Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here Part 38 Part 39*******************
Another Point of View*******************
Inspector Henderson glanced at the two reporters who had just entered and sat down in his office. He recalled walking through Kent’s sparsely decorated apartment that morning after the reporter caught those men who had broken in.
Clark Kent lived simply. He had a trinket or two and some books. He had some basic furniture, nothing fancy and nothing matching.
Henderson had done a cursory search on the man after their meeting at the bar but, like Luthor, Clark Kent had no arrest history that he could find. Kent was a recent transplant to Metropolis, which could explain his bare living conditions. One thing was for certain, Kent had guts. Not only was the man not frightened off by Lois Lane’s barbed-wire personality, he was actually attracted to it. Lane had intelligence and was fun as hell to tease, mainly because she had a tendency to take herself and her opinions too seriously, but she was a spitfire and often a pain in her dogged search for the truth. For some reason, that not only attracted Kent, but also Luthor. Well, there was no accounting for taste.
He had wondered if Kent’s animosity against Luthor had to do with misplaced jealousy. Henderson had seen that tactic before; make the rival for his love less attractive by framing the other man for a crime he hadn’t committed. If Menken hadn’t given Henderson all the details about conversations and financial transactions between him and Luthor. If after the inspector had turned off the recorder to log in the tapes, Menken hadn’t grabbed Henderson’s sleeve to whisper to him that Luthor was trying to kill him, because he knew too much, and to please protect him. If Henderson hadn’t brushed off the man’s pleas as the paranoid ramblings of a man who knew he was going to prison. If Menken hadn’t then died in a manner which could only be called ‘a statement’ that had matched his paranoia, and under Henderson’s watch as well. If Henderson hadn’t disliked the self-important billionaire with his braggart attitude on sight, then maybe, possibly, he would have considered this a feud between rivals.
Lane was an annoying thorn in Henderson’s side, but he just couldn’t imagine her spurring a rivalry of this kind.
Henderson looked down at the two drawings that Kent claimed Superman had made of the men following Lois. “And Superman drew these?”
“Yes,” Clark repeated. “Superman noticed this man –” He pointed to one drawing. “ – while patrolling last night. He was sitting in the same car that Lois and I noticed following us this morning.”
“All night?” Henderson asked.
Kent pointed to the other man, who he had said was driving the car following them. “He was relieved by this man at seven this morning.”
Lane, unusually quiet as Kent explained this, finally spoke up, asking the one question that Henderson wanted to ask. “Superman?”
Kent glanced away for a moment and then met her gaze head on. “Uh-huh. While he was out on patrol,” he lied.
Henderson knew it was a lie, not only from Kent’s expression but because of the extra busy night for MPD. No one had seen Superman since he dropped Luthor and Menken off two days earlier. Several patrolmen had mentioned it, and they weren’t the only ones.
Lane nodded. The brightness that had flashed into her eyes at the superhero’s name faded quickly. The rumors he had heard whispered around about the reasons Lane got more than her fair share of Superman stories had a bit of truth to them. Poor Kent. He was fighting a losing battle, and Henderson had thought he had stiff enough competition with the billionaire. Yep, Kent definitely had guts.
“Uh-huh,” Henderson said, glancing down the pictures.
“They aren’t your men, are they?” Kent asked.
“No, I don’t know them,” he replied.
“What is it then? You don’t believe someone’s following us? Even after all the recording devices found in my apartment and those men we caught red-handed at his place?” Lois snapped, throwing her thumb back at Kent.
“No, Ms. Lane, with all the trouble you sniff out, I’m surprised more crime bosses don’t have someone following you,” Henderson admitted wryly, and saw a flash of agreement cross Kent’s face before he hid it behind his hand.
“Hardy-har-har,” Lane responded. “Then what is it? Why don’t you believe us?”
Henderson leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers. “Who says I don’t believe you?”
“Well, you’re not rushing off to do anything about it,” Lane observed.
“It’s just I find it interesting that no one has seen Superman since late Saturday night,” he drawled.
