I don't know if it's okay to do this on here, but I took the advice of a few people and made some changes to part two and the second part of part two to make sure the dream included everything I didn't want to be permanent in the story. Thanks for the help.
Disguise Failed pt 2
Lois Lane sat at her desk, pulled out her keyboard and began to type. The Godlike hero, now named Superman by her own doing, had saved the Messenger. Everything he had done, however, was not as interesting as just who he was. She knew that. This was 'her' story…the story that would make her career…the story that would win her the Pulitzer. She knew all about Superman. He was from Smallville Kansas. He worked at the Daily Planet. His name was Clark Kent, the mild mannered reporter.
He was a pretty decent guy, good looking with excellent muscles. He lived on junk food. He didn't own a tuxedo. He was close with his parents. He wrote touchy feely stuff. He didn't like being chased by lewd women, Cat for one. He also was a real character, meeting her put-downs with his own versions. With that and all she’d learned about him over the past few days of working together, she wrote it all out. It looked good. Should it be published?
The thought crossed her mind as she looked across at Clark Kent who was sitting at his desk looking at her over a pencil he held between his two sets of fingers. Should she make his identity public? He’d been nice to her, sure but he was Superman! He wanted her to keep it secret. Why? Was he planning on scooping her himself? What about her job? Was she supposed to turn up her nose at a story just because she knew the person involved?
She pressed Send and LAN'ed it to Perry. Done. The Pulitzer she’d sought for years would finally be in the works.
She grinned at Clark, and then walked over to his desk. "Let's go, Farmboy."
His eyebrows went up. "Where are we heading, now?"
She slapped his arm with her bag and headed to the elevator. "I'll fill you in on the way."
In the elevator, she turned to him. "So where do you keep the cape?"
"Excuse me?"
She took hold of him and unbuttoned a button in the center of his chest. "I thought so. But where's the cape?"
She walked around behind him and felt the back of his shoulders, then tugged his shirt up out of his pants to look for the cape beneath it. Bingo.
"But doesn't it get all mashed up in the legs of your pants?"
"Lois, do you have to know EVERYTHING?" His irritation was evident.
"Yes. You're my story."
He caught her hands and dropped them to her sides. "I am not your story Lois Lane. I work with you. I am your co-worker. Period."
"Oh yeah? Well I saw you first, and those are the rules."
"Whose rules?"
"Mine. So may I have an interview now?"
"Lois, you have every intention of telling everything about my life in that story of yours, don’t you? My life is my life! I only put on that suit so I could help people without having to hide. Every time I saved someone before, people wanted to trap me and study me. I thought with a disguise I could still have a life, still work at the Daily Planet, still live in Metropolis and be normal."
"Ah, but you're not Normal, Clark Kent. You're not anything like normal. You’re Superman. You're...” she couldn't find the right word without sounding like a total groupie. She wasn’t making much effort to hide the groupie from her voice, however.
For some reason her words didn't sit too well with him, judging by the look on his face. "What's wrong?"
He shrugged. "Normal is good."
She looked at him incredulously. "You can fly, but you want to be NORMAL?" It was beyond her comprehension. "Clark Kent, do you have ANY idea how many people have wanted to fly? How many people would love to be able to lift a space station and carry it up into orbit? Do you have any idea how boring 'normal' is?"
"Lois, normal is good."
"Trust me Farmboy, normal isn't all it's cracked up to be." She patted him on the chest and stepped off the elevator as the doors opened into the lobby.
"Lois, don't tell everyone who I am. Please?"
"Are you begging me?"
"Do I have to beg you Lois? Have you any idea what will happen to my parents if this gets out? Everyone will be trying to harm them to get me to do what they want. It'll be an extortionist's dream come true. Every criminal element that finds out what I can do along with what my weaknesses are will see anyone I care about as fair game." He was keeping his voice down so she had to strain to hear what he said.
Lois stopped walking down the sidewalk and turned to look at him. He looked helpless, hardly a shadow of the Superhero she'd seen in the skin tight outfit earlier in the day. "Are you serious?"
"Dead serious, Lois. You know I told you I'd traveled?"
She nodded and started walking again. "Well, every time I left, it was because people started to figure things out. I couldn't stay in one place for any time at all. I don't want to keep moving. I just want to stay in one place. Can you just let me do that?"
