Lois & Clark Forums Forums Superman In Other Canon Superman In Other Canon Fanfic Twelve Steps From Smallville 41/57 (Smallville & the Superman movies)

Perry set off toward his car. Suddenly he felt tired and cranky, his amusement dying away. He heard Clark mumbling, "'Bye, Maggie," as the taller man sprinted toward him and caught up to him.

"Clark wasn't there anyway?" the tall man teased Perry softly.

"Well, he wasn't," Perry said, shortly. Clark seemed to pick up on Perry's sudden irritation and became silent.

The two men stayed quiet as Clark pulled Perry's car out of the drive, carefully inching past the crowd of curious gawkers that had developed. Perry had hoped that the crowd would disperse after Superman flew away, but it seemed that a Superman sighting in their neighborhood, even with the hero currently absent, just attracted more people. Lois and Richard would be hearing about this from the neighborhood association, for sure.

Once they'd gotten on the main road, Perry looked towards Clark. The other man's face was a shadowed profile illuminated by the lonely lights of this far-flung Metropolis environ.

"Where's Jason?" Perry asked.

"He's with my mother in Smallville," Clark replied. He gave a small smile. "She was happy to take him in."

"Does she know – " Perry asked.

"Yes," Clark said. "I told her. Then I left to come back here." He smiled again, that tiny lifting of the lips. "I think she really wants to talk to me."

"And Lois?" Perry asked.

"She's in Smallville too," Clark said quietly.

"I thought you were taking her to Met Gen."

"No." Clark said it flatly.

"Why?"

"Perry, did you see what she did?" Clark genuinely seemed to want to know the answer. It wasn't a rhetorical question – it was a request for information. "She healed me, didn't she?"

Perry thought back to those moments where Lois had glowed. "You were dead," he whispered. "She was dead too." He swallowed. Some things were just too weird to think about. But he hadn't imagined the stillness, the staring eyes, the lack of a heartbeat.

Clark drove silently for a few miles. Perry waited too, the silence in the car taking on its own space, filling the darkness of the night, spreading like a blanket over their lips.

"There's a big difference between mostly dead and all the way dead," Clark said suddenly. Perry shot him a confused look.

"Didn't you ever see The Princess Bride?" Clark asked. "Where you think Westley is dead, and Miracle Max brings him back to life. And Max says that." Silence for a moment. "I think I was only mostly dead."

"I don't think so, Clark," Perry said. "I think you were all the way dead. And she was too." He took a deep breath. "And I think Lois brought both of you back."

Clark sighed. "I don't know, Perry."

"I know what I saw," Perry said stubbornly. If he thought about it too much, it would make him crazy. Nobody could do stuff like that. Perry would almost be afraid again, if he weren't so darned tired.

Clark drove for a few more miles without speaking. This seemed to be a very intermittent conversation.

"Lois did that once before, that I know of," Clark volunteered, out of the blue.

"Hm?" Perry made a questioning noise.

"It was years ago, when the Reeves Dam burst. I think we were talking about it earlier," Clark said. "Cat Grant - or Lois as she was then – got stabbed. Our Lois brought her back."

"You said that before."

"Yeah, but last time I didn't say that Cat was dead." Clark said it flatly. "I just said she was wounded. But she was actually dead."

"Oh."

Silence again for a few more miles. The traffic was sparse tonight and they were sailing through intersections. They seemed to have the stoplights timed their way – they were getting green on almost every light.

Clark said hesitantly, "I didn't want to say that before. It's just too…"

"I know," Perry said.

Silence again.

"When she healed Cat – when she brought her back –" Clark said.

"Yes?"

"Lois was dead afterwards. For eighteen hours." He went on after a pause. "I know I said that she was in a coma. But she was dead."

Perry only nodded. He was becoming immune to surprise.

"For eighteen hours she didn't have a pulse. She didn't breathe. She just lay there, motionless." Clark swallowed. "I'll never forget that time. It was right then I realized how much I loved her."

"You only know the true value of things after they're gone," Perry murmured rhetorically.

"Yes." Silence again. "And she came back. Lois was alive again. I swore I'd do everything in my power to keep her from dying again." Silence. "And I did, until tonight."

Understanding coursed through Perry. "So when you took her away…"

"She looked like she was dead, right." Clark said it flatly. "But I'm pretty sure she'll wake up, given time." He gazed over at Perry and Perry could hear the urgency in his tone. "We have to protect her secret. That's why Lois isn't in a hospital."

Perry thought about it a moment. Then – "Did Jason see you bring in Lois? Does he know?"

"No," Clark said. "I was very careful to bring her in to a room while Jason wasn't looking. The room is locked. I think my mother will keep Jason too busy for him to be snooping."

"He is Lois' kid, you know," Perry said, amused. "He'll snoop." Then Perry sobered. "He shouldn't see his mother dead. Or dead-like."

"I agree," Clark said intently. "I just don't know how long she's going to be out – when she'll come back – "

Perry mentally filled in what Clark wasn't saying. "If she'll come back."

"She's never used her ability with me before," Clark said quietly. "Maybe I'm so different I did something to her?"

