From part 3:
They gathered up the files and papers, stuffing them into briefcases, and thanked Jimmy for his help.
“It’s a privilege to watch you guys,” Jimmy told them with a smile. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
And now, part 4:
---
Lois and Clark had returned to his apartment, to find Alan Morris sound asleep on the couch.
They had decided to let him sleep; he’d told them the night before that he hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time over the last week.
They’d stood out on Clark’s balcony for a long time, sipping tea and talking. At one point, she’d asked him whether he’d choose to be invisible or to be able to fly.
At his obvious curiosity, she’d told him that she and her sister had played the game when they were small. Intrigued, he’d asked her what she would choose. She’d told him she’d always chosen ‘invisible’ – “I wished I could walk through all those closed doors. I guess I still do.”
She had asked him again, “Invisible or fly, Clark?”
When he’d answered, “Fly”, she’d commented that the two of them had something in common. “…Superman. You want to fly *like* him. I want to fly *with* him.”
She’d leaned back into him slightly, and rested her head against his shoulder. He’d had to reach down quickly and grab the balcony railing tightly in an effort to keep himself grounded.
And he’d had to bend the railing back into shape the next morning.
They’d gone back inside, then, to start work on the initial draft of the story. Sitting at Clark’s kitchen table so they wouldn’t wake Alan up, they had finished the first of what they both felt could turn out to be a series, starting with Alan Morris and ending with Golden Boy Barnes.
Lois had laid her head on her folded arms at the table while Clark gathered up their scattered notes and then emailed the story to Perry. He’d returned to find her sound asleep.
Gently gathering her into his arms, he’d carried her to his bedroom. He had made no effort to curb the inevitable floating, reasoning that he’d be less likely to wake her. He’d laid her on his bed and removed her shoes, then covered her with a blanket and retreated.
With only a few hours left until daylight, he’d decided Superman would do an extensive patrol of the city. While he didn’t expect to see anything - literally - of any invisible man, he’d found that Superman’s visibility was a good deterrent to the more typical criminal element.
---
He landed on his balcony three hours later, noticing the misshapen balcony railing and quickly bending it back into its original position.
After some thought, he had decided to speak to Alan and Lois this morning as Superman. It would allow him to involve the superhero in finding a way to make the invisible suits visible. He’d explain Clark’s absence as doing research on Barnes, or getting breakfast, or something.
And it wouldn’t matter if he floated; people *expected* Superman to float.
Lois was sitting up in bed when he stepped through the windows from the balcony to the bedroom. She looked rumpled, sleepy, and very desirable. He felt an intense desire to gather her up and never let her go, and found he was floating about six inches off the floor.
“Superman!” she exclaimed, “What are you - Are you here to talk to Alan Morris?”
“Yes,” he answered, still floating.
“Okay, let’s go find the others,” she said, moving toward the bedroom door. Reaching the doorway, she paused and glanced around the rest of his apartment.
“Where’s Clark, Superman?” Lois asked.
He really didn’t want to lie to her. Maybe… Maybe telling the truth in a vague sort of way would work? He drifted down to stand firmly on the floor. “He was awake early, and is doing some more research.”
“Oh… I wonder why he didn’t wake me up…” she said, “Maybe he didn’t sleep very well, couldn’t get comfortable… Poor guy, I ended up taking his bed, he probably slept on the floor or something…”
She wasn’t paying her usual rapt attention to Superman. It sounded like she was more concerned with Clark at the moment. Beginning to drift upward again, he came very close to reaching out for her, to running a gentle hand over her cheek before kissing her… He drifted higher.
He couldn’t decide if it was fortunate or not that Alan Morris chose that moment to interrupt them.
“Superman!” he said, “I can’t believe it - I’m honored to meet you!”
Clark greeted him in his best courteous-and-kindly-but-remote Superman voice, and suggested that they go into ‘Clark’s living room’ so that Alan could answer some questions.