“That’s ridiculous. I saw him yesterday, and Clark saw him both yesterday and this morning.”
“Yes, so you say,” Henderson went on. He picked up that morning’s
Metropolis Star he had snatched off someone’s desk when he returned from Kent’s apartment, and dropped it in front of them on his desk. The headline blared: “Garrison Calls Superman a Chicken. Is He Right?”
Kent paled and seemed to melt into his seat.
Lane, on the other hand, started in on the policeman. “You call
that news? How can you pay money for that crap?”
“They say nobody has seen Superman since fight night, when Garrison dared the hero to fight him,” Henderson summarized.
“Superman didn’t fight Garrison because he didn’t want to hurt him. Clark, back me up here,” Lane said, slapping her partner with the back of her hand.
Kent nodded. “I spoke to Murray Brown from the Superman Foundation a few days ago when Menken started spreading rumors of Superman attending the fight. Mr. Brown told me that Superman wouldn’t be fighting anyone for money, charity or otherwise,” he said. The man looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here having this conversation. Henderson wondered why that was.
“Fine, but it doesn’t explain how nobody has seen Superman except you two in the last forty-eight hours,” Henderson retorted.
“It hasn’t been forty-eight hours since I was shot, Henderson, closer to thirty-six,” Lois grumbled. “What is this? A witch-hunt?”
“Of course not, Ms. Lane, but I don’t see how Superman was ‘patrolling’ Metropolis when he didn’t come to anyone’s aid? Why did he pass sketches of the suspects to Kent here, instead of just bringing them in?”
Lane glanced at her partner in disbelief before turning back to the inspector. “He didn’t come to anybody’s aid?”
Henderson shook his head. “Not one officer reported seeing him last night.”
Kent shifted uncomfortably in his seat as Lane glanced at him again.
“Somebody must have seen him, Inspector. It’s not like he spent the whole night at…” Lane’s voice faded and she cleared her throat. “No, that’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t do that.”
Henderson raised a brow, and gazed at Kent who seemed to have lost interest in this discussion and was now studying the office ceiling.
Suddenly Kent spoke, “It’s not like he hasn’t gone a day or two without rescues before.”
“Right,” Lane jumped at this excuse.
Yep, these two were definitely hiding something.
“Maybe Superman was doing rescues in another part of the country or world. Metropolis doesn’t have a hold on him, you know,” Lane continued. It seemed as if she said her words before considering them, because as soon as she did, her shoulders slumped.
Kent set a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “He’s said that Metropolis is his home now, Lois.”
“No, Clark, he said that
Earth was his home now, not Metropolis,” she corrected softly as if the fire inside her had been dampened. “Sticking to one place would just hold him back from doing the most good.”
“He’s got to live somewhere. Why not Metropolis?” said Kent. “He has no reason to leave.”
Lane glanced over her shoulder at her partner. “He has no reason to stay, Clark.”
Poor Kent was fighting an uphill battle there, that was clear to Henderson.
“The only problem I have with your theory, Ms. Lane, is that Superman told Kent that he saw these men while he was ‘patrolling’. Only if he was patrolling Metropolis, why didn’t he help anyone here? And if he was patrolling the country or world, why keep swinging back by
your place to check on some men who may, or may not, have been lying in wait for you?” Henderson asked before leaning forward to continue his barrage of questions placing doubt on Kent’s statement.
Before he could go on, Lane interjected, “Why wouldn’t he check on my apartment? We’re friends. He knows that someone is spying on me, and then he catches sight of a man who may have been watching my apartment. Superman probably kept coming back to see if the man was still there. He couldn’t very well bring the man in for sitting in his car all night, could he?
That’s not against the law,” she responded, pausing in her defense of Superman long enough to catch her breath.
Henderson took the opportunity to ask, “You’re friends with Superman?”
Kent fielded this one. “Yes. Is it surprising that Superman has friends?”
“No. No. Of course not. I’m just wondering how unbiased you are, writing about your so-called ‘friend’?”
“I’m friends with Lex Luthor too, but I don’t let that influence the truth,” Lane snapped.