"Look Clark. I'll give it to you straight. If I don't publish the scoop on you, someone else will. It's my career we're talking about. I could let this story slide, but how many other people are going to recognize you now and publish it? Clark, I was there, I saw you first, it's my story...and I'm going to get the credit for it."
"Fine, Lois. Fine! Could you just please leave any reference to my parents out of it please? And where I come from so they won't be kidnapped?"
With that, he turned angrily and headed down an alley and around the corner. When Lois had caught up to him, the alley was empty.
Perry read the article that appeared in his computer with interest. Fascinating story. And Clark Kent worked right here in his newsroom. He got up and opened the office door. "KENT!" He looked around but didn't see the pair working on the Prometheus story. He'd talk to him later.
Clark arrived back at his apartment at the end of a long day. He'd been furious with Lois. How could she do this to him? But what did he expect? She was a hardnosed reporter. She didn't let a story slip through her fingers.
He eyed the newspapers in the stand on the sidewalk, walked over and dropped some change in the slot, pulled open the door and lifted out a paper. Half the top of the front page was covered with a picture of him carrying the Messenger into space. His red cape billowed out behind him. He looked closely at the picture. It did look like him, but not that much.
He tucked the paper under his arm and jogged up to his hotel room two steps at a time. It was a seedy hotel. He'd find a new place to live tomorrow. Well, depending on what Lois had published. He sank into a chair at the small table and laid the paper out in front of himself. There it was. The story he'd never wanted to see published. He couldn't bring himself to read it. His secret was public now. His life was ruined. How could she have crushed him under her foot like that? Didn't she have any normal feelings? He got up and went to make himself a cup of oolong tea.
She was stubborn and pigheaded, opinionated and selfish, but she was beautiful and brilliant. She also exposed the truth, something for which he stood. How could he be mad at her for doing the same thing that he did, bringing the truth to light? He furiously shot a ray of heat at the water in his mug, boiling it instantly.
"Mom and Dad. I guess you heard?"
They both nodded, looking up from the television. "You're the top story. They've got everything on there about you except for your ship landing and our finding you." Jonathan looked devastated. His mother's cheery smile was gone.
"I'm sorry Mom and Dad. I had no idea she'd do this to me."
"Who?"
"Lois Lane."
"That reporter you work with?"
"Yeah. She recognized me right away. I don't know how I could have been so stupid as to think that a pair of glasses could disguise me. It just seemed so right when I looked in the mirror before."
"I had my doubts about those glasses." Jonathan had spoken up about it, but Clark had assured him that it would work. Well it hadn't. Now what should he do?
Back in his hotel room, his super hearing picked up a sound. It was a low knocking at his door. In a flash he was out of bed and opening the door to the tear-streaked face of Lois Lane.
"What's wrong?" He ushered her into his apartment and led her over to the couch.
She was blubbering, her nose in a handkerchief. "I'm ssssss...orrrrry, Clark." she wailed.
"You wrote the story?"
She nodded. "I couldn't ssssss...top myself...I wwwwww...anted the ssssssss...tory."
For some reason far beyond his comprehension, he was rubbing her shoulders saying, "There, there, Lois, don't cry."
"I'm ssssssss...orrrrrrry, Claa...rrrrrrrrk."
Clark rubbed her arm gently. "I didn't read it. I couldn't bring myself to find out what you said."
"Every...thing Clark. You must haaaaaa....te me."
"I could never hate you, Lois."
She met his eyes in wonderment. "Really?"
"Really."
"What are you going to...do now?" she choked the words out.
He looked away, through the ceiling at the star-lit sky beyond. "I don't know."
There was silence as the enormity of what had happened hung in the air between them. She was crying again. He remembered the look of bliss in her face as he had flown with her from the Messenger back to the Daily Planet yesterday. He couldn't bear to hear her cry like that. What was done was done. Water under the bridge. He'd deal with it in the morning.
"Would you like to go flying, Lois?"
She looked at him through reddened eyes. After a moment's eye contact, she nodded. He walked over to his closet and took out a suit, then spun into it. He came back and stood in front of her, noting the look of amazement on her face. He leaned down and scooped her up off the couch. She put her arms around his neck and felt the strength of his muscles as he held her, walking to the balcony door. Moving his hand at the speed of light, he turned the door knob and pulled the door open. He stepped through the door and lifted them off into the night sky.