Lois moved forward and swiftly gathered Alan’s blanket and pillow up, placing them on the floor at one end of the couch.
“What do you need to know, Superman?” she asked, sitting down on the couch. Alan chose one of the armchairs, and Clark sat down next to Lois.
“Clark said you got the idea from a fluorescent light?” Clark - Superman - asked Alan, and at his nod, continued, “And he said you reversed the process, turning visible light into invisible light?”
Alan spent a few minutes detailing his research and eventual success in creating the invisibility suits.
“Clark filled me in about Barnes and the gold repository,” Superman said. “My problem is, even if they show up there, I can't see them.”
“Even with your x-ray vision?” Lois asked.
“No, because I still need visible light,” Superman replied.
“Fluorescent light…” Lois said. “How does it actually work, Alan?”
“In a fluorescent lightbulb, invisible light becomes visible by passing it through a coating of phosphorus,” Alan said.
“Well, the suits make visible light invisible,” Lois said slowly, “because you said you ‘reversed the process’. Can you… reverse the reversed process?”
Alan looked bewildered, but Clark understood exactly what Lois was saying. And he also realized that Lois was right. There *was* a way to make the suits visible.
He looked at her in admiration - and floated up off the couch. As usual, Lois was brilliant.
He barely restrained himself from kissing her.
This wasn’t the time for that, no matter how much he wanted it.
He rose to his feet, still not quite touching down on the floor.
Lois’s cell phone rang, and she answered it with a brisk “Lois Lane.”
He heard Jimmy on the other end, saying that the Bill Henderson had called to tell them that the silent alarm at the gold repository had gone off.
“Thanks, Jimmy,” she said, shutting off the phone.
“I heard, Lois,” he said, still hovering a few inches off the floor, “And you’re right, there is a way to make the suits visible, and you gave me an idea. Thank you!”
He left from his balcony, knowing he only had a short amount of time to put his plan in motion. Circling around, he saw Lois grab the invisibility suit and dash out the front door, Alan in close pursuit. There was nothing he could do about that, except hope he stopped Barnes and whoever was with him before Lois got into any trouble.
He headed west, for the nearest phosphorus mine, at a high rate of speed, even for Superman.
-----
Superman had arrived at the gold repository to find the SWAT teams pinned by gunfire coming apparently from nowhere. Standing on the roof of the building, he had dumped phosphorus liberally over the area, bringing the gunmen - there were five of them - into view.
Superman dropped down on them, crushing their guns, and within a few minutes the SWAT team members had the men handcuffed and loaded into the police vehicles.
That was when Clark had suddenly realized that Lois was missing.
Worried, he’d looked around for her, scanning the building. He’d seen and heard her at the same time, and was through the concrete wall of the vault in almost the same moment. When he reached her, locked inside the vault and nearly out of air, he’d swept her up into his arms and held her close; she’d clung just as tightly to him.
He’d been unable to let her go immediately, and they’d hovered over the rubble from the collapsed wall until he calmed down. He was lucky he’d been in the suit, since he’d have been unable to touch down for those few moments even if he’d been dressed as Clark.
He was lucky.
He was lucky he’d found her in time.
If luck operated on the same principle as a cat’s nine lives, he was probably just about out of… well …luck.
-----
Perry officially made Lois and Clark partners after they broke the Invisible Man story. Lois complained about it, but Clark wondered if she really minded all that much. She seemed to have developed a slightly proprietarial air about him with their co-workers, especially Cat.
Clark, himself, was delighted with the arrangement, and had involuntarily floated up off his chair. In an effort to conceal it, he had sort of twitched upward, hitting the bottom of the table with his knee with a solid *thunk*.
Both Perry and Lois had looked at him across the conference table; Clark had grinned weakly and subsided into the chair. “You’re a weird guy, Clark. That’s a given,” Lois had commented.