From behind her Kent shook his head. Clearly, he was keeping secret his investigation of Luthor from his partner. Wise move. The less people who knew the better.
Henderson voiced the obvious question, “But he
shot you?”
“Are we here to discuss my friends and their actions, or are we here to get to the bottom of who’s stalking me?” she asked, returning to the point at hand.
Henderson knew that there was more to the story on how the drawings were made. He wouldn’t be surprised if Kent drew them himself, but claimed it was Superman so his partner wouldn’t realize he had stood watch outside her apartment all night. Although, if Kent had, he didn’t look any worse for wear.
“Funny coincidence about those cameras you brought me from Ms. Lane’s apartment, Kent,” Henderson said, moving on for now. “They’re the same kind as the ones found at the Carleton Building after that explosion that buried Superman.”
“It didn’t bury…” Kent interjected. “— him.”
Lane glanced over her shoulder at her partner. “What would you know about it? You weren’t even there, Clark,” she reminded him. Then she refocused her gaze on Henderson. “But he’s right. Superman wasn’t buried. Dazed maybe. Surprised…”
“Dazed?” Kent echoed, scoffing.
“More surprised than dazed,” Lane clarified.
Kent shook his head and leaned back in his chair, letting her take the lead again. Probably a good policy.
“Bureau 39,” said Lane.
“Bureau whatsit?” Henderson asked.
“That rogue military group that went after Superman,” Kent explained.
Henderson chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Oh, yeah. I heard about your warehouse of UFOs, Ms. Lane.”
“Stop your snickering. They wanted to examine my body because…” she paused and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “— because we had been alone together after he saved us from the bomb on the Prometheus shuttle.”
Henderson raised a brow, and avoided the obvious joke, despite the temptation. Lane looked as if she had heard them all before. He watched as Kent touched her arm reassuringly, and he wondered if Lane knew how much her partner admired her.
“I don’t know if it was them, Lois. Remember how Trask tried to push blame for the bombing of the Carleton Building on Superman,” Kent said. “— when you accused him of it.”
“Well, yes,” Lois conceded. “But he could have been trying to frame Superman.” She pressed her lips together in annoyance. “No. Trask really believes that Superman’s a menace. He’d crow over the fact he tried to blow him up.” Her eyes widened as the implication of this development struck her. “It
has to be Trask!”
“Ms. Lane?” Henderson asked, knowing full well her ability to glean information from nothing and into highly accurate hunches.
She glanced between the two men, and her shoulders fell. “So some
other wacko group is out to get me now?” Instead of getting all Mad-Dog at the idea, she seemed more exhausted by it.
“Me, too,” Kent reminded her.
“It must have to do with something you’re investigating,” Henderson suggested.
“But the only story
we’re investigating together is Menken, and he’s dead. We’ve only just become partners. No, this is someone interested in me and me alone. The bugs were placed at
my place first. Superman said that they may have been there for a while. They only did your place because of me.”
Henderson couldn’t let another opportunity pass by. “Why exactly would this person, or persons, spying on you be interested in Kent here? Did something happen between you two at your apartment that would cause a sudden interest in Kent and the goings on at his apartment by your stalker?”
“Yeah, we made mad passionate love, and it was so entertaining, better than porn quality stuff, that my stalker didn’t want to miss any part of the show,” she shot back with sarcasm.
Henderson glanced over at Kent who winced at this description so it must have hit close to home.
“Really?”
“No, not really,” Lane spat.
Kent seemed interested once more in the ceiling tiles.
“
He’s my partner and friend. If my stalker thinks we’re anything more, he’s going to be sorely disappointed,” Lane said, staring the inspector in the eye as if daring him to comment.
So, he did. “Because the video footage of you two will no longer be available for viewing?” Henderson grinned.
She shot Henderson daggers with her eyes, and poor Kent melted in embarrassment a little further into his seat.
***************
Mending Wounds***************
Clark tried, honestly he had tried to go on a rescue while Lois was asleep, just to prove Henderson wrong about Superman’s disappearance coinciding with fight night, but somehow he kept ending up either standing on or hovering up in the sky over her roof. With someone still after Lois or Superman via her, it made him nervous to be far away from her for any length of time. He might be able to stop a mugging across town, but would a fire delay him too long if Lois needed him?