The warm fall wind blew through her hair as they sailed low over the city lights. She was speechless. Her tears were forgotten as she took in the sights of the city below. She'd seen the city from the air during airplane takeoffs and helicopter rides, but it was much different now with the wind in her face, the smell of Clark Kent's aftershave, the feel of his strong arms and hands on her body. She felt safe. Safer than she'd ever felt in her entire life.
He looked down at her face. "Are you okay?"
She nodded, sighing.
"Warm enough?"
She nodded again, at a loss for words.
"Superman?"
His deep brown eyes met hers.
"Don't you hate me?"
"I told you, I could never hate you, Lois."
"Why not?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. That's not the way I deal with things. I'm here to help. Hating doesn't help anything."
"What was it like? Flying the Messenger into orbit?"
“Are you going to write this?”
As she nodded her head he continued. "Heavy. I've never lifted anything that big before. It wasn't too heavy, though. It was only heavier than other things I’ve lifted."
"Was it hard to fly that far?"
"No. I've flown further. I just have to hold my breath when I get beyond the earth's atmosphere."
"Oh."
"Why can you fly? What happened to you?"
A small smile crossed his face. "It's a power that I just developed when I was a teenager. Are you sure you’re not going to write this?"
She shook her head. "I've learned my lesson."
He nodded, "I'd rather you don't tell people about my life on earth. Just that I just arrived from another planet, and that I came to help."
"Well, it's a little late for that, Superman." Tears were forming against her nose again. "I'm so sorry. I should never have done it. Do you think your parents are okay?"
Clark nodded; he'd have felt something if there had been trouble with his parents. But maybe it would be a good idea to check on them later. But not with Lois, just in case she decided to tell anything else she found out about him.
"How normal are you? I mean, do you have to eat and sleep and go to the bathroom?" She blushed, wishing she'd not asked that last part.
"I don't have to eat or sleep. But if I eat I have to go to the bathroom." He added that part with a smile. "You do ask the difficult questions don't you Lois Lane?"
Her countenance changed to one of pride, "I'm the best."
He nodded silently, meeting her smile. She was so beautiful when she smiled, when she was crying about her failings, when she was asking the searching questions.
Clark awoke, wondering how he could have been so nice to her as he remembered his dream. How could he have just frankly forgiven her? She was despicable, the lowest of low, completely void of feeling, selfish…
He lay there thinking. Had she really printed the story? He listened for the sound of reporters outside. It was quiet.
She was appalling. How could she have done that to him? He looked around at his hotel room. His life in Metropolis was going to be over before it had ever begun. He gritted his teeth, the muscle in his jaw twitching.
How could she have done that to him? Had she no idea what it would have done to his future? He thought of all the things he should have said to her. He should have thrown her out, dropped her in the wilderness where it would take her a very long time to get home. Maybe he could still do that…he loved the idea. But it wasn’t possible. It wasn’t what he’d do. He was honorable. He had principles. Too bad she didn’t have any.
He pictured her lost in the jungle, scared of the noises, the natives chasing her with spears. He pursed his lips. He couldn’t do that. How about the great Lois Lane sitting atop an iceberg? He pictured her floating for days, thirsty, her pretty hairdo all a mess, one shoe having fallen into the mouth of a polar bear that was scratching to reach her.
No, he had standards. Even thinking about doing this wasn’t something he should be doing.
He envisioned her wading through sewage in search of some precious story bit. Was that beneath him?
In his dream, she had apologized. Did the great Lois Lane usually ever apologize? Not according to the gossip he’d heard around the newsroom.
He rolled over and puffed up his pillow, but the contents blew like a volcano at the ceiling. How about Lois Lane orbiting the earth? He pictured her flailing in space wondering if she’d ever find her way back.
But the worst revenge he could imagine would be Lois Lane, greatest reporter, or so they say, unemployed, begging for a job with the local gossip rag. Or worse yet, having a dog show reporter column forever.
Clark smiled as he rolled back onto his back and pictured her sitting atop a telephone pole.
How could he be so mean? What had gotten into him in his dream? He’d told her he couldn’t hate her. He wasn’t so sure about that.
He sighed. Well, if she had printed it, she would have Superman to contend with. There wouldn’t be any nice flights around the world in his arms. He’d have to really work hard to keep from plucking her out of bed and leaving her afloat in the ocean, or any of his other fantasies. Superman doesn’t do things like that. He punched his pillow again, or at least what was left of it.