Perry had also told them that the Planet would be promoting them as a team. That was what he had started to tell them when they’d been interrupted by Helene Morris’s appearance in the newsroom. “Lane and Kent are the greatest writing team in town… and they can read about it in the Daily Planet,” he’d said.
Both Lois and Clark had objected to print ads showing their faces. “It would ruin our ability to go undercover, Chief,” Lois had said, with Clark in absolute agreement. Perry had agreed with them also, and the three of them ended up meeting with upper management.
Eventually, thanks mostly to Lois’s complete… unbudge-ability when she was convinced she was right… they reached a compromise. The Planet’s print ads would show them in one-quarter profile at the most, and one of the advertising department’s artists had quickly sketched out an ad showing rough drawings of the two of them, faces hidden behind open copies of the Daily Planet. That had been met with approval from everyone present.
That issue resolved, Perry had assigned them the boxing story. Lois had objected at first, until she realized that it might turn out to be, as she said, “…The biggest scandal in boxing history.”
She’d been right. Her father, Sam Lane, was a sports medicine specialist. He’d thought he was designing artificial limbs that would stand up to rigorous daily living, but he’d become accidentally involved in a scheme to create cyborg boxers.
Perry had been right on the money; Lois and Clark - Lane and Kent - made a good team. With Sam’s help, they’d broken the story, the headline taking up a huge amount of the Daily Planet’s front page.
It had been the same old scheme - weigh the odds artificially and illegally in someone’s favor, then make money on it. Once they knew what was going on, Superman had dealt with the cyborg boxers.
There had been one curious and singularly *non*-float-inducing incident; the appearance of Lex Luthor on the scene while Superman was dealing with the cyborg fighters. Luthor had arrived in time to save Lois’s life, which had seemed a little bit *too* coincidental.
It wouldn’t be too surprising if it turned out that Luthor had had a hand in the whole scheme.
-----
After the boxing scandal, in rapid succession, Lois and Clark had broken first the Toasters story, and then the Mentamide 5 story.
Both stories had progressed quickly, overlapping somewhat. They’d been digging into happenings at the Beckworth School while they were putting the final touches on the Toasters story.
It had been a busy and frustrating time. They’d had to go undercover at Toni Taylor’s nightclub, and Clark had been torn between protecting Lois and his own undercover work.
He’d felt he was forced to blow Lois’s cover at the nightclub, and she had been absolutely furious with him. He’d spent several days in the Mad Dog Lane doghouse; she’d spoken to him only when necessary and had treated him much as she had when he’d first come to work at the Planet.
His apparent closeness with Toni Taylor had further irritated her, but he wasn’t sure why. Despite her very convincing standoffishness with some people, Lois didn’t usually form instant dislikes without reason. But it couldn’t be jealousy; she’d made it clear that he was nothing more than her partner.
All in all, there hadn’t been a lot of floating going on.
He had been afraid that their friendship would be set back months. He had really missed their intereactions despite his… gravity problem.
Things had improved again between them during their Mentamide 5 investigation, when he apologized to Lois for the way he’d reacted to the threat to their undercover work at the nightclub. Having inside knowledge of Lex Luthor’s true nature had made Clark fear for her safety, but that was something he couldn’t tell her. Not only because that information belonged to Superman, not Clark, but because she insisted that she could take care of herself and didn’t need protecting.
He had limited himself to a sincere apology and an admission that he’d been in the wrong. She had accepted his apology fairly graciously for Lois Lane, merely reminding him what she’d do to him if he ever tried that sort of thing again. It involved his spleen and a spoon, and it made him promise to toe the line despite the fact that he was invulnerable.
They were currently leaving the Beckworth School after a very unproductive meeting with the school’s doctor.
Clark, however, had looked carefully at the combination clinic and laboratory while Lois talked to the man. He’d spied a slide labeled ‘Mentamide 5’ and had appropriated it without a qualm. If they were correct, this doctor was giving an unapproved and potentially unsafe drug to kids, without regard for their welfare.