He knew he was being paranoid, and he didn’t like this feeling, this lack of control of his own fears. He had experienced so much loss in his life: his birth parents, his folks, and even
his Lois; the thought of anything happening to
this Lois was more than he could handle.
By the Wednesday after fight night, having only gotten a spattering of sleep, Lois confronted him.
“What’s going on with you, Chuck? You look like the walking dead,” she said, after he had accompanied her home and helped her with her locks.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” he confessed.
“Or at all, from the looks of it,” Lois accused. “What’s keeping you up?”
“Nightmares,” Clark said. That wasn’t exactly a lie. Every time he closed his eyes he pictured himself arriving a moment too late and finding Luthor standing over her dead body lying in a pool of blood.
“Yeah, me too,” she murmured, pushing open her door and taking her keys back from him.
His brows furrowed. “Luthor shooting you?”
She glanced away as she walked into her apartment. “Superman.”
Clark leaned against her doorframe, trying hard for nonchalance, but his heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. Had he gone too far in the woods? “Superman? What kind of nightmares?”
“That I’ll never see him again,” Lois said.
He exhaled in relief. “He’s around. I’m sure he’s just giving you time and space.”
“I never wanted space, Clark,” she stated the obvious. “Have you spoken with him?”
Clark shook his head.
“Then how do you know that he’s around?”
“Because if he felt for you even a quarter of what I do, he wouldn’t be able to stay away,” he said, wishing he hadn’t after the words had passed his lips. He loved her so much it was hard not telling her so.
“Want to stay for dinner? Lucy bought some pasta yesterday.” She grinned at him, and he knew they both were thinking the same thing.
“No, I better be going,” he said, his voice cracking as he stepped back out into the hall. He hadn’t been able to look at pasta since that night without thinking of Lois. Just thinking about pasta and Lois at the same time… he took another step back.
Lois smiled at him again and stepped towards him. He knew she was only teasing him by the evil, seductive glint in her eye. It hadn’t been a real invitation; she just liked wielding her power over him to turn him into jelly. She was getting him back for once more opening his big fat mouth and mentioning his feelings towards her. He wasn’t trying to pressure her in any way, shape, or manner, but she clearly thought that was going on.
He wanted to apologize for sticking his foot in his mouth again, but as soon as his mouth opened, her gaze hardened. She hadn’t let up on her moratorium on his apologies. He coughed instead. “Maybe some other time.”
“Well, you better be heading to bed, because you aren’t going to do either of us any good if you don’t get some sleep,” she said, taking hold of her door to close it.
“No guarantees.”
“Are you going home?” Lois asked, and Clark felt a jolt of panic that she had figured out that he was keeping watch at her place.
He shrugged, unable to lie.
“Go home! I’ll be calling you in a half hour and I expect you to answer,” she said. “If I have to, I’ll sing you lullabies.”
He smiled. “You sing?”
“Go home, get ready for bed, and wait by the phone. Maybe you’ll find out,” Lois coaxed.
If Lois was trying to chase him off, she was doing a horrible job of it because that was an invitation he couldn’t refuse.
***
After that night, they got into the habit of calling each other at bedtime. Clark felt reassured enough that she was safe, so he could sleep. Lois was able to concentrate on something other than Superman being missing, or at least that was why he thought she continued the calls. On those nights when he awoke with nightmares of Lois, he would spin into his blue Suit, fly to her apartment, and make sure she was still safely at home asleep.
A week passed since Lois had been shot, and the arrest of the private detectives hired to follow them and the electronics men found in his apartment, and no other evidence had been uncovered. Their stalker knew that they were on to him or them and had ceased all activity. Literally, no one was talking, which wasn’t too surprising after Menken’s death. According to Henderson, MPD hadn’t gotten a single confession since Menken’s death; even their snitches were keeping silent.
