From the previous chapter...
Clark's smile disappeared. Pain crossed his face. "Not really," he said, his voice flat. "When I put on the glasses for the first time, they wiped out everything. All her memories of me. All our days together. The times I took her flying, right after I learned how to fly. The times I saved her life, and the times she saved mine. Helping me through my training. Working together, at the Planet. The one person that I was closest to, my best friend, the woman I loved." Clark clenched his fist. Perry saw the knuckles were white. The carefully controlled fury awed Perry more than destruction of the furniture would have. "Jor-El took that from us. He got his revenge on Lois."
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"You were there, Perry," Clark said, turning his gaze back on the older man's. "It was right after you moved into the Chief Editor's office. I was going to get the glasses established, and then I was – we were - going to debut Superman that night. Lois would have gotten the exclusive." Clark smiled; Perry noticed bitterness, again, in the smile. "It was going to be a congratulations gift – the most exciting story of the decade – to commemorate your arrival as Editor-in-Chief."
"Well, thanks for that, anyway," Perry murmured, sinking back into his chair. He rallied himself to say, "Don't short yourself, Clark. The decade? Heck, Superman's debut was the story of the century!"
Clark just nodded. "Anyway, you were there, and Lois, and Cat Grant, when I put on the glasses for the first time." He looked down at the offending item in his hand. Sardonically, he added, "When everyone started falling unconscious, I realized that maybe there was a little problem."
Perry said nothing, although a tendril of memory uncoiled in the back of his brain.
"Lois hit her head when she fell down," Clark said. "That was the official excuse for her memory loss."
Another bit of recollection floated upward. Perry could remember bits and pieces of that day.
"Although it didn't matter much," Clark continued, "because pretty soon, with the Magic Reality-Altering Field that these glasses put out, nobody remembered or cared that Lois and I had a past together."
"You were in my office," Perry blurted out. "I remember thinking those glasses made you look like a total dork."
Clark smiled briefly. "It's part of the image."
"You had me touch a piece of meteor rock to the glasses."
Clark stopped handling the glasses and sat up straight. He looked sharply at Perry. "What else?" he asked slowly.
"In fact," Perry said, "I think I remember – Lois fell down, and you, you just, um, blurred. When you stopped blurring you had a box in your hand and it had a green meteor rock in it. You told me to touch the rock to Lois and to the glasses."
"I did," Clark said intently. He looked hopeful. "Do you remember anything else?"
"There was a class ring," Perry said slowly, "with a red rock in it. You had me touch that to Lois and the glasses too." More and more was coming back to him. "And then Cat threw the ring at you, you caught it, and then all of a sudden, you and Lois just vanished." Now he could remember the sheer oddness, no, the impossibility of what he'd seen. Impossible then – now understandable as a manifestation of Superman's powers.
"You remember that?" Clark whispered.
"Yeah, it's coming back to me in bits," Perry said, eyes unseeing as he sought more fragments. "Why'd you have me touch the rocks to the glasses?"
"That green meteor rock was kryptonite, Perry," Clark said. "It's destroyed or snafu'ed some of my home planet's technology in the past." Softly he said, "I thought it might be worth a try to see if it could get Lois' memories back. But it didn't." Then he sat up straighter again, and looked at Perry, a hint of excitement in his voice. "But you remember it now, don't you? You remember that day?"
Perry rubbed his eyes. "It's becoming more familiar…" He leaned forward, placed his head in his palm, rubbed his forehead. "Was there a dark room with a lot of marbles? Marbles in patterns?"
"Uh, not that I know of," Clark said cautiously.
"The marbles were knocked out of their patterns," Perry said peevishly. "I was there."
Understanding spread across Clark's face and he fought to keep himself from bursting into laughter. "So, Perry, when I inadvertently put the mind-whammy on you, you're saying you lost your marbles?"
Perry, lost in thought, just said, "Yes." Then he dragged himself back from the memory of that dark room, filled with marbles in astounding complex patterns, the patterns that became disrupted. He realized what Clark had said, and chuckled himself. "I guess you could say that I'm such an old newspaperman that I followed the cliché. Lost my marbles. Heh heh."
An intent look crossed Clark's face. "You know, Perry?"
"What?"
"You said the marbles were knocked out of their patterns." Clark had the scent now, Perry could tell. He'd seen Clark with this expression a hundred times – a story, a lead, a clue. "Were the marbles really lost?"
"Ye-" Perry stopped. Were the marbles lost? He thought back to the time in that dark room. Marbles were knocked down, patterns destroyed – but he realized, thinking hard, that the marbles all stayed within the room. "No. They were just jumbled. Out of order. Swept to the walls of the room. Not where they should be."
"So, when I make reference to that time," Clark said, "some of it comes back to you? You start remembering?"
Perry considered it. "I think so. Clark, I had no memory of that day in the office where you tried on the glasses until now. When you talked about it, it just came back to me. In bits and pieces, but it's mostly back."
Clark leaned forward intently. "The memories aren't lost, then," he breathed. "I might – Lois might – " he broke off.
Perry had an idea what this might mean to Clark. "You think Lois might remember, too?" he asked. "You sure about this?"
"No," Clark said in a desperate tone. "It's all I have, Perry." Hopefully, he asked, "If you can remember, maybe she can too?"
He got up, began pacing nervously. "So, there was Lois, not remembering anything. When the kryptonite didn't affect the glasses, I took her up to the Fortress. I demanded that Jor-El restore her memory." Clark fell silent.
"What happened?" Perry asked, fascinated.
"Obviously, Jor-El didn't," Clark spat. "He told me that this was all part of the work the glasses would do, and that if he reversed it for Lois, the whole thing would fall apart." He stopped pacing, grabbed the back of his chair tightly, facing Perry. "I had to negotiate like hell just to get him to make it so that the glasses wouldn't have the same effect on my mother. He said that was only possible because she hadn't seen me in the glasses yet."