For Clark, that meant the gloves were off.
“Well, that got us exactly nowhere, Clark,” Lois said in disgust as they left the clinic and made their way out into the hallway. “You know, I’m not real big on kids, but this is just *wrong*. We have to stop this guy.”
They were passing the infirmary, which was next door to the clinic. Clark stopped for a moment, glancing around to make sure there were no listeners in the area.
“Lois,” he said, “While you were talking to the doctor, I… found this.” He carefully slipped the slide from his pocket far enough for her to see what it was and how it was labeled.
She looked up at him, eyes shining with delight, and he could feel his heels start to leave the floor. She tugged affectionately on his tie, and told him, “You took advantage of a privileged interview situation to grab potentially incriminating evidence from an unsuspecting subject. I love it…”
He surreptitiously grasped the infirmary door’s doorknob, trying to keep himself from rising any farther.
“Let’s take it to Star Labs, partner,” Lois told him, turning to continue down the hallway. Feeling more in control, he let go of the doorknob.
It didn’t survive the encounter; by the time Clark had his feet completely back on the ground it had parted with the door. He tucked it into his jacket pocket, hoping no one would be blamed for the missing doorknob.
-----
Once the Star Labs researchers had analysed the Mentamide 5, Lois and Clark had proof that Dr. Carlton had been using the children as test subjects for his ‘smart compound’. He’d treated them as guinea pigs for the sake of his desire to make a name for himself in neuropsychology.
The frightening thing was that the rats tested at Star Labs had stopped responding to the compound fairly quickly. After taking into account the different time frame to maturity between humans and rats, the researchers at Star Labs had concluded that the compound would begin to ‘burn out’ the children’s brains in a matter of months.
Age seemed to also be a factor; the older rats burned out more quickly. The progression seemed to be tolerance to the compound’s effects, followed by higher doses to get the same results. That, in turn, was followed by the ‘burnout’.
The oldest of the children Dr. Carlton had been experimenting on had begun to show signs that the compound was wearing off rapidly. It hadn’t occurred to her, fortunately, that taking a higher dose might give the results she’d been expecting. Frightened by the fact that the Mentamide 5 had stopped working, she had turned for help to Lois and Clark, with whom she was familiar.
She’d led them to the other children, who were also beginning to show tolerance to the dose.
Superman had had the unique advantage of growing up ‘different’ from his peers, and had been able to convince the children to relinquish both the remaining Mentamide 5 and their control of the city’s infrastructure.
Fortunately, none of the children had reached the burnout stage.
The Beckworth School had been put under the aegis of the Sisters of Charity, which already ran the St. Jerome Orphanage and several group homes. Lois and Clark, visiting the children, had watched them - all of them - blossom under the normal, healthy, and caring atmosphere.
“Dr. Carlton achieved his goal of making a name for himself; it just wasn’t the one he originally intended,” Lois had said thoughtfully when the story broke. “He’s infamous and imprisoned instead of famous and printed.”
-----
Lois and Clark’s friendship had been cemented during the nightmare second encounter with Jason Trask in Smallville. It was one of the few good things to come out of that whole situation, other than the safety of his parents and Wayne Irig.
Losing his powers to Kryptonite had allowed Clark a degree of closeness with Lois that he’d probably have had to avoid under normal circumstances. While the loss of his powers had been frustrating, having the freedom to hug Lois, to gaze at her to his heart’s content without fear of floating, had been liberating.
Even so… While the last thing he would ever want to do was discourage Lois from any displays of affection, he had to protect his secret.
Didn’t he?
<It would certainly be easier if Lois knew about Superman.>
The constant vigilance and subterfuge involved in both protecting his bigger secret - Superman - and hiding his gravity issues was beginning to be a difficult balancing act.
His life carried the idea of multi-tasking to the extreme.
It wasn’t the kind of multi-tasking he could put on a resume, though, so it was a good thing he had a job he loved.