Lois and Clark were settling into their new partnership. She told him what to do, what to type, and where to go, and for the most part he followed her lead, unless he had a better idea. He knew he shouldn’t be doing that since it would set a bad precedent, but with her unable to do many things one-handed, he let her have a little leeway for a while.
Having been awoken by an extremely graphic nightmare of Lois bleeding from a head wound, Clark was hovering above her apartment building when he heard a news report of tornados in Kansas.
Without thinking, he took off like a bolt of lightning, probably causing a sonic boom over her building, but he was already in Kansas by the time anyone heard it.
Superman scanned the horizon and saw the storm. Rushing into the swirling vortex, he found a baby in a car seat and a dog in the winds. He caught both of them and took them to the ground. Then he returned to the twister, grabbed hold of a tractor and flew it to safety. There wasn’t anyone on it, but from experience he knew many people were hurt from falling debris as from the winds themselves. He scoped out the path of the funnel and reassured himself it was all fields without homes, people, or roads for the next few miles, then he returned to the heart of the winds. Superman started turning himself quickly in the opposite direction as the winds, slowing them down.
After the storm had dissipated, he returned to where he had left the baby. The dog had run off. Superman picked up the baby, reassured himself of its safety, and flew in the direction the tornado had come. He found a farmhouse in ruins, and horses running free from the destroyed barn. Hovering above the house, he determined that the storm had struck while everyone was still asleep. He set down the infant in the car seat a safe distance away and went to uncover the family. Luckily, after unburying them, most of the family was more shook up than badly injured.
The youngest son was wearing a pair of Superman pajamas with a built in cape. The boy couldn’t speak, he was so in awe of being rescued by his hero; he merely gaped and pointed at him. Superman put the oldest child, a young teenage daughter, in charge of watching her brother and the infant as he went in search of the children’s parents. The mother had a bleeding head wound, and Superman flew her to the nearest hospital for care.
Then upon his return, he picked up the infant, who didn’t belong to this family and continued along the path of destruction. He found a young mother, crying in the arms of her mother. Their mobile home destroyed. Superman had passed it a half mile away. Apparently the tornado pulled the car seat with the sleeping infant out of the mother’s arms as she had run for shelter. Her boyfriend hadn’t been so fortunate. Superman found him lying within what was left of the mobile home.
Superman accepted the gratitude from the women and returned their child before continuing along the path of destruction. After making sure that everyone had been safely rescued, Superman flew towards Smallville. He hadn’t come by in several weeks, not wanting to leave Lois unprotected, and was worried that the Kent Farm had also been visited by twisters. He stood on the roof of the barn and watched the sun rise to the east on the other side of the house. He could see that everything was still shipshape, and he sighed in relief.
There was something about being in Smallville that just made him feel like he was home.
“Superman!” he heard Martha Kent call out to him.
He gazed down and saw her in the courtyard between the barn and the house. She was looking at him with such pride, that his heart began to ache. Oh, to have
his mom look at him like that.
Jonathan rolled his wheelchair outside and followed his wife’s gaze. “Superman,” he murmured in awe.
Clark’s heart exploded in misery. These people weren’t his parents. They looked like his folks. They sounded like them, but they didn’t know him… not the true him. They only knew the hero. He floated into the air, unwilling to let these people, these strangers, see him cry. He still wanted to get to know them; maybe as Jerome the wanderer, they would finally look upon him with friendship and gratitude, as an equal. He doubted they would ever look at him like that other Clark’s parents had when they thought he was their son.
“Thank you,” he heard Martha Kent call to him. He closed his eyes in a wince, wiping away the tears. It was too unfair that he had lost his folks, and these Kents had lost their Clark.
***
Clark returned to home via a flyby of Lois’s apartment and heard that both she and Lucy were not only awake, not surprising given the hour, but also in the midst of a heated argument.
“You may have signed up for this crazy life, Lois, but I didn’t,” Lucy screamed at her sister.
It hadn’t been difficult for Superman to hear them with their living room windows open, and him floating overhead.
“I didn’t sign up for a stalker either, Lucy,” Lois shouted back. “Fine! Go! My life will be easier if I’m not worrying about you.”