"That…would have been bad," Perry admitted.
"Anyway, Perry, Jor-El said that was the best he could do. So it ended up that my mother didn't lose her memory, you lost some, and Lois, who was closest to me, lost everything. And so did I," he concluded softly.
Perry only nodded, understanding now. The two men sat silently for a moment.
"I forgive you, Clark," Perry said softly.
After hearing Clark's story, Perry did forgive him for the memory loss. The law of unintended consequences had jumped up and bit Clark in the ass on this one. Perry was only collateral damage. Besides, after being in AA so long, Perry was getting better and better at forgiving. In years past, he would have nursed his resentment for months, taking a drink each time he thought about it. Now, he learned how to let things go. Forgiving others set himself free.
Clark looked at him in surprise. "Thank you, Perry," he said quietly. "That means a lot to me."
Perry nodded again. Get back to the story. "What next?" he asked.
"Well, you were pretty much there for all of it. Lois didn't know me anymore. In fact, I think she had some uneasiness around me – it was like she knew, underneath, that I'd taken something from her. She was pretty brusque with me for a long time."
"I do remember that," Perry said, chuckling. The famous "Mad-Dog Lane" - no one could work with her. Only Clark had the persistence to stay with her, to jolly her along, to gradually earn her confidence, her trust.
"So I spent the next three years rebuilding a relationship with her," Clark said, echoing Perry's thoughts. "It was hard seeing her every day, knowing what we'd lost." He leaned forward again. "But it would have been harder to be without her."
Perry nodded. Lois grew on one. He thought back to the day she'd almost died in the plane crash – saved by the man across the table. Perry's life would have been much bleaker without Lois Lane in it.
"What was frustrating was that she had a crush for Superman," Clark said. "I don't know why. Maybe, underneath, she knew that she'd created Superman. She did, you know," he said to Perry. "She was the one who got me into the costume, got me using my abilities openly."
"I guess I realize that now," Perry said, as a memory of furtive conversations by the Planet coffeepot came back to mind. What do they have in common? Don Diego de la Vega, Sir Percy Blakeney, and Clark Kent?
"She fell for the man in the cape and couldn't see that he was right at the next desk over." Clark grimaced. "It was perfect irony. It was cruel and unusual punishment. It was poetic justice."
"Yes," Perry agreed, stunned at the bitterness in Clark's voice.
Clark went on. "I should have gone to the Fortress for my training then, and learned more about the technology."
"Why didn't you?" Perry asked.
"At first, I was just too angry at Jor-El. I stayed away for almost a year. Even though he told me it wouldn't work, I kept on trying things on Lois to try and get her to remember. And then I took on the role of Superman, and my life got a lot busier."
"I guess you could say that," Perry said, mind busy as he tried to calculate the number of Superman's rescues in the first few years. There were thousands. "How did you ever do your job at the Planet and wear the blue suit too?"
Clark shrugged. "Sometimes it was difficult." He didn't seem to want to talk about it. "So, I blew off my training, aside from the little bit I'd done before becoming Superman. After the whole memory loss/glasses fiasco, I didn't want to talk with Jor-El for a long time. In fact, I didn't talk to him until things came to a point where I absolutely had to go back to the Fortress." He paused.
Perry noticed their cups were empty. Clark had stopped his confidences, a faraway look on his face. Perry stretched, breaking into Clark's reverie.
"Can we go out and walk a bit?" Perry asked. It was definitely time to get moving. His joints were stiff after the long sit.
"Sure," Clark said after a moment. He ushered Perry out the side door, into the yard illuminated by the setting sun. He looked at the sky a moment and said, "It'll probably rain tomorrow morning."
"Superpower forecasting?" Perry asked lightly.
"No, just living on this farm all my life. When the sky gets that color, and the leaves on that tree – " Clark pointed to a mid-size ash – "get that appearance, I know rain is coming."
"Oh," Perry said. "Just regular observation."
"Well, that, and flying through a storm system to the west of here when I was out getting the food," Clark admitted.
"Oh. Of course," Perry said. "You know, your life is strange?"
Clark laughed out loud. "Uh-huh," he said.
The two men strode along the Kent Farm fields. After one glance at Perry's polished shoes, Clark considerately picked a manure-free, mostly mud-free path. They ended up a fair distance from the house, leaning on the fence, gazing at the symphony of color as the sun slid under the horizon.
"I don't do this enough, you know," Perry said.
"What?" Clark asked. "Confronting your reporters?"
"No, that I do every day," Perry chuckled. "I mean, just standing, being still, just listening." He looked across at Clark and saw the other man understand him.
"I know what you mean, Perry," the tall reporter said. "It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind."
Perry took a minute to consider that it must be worse for Clark – always seeing tragedy, disaster, the worst in people. And that was only when he was in his Planet reporter persona, Perry thought cynically. Superman had harder stuff, larger disasters, thrown at him.
Clark took a deep breath. "I like to go flying, really high. I stay up there in the stratosphere, and just watch the stars. They don't twinkle when you're that high, you know." He turned back to look at the sunset. "It's quiet up there, just floating."
"That must be nice," Perry murmured, not turning to look at the other man.
They remained in a companionable silence as twilight spread across the fields. Perry's heart slowed. His breathing calmed as peace crept up on him. Seeing the beauty of the Earth touched something deep inside him, that feeling of joyous wonder that he'd never really lost. Even though in his drinking days it had been buried pretty deeply. Getting sober had brought back his ability to touch it.
Clark gave him a questioning look, gestured to the path. Perry nodded, and followed the other man back through the darkening twilight back to the welcoming glow of the farmhouse kitchen.