Silence.

"I'm sure she'll be fine," Perry reassured Clark. Inwardly he quailed. Sarcastically, he thought, Yeah, everyone's fine from being dead. It's just a temporary condition.

"Yeah, she'll be fine," Clark repeated, his voice weakly hopeful rather than strongly positive.

Silence.

"We probably should get our stories straight," Clark finally said. They were nearing Met Gen, and the traffic here in the city center – or closer to the center, anyway – was predictably worse. Perry figured they'd have at least thirty minutes to rehearse.

"OK, you've heard Clark Kent's story," Clark continued. "Let me hear Perry White's story."

"And I'd like to hear Superman's story," Perry said. "Is it OK to mention that you were shot?"

"I don't think there's any way to cover that up now," Clark said ruefully. Too many people know that kryptonite is out there. Maggie Sawyer knows now, and I don't know if Lex Luthor told all his henchmen tonight. He probably did. And everyone saw all the blood on the Suit, and the holes in it." Clark drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm just hoping that we can keep too many people from making the connection between the Smallville meteor rock and kryptonite." He grimaced. "Smallville is the only place in the world where it's common. It's vanishingly rare everywhere else. Luthor had to get his sample by stealing it from a museum."

"If he'd known he could have gone to Smallville and just picked it up off the ground…." Perry said quietly, not liking that thought.

"I'm surprised he didn't remember that," Clark said. "It must be part of the memory wipe."

Perry tensed. "What are you going to do about Jason? And Luthor? I mean, Luthor knowing about Jason?"

Clark drummed his fingers again, but his voice was steady. "I'm going to use Kryptonian technology to protect my family. Lex Luthor can't be allowed to remember that Jason White is Superman's son." He was using the Superman voice now, Perry realized. "Luthor has to forget that."

"Well, from what I saw of Richard beating him on the head after he shot Lois, those glasses may have some competition in the amnesia department," Perry said.

"Richard?" Clark asked quizzically.

"Oh. That's the part you didn't know…" Perry went on to tell the whole sorry story, as the only witness who'd been there for the whole thing and wasn't wounded, unconscious, or dead now.

They talked out their stories. In the end, they decided that it was most important to cover Lois and her meteor ability. Perry had no trouble with that. The thought that Lois could bring back someone from the dead was profoundly disturbing. He'd always thought that ability restricted to divinity. To know that someone you worked with had godlike powers….of course, he'd just gone through that realization with Clark. Maybe it was getting old hat to him.

Nah. It still gives me the willies. Perry firmly decided to believe that Clark had been only "mostly dead". That's right, he was only mostly dead, not all the way dead. And Lois just has an incredible healing ability.

Of course, though, Lois had healed herself. Perry had actually seen her ghastly head wound. The brain had been exposed, damaged. And then he'd seen Lois alive, well, walking, moving…..and healing Superman. It was a miracle.

Perry gasped when the thought came to him. This is how she could have a child with Superman. When Clark looked curiously at him, he realized he'd said it out loud.

"What?"

"Her meteor power. That's how she could have Jason…." Perry mumbled.

"I've been wondering about that for a long time, too," Clark confessed. "I mean, I'm an alien." Perry caught a glimpse of long-held hurt in that statement, just for a moment. Clark covered with a light tone, "I'm the last Kryptonian. I'm not genetically compatible with, um, Earth. Fathering a baby would be impossible." In Clark's voice, Perry heard again the wonder, the excitement that Clark usually concealed at the thought of his son. Clark continued with a poor attempt at jocularity, "I'd have thought she'd have had better luck getting pregnant with homegrown tree pollen than me. At least pollen has Earth DNA."

Perry said quietly, "But she loves you. She heals. Did she know you wanted a child?"

Clark dropped the joking tone. "Yes." He said it quietly, poignantly. "I've always wanted children." His voice wavered. "I never thought I could be a father. And now I am."

"I don't know if she even knew it was possible," Perry said, putting the pieces together. Did Lois feel like this when she made one of her patented leaps? When she took a bag of disparate pieces, and fitted them together into a seamless whole? When clues coalesced into an award-winning story? For once in his life, Perry had an idea of what it felt like to be Lois Lane, to take ethereal wisps and put them together with a rightness that stood firm and tall and solid. It was antithetical to the Pit Bull – he'd always worked step by step, firmly, buttressing every bit, never jumping. But somehow he knew this conclusion was right.

"You were together," Perry mused. "She loved you. You loved her."

"I had given up my powers," Clark whispered. "She didn't know it, but she was in the fullness of her own powers."

"And you two made a son," Perry said quietly. It felt right. He knew it was right. The circumstances were one-in-a-million. No, the circumstances were unique. It could never happen again. But it had happened. Superman had a son. The reporter-beast in Perry snuffled, snorted, turned around three times, and settled down to sleep. The nagging sense of incredulity that he'd had ever since he realized that Clark was Superman, and therefore, Jason White was Superman's son, was finally assuaged. Perry understood how such a crazy thing might have happened. It soothed the Pit Bull in him. Now, he knew.