“I know that the police and Superman removed the bugs and cameras and stuff, but I can’t erase that feeling like someone is always watching us. I feel self-conscious about changing my clothes, taking a shower, even going to the bathroom. I haven’t slept in a week. Lois, I can’t live like this.”
Clark lifted himself higher into the sky, feeling a bit uncomfortable about that observation. He hadn’t been
watching the Lane sisters, per se, listening sure, but not x-ray watching. He wouldn’t do that, unless he thought they were in danger.
“Fine! I said, ‘go!’ It’s not like I
need you. I
can take care of myself,” Lois said, and Clark could hear the frustration in her voice, her anger, and even a bit of pain. There wasn’t any fear that she couldn’t do it. No matter what anyone said to the contrary, Lois would do anything to prove to the world that she could make it on her own, or die trying.
“That’s right, Lois. That’s why I’m going. If I felt like you needed me, I’d stay, but between Clark and the Jimmys, plus Dad… okay, maybe not Dad,” Lucy paused to draw a breath.
Dr. Lane had given Lois his usual non-loving support upon coming out of hiding, long enough for the Medical Ethics Board to revoke his license to practice medicine on humans, and/or partial humans. As long as Tony Garrison was out and about hurtling insults at Superman’s masculinity and refusing to submit himself to have all the non-vital components of his cyborg self removed, the D.A. had suggested that Sam Lane remain in hiding. Dr. Lane hadn’t needed the suggestion to heed the advice.
“Yeah, Dad,” Lois grumbled, and the two women shared a momentary scoffing chuckle at their father’s expense.
Lucy continued on about her plans to take the train that afternoon to her friend’s in Philadelphia and then journey cross country the rest of the way by car. She had cashed in her plane tickets and planned on using the funds for her road trip and a deposit on an apartment back in L.A. “Lois, don’t be a martyr. If you can’t handle it, I want you to take Lex Luthor up on his offer for the home care nurse.”
Clark hadn’t heard of the offer, nor was he surprised that Lois hadn’t mentioned it to him. She knew that after Lex shot her, any chance of civility between the two men was null and void.
“I’ll be fine,” Lois said, and even without x-ray vision Clark knew she said the words through gritted teeth. “I’d have Clark move in to your room before I hire a nurse.”
“Or…” Lucy teased. “You could have Clark move into
your room. I’m sure, if you just let him, Clark could nurse you back to health faster than anyone Lex Luthor would hire.”
Clark flushed, and decided that he had eavesdropped long enough. He really didn’t need to hear Lois tell her sister how
that would never happen. Anyway, Lois still had a lot of healing to do before he’d fool himself into believing she actually wanted Clark for himself, instead of using him to scratch her Superman itch.
************************
Return of the Time Traveler************************
H. G. Wells stepped off the elevator and into the Daily Planet bullpen. He had dropped off that other Clark in this new dimension – three months ago for Clark, and less than five minutes ago for him.
Herb wondered if Clark had recreated himself – his Superman self – in this new dimension, or if he had taken his advice about a vacation. He figured if Clark was given a chance to be himself again, he would rekindle his love of helping people. Not that Clark had lost it, but recently he seemed more bitter towards his fate in life.
Herb hadn’t seen any photos of a familiar man in a blue suit and red cape on the cover of the newspapers or magazines in the lobby, but had only had a chance to glance at them before entering the elevator. Knowing the Clark in his dimension so well, Herb knew that giving up being Superman was near impossible for him, but this other Clark, he was different. His priorities were different, as was his history and motivations. The one thing that stayed true was his fierce love and devotion for Lois Lane.
Herb had noticed many similarities between this new dimension and his own. He had hoped that the Lois Lane of this new dimension also mirrored that of the personality of a younger pre-Clark Lois: career-focused, no-nonsense, sharp around the edges, and definitely not interested in a hick from Smallville. The Lois and Clark of his dimension had grown into friends and then eventually into more, but the original Ms. Lane he had met was hard enough that she might scare this other Clark away from wanting that dream life that he had seen with the Kents from Herb’s dimension, especially if this new Ms. Lane became obsessed with Clark’s Super side. He hoped that this Clark would be refreshed from not having to be Superman every moment of the day and ready to move back to his Lois-free home dimension.
He knew that this Lois was strong enough to continue with her life, and hopefully, with this little bit of exposure to a Clark, if not her
soul mate Clark, would be less likely to go insane without him. Best of all, if Herb’s plan worked, Clark wouldn’t ask him to go back in time to rescue
his own Lois Lane. No, no, no, that wouldn’t do at all.
Herb walked down the ramp and quickly spotted Clark sitting at his desk. The man glanced up as he approached and smiled, standing up to greet him.
“Herb!” Clark said, moving toward him with his hand outstretched. “It’s good to see you.” He paused a moment to look around as if double-checking something, and then went on. “There’s so much I would like to discuss with you. Let’s go to lunch.” He grabbed his jacket off his chair, and quickly escorted Herb back to the elevators.
The doors opened as they reached them, and out marched Ms. Lane. Her hair was a bit shorter than Herb remembered from when he had first met her all those years ago in his dimension’s 1995, when he mistakenly brought Tempus back from the future. The most noticeable change was that her right arm was in a sling.
She grabbed Clark’s arm with her left hand. “Weeks! My physical therapist said it could be weeks, if not months, until I have my strength back in my arm to do what I used to take for granted before Lex shot me. Can you believe it?”
Lex Luthor had shot Ms. Lane? Herb looked at Clark, and the man returned a glance full of shame and embarrassment.
“Lois, you can do this. I know you can,” Clark reassured her, stepping into the elevator.
“I know
that! Of course I can. I can do anything!” she snapped, refusing to acknowledge defeat. Yes, Lois Lane was the same no matter which dimension she was in. “Where are you off to?” She gazed into the elevator at the different occupants. “Why are you taking the elevator?”
“I have a meeting,” he replied, both vaguely and curtly. “And what does it matter if I’m taking the elevator?”
“You
never take the elevator, Chuck,” Ms. Lane responded suspiciously before nodding at someone behind Wells. “Who’s that?”
Both Herb and Clark turned to see a blonde woman with a quizzical expression on her face.
“Jeanine from accounting,” Clark responded. “And I’m not going to review the details behind my odd behavior while others are waiting.”
“Tell him…”
“I’m not going to see
him, Lois,” Clark said quietly, cutting her off. “I’ll see you later.”
Ms. Lane nodded; her earlier fire but a mere ember. “Right. Of course,” she said, letting go of the elevator door, with one last glare at Jeanine.
After the doors closed, Jeanine stepped towards Clark. “How can you stand being partnered with her, Clark? She was a witch before, now she’s a full blown…”
“Lois is going through a lot right now, Jeanine. She could use all of our patience,” Clark replied.
“You’re a saint. I hear she practically bit off that new reporter’s head at the morning meeting all just because he said ‘hello’,” Jeanine said. “And that she demanded that Perry fire him on the spot.”
Herb hadn’t courted a woman in quite some time, but he recognized the expression in the woman’s eyes. She was more than interested in this farm boy from Kansas.
“Lois is my partner, and I’m sure Ralph would be more than welcoming of your support,” Clark said diplomatically with no hint that he was interested in Jeanine’s flirtation.
Jeanine stuck her jaw higher in the air. “I just might give it to him.”
Clark leaned towards Herb and mumbled, “Doubtful.” He raised his voice. “So, Herb, travel anywhere interesting since we last saw each other?”
“I came straight here after I dropped you off,” replied Herb, having learned over his years of time-travel not to disclose details from his life so freely as he once had. “I see you’ve been busy.”
Clark smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “I’ve kept active.”
Herb raised an eyebrow at him. “Have you?”
Luckily for the reporter, the elevator arrived at the lobby at that moment, delaying any reply to that question.
Herb was beginning to see that all his hopes and plans for this Clark had already flown out the window.
***End of Part 39*** Part 40 Comments ?