-----
He and Lois returned from Smallville with a powerful story; Clark had insisted that it be a Lane exclusive. Lois had reported on the existence of Kryptonite, but he strongly suspected that if she’d believed it was more than a figment of Trask’s imagination, she would have suppressed that part of the story.
His confidence in her integrity didn’t really surprise him. Though he could be considered biased because he saw her through the filter of his love, Lois was a good person. She hid it well behind the Mad Dog Lane exterior, but inside she was warm and loving, and intensely loyal to her friends.
If only that loyalty was enough, on its own, to save Superman.
She was the only one who was *not* convinced that Superman’s activities were the cause of the heat wave that was currently plaguing Metropolis.
Superman was being blamed for the heat, because it appeared to be linked to any Super activity. Today he had been asked to leave Metropolis, and that meant Clark was going to lose the job he loved.
Faced with the rising heat - from both the sun and the citizens of Metropolis - Clark felt he had no choice but to leave the city.
With a heavy heart, he returned to the Planet to collect his things.
He had no choice.
He couldn’t stay if he was putting people in danger.
He leaned defeatedly against the elevator wall as it took him up to the newsroom. He had no desire to move any faster than human speed. He didn’t even want to move that fast. He had no desire to hasten the end of all his dreams.
He could go back to Kansas. He *would* go back to Kansas, maybe write free-lance from the farm. Get used to living without Lois.
But how could he leave Lois? He’d be leaving his heart, his other half.
No more working beside her. No more watching her on the trail of a big story, no more talking to her, no more bantering with her, no more laughing with her. No more takeout meals with her while they worked on a story.
No more hearing her heartbeat.
But…
He *could* hear her heartbeat. Right now. Slow and steady, bringing his own heartbeat into sync with hers.
She was here, in the Planet building.
He exited the elevator and moved to the top of the ramp. Yes, there she was, arms folded on her desk, head on her arms, sound asleep.
Why was she here, so late at night in the empty bullpen, asleep at her desk?
She’d probably been digging through everything she could find that related even remotely to weather patterns or to Superman, with that single-minded determination that had catapulted her to the top of her profession. She was absolutely determined to prove that Superman was not behind the unseasonal and increasingly dangerous heatwave, and if anybody *could* do that, Lois Lane would be the one.
But, in the meantime, he had to go. He had to assume that the experts were right, that he was the cause of the heat.
He had to leave the city before the heat reached temperatures too high for the elderly, the very young, and the medically fragile to withstand.
He sat down in his desk chair, but instead of packing his things, he simply sat gazing at her for a long time. Committing every feature to memory.
Her face was turned partly toward him, peaceful in repose. She was just… beautiful. He felt an aching emptiness opening wider and wider in his heart.
He couldn’t bear to leave her.
He couldn’t bear to stay and risk her health, her safety.
Finally he rose, and quietly collected his things, putting them in the box he’d brought with him.
His coffee mug with the Daily Planet logo on it. The desk set his parents had given him when he’d landed the job. The funny magnet Lois had given him that said ‘Proofread carefully to see if you any words out’. The framed photo of the Daily Planet staff, taken at the impromptu party in the newsroom the day they’d broken the Space Station Prometheus story. His nameplate.
Turning to leave, he hesitated. Unbidden, his feet carried him toward Lois’s desk rather than away from it.
Unable to help himself, he bent and ran a gentle hand over her hair, saying softly, “Lois…”
She stirred and lifted her head from her arms, looking up at him, and as she did so, he touched his lips to hers in a slow and tender goodbye kiss. It was a kiss only slightly less powerful than the previous one they’d shared.
He instantly elevated about four inches inches off the floor.
Only Lois’s confusion, due to the fact that she had been deeply asleep, kept her from noticing. By the time she gathered her wits, he had managed to touch down again and was preparing to walk out of the newsroom, his box of belongings tucked under his arm.
“Clark?” she asked, bewildered. “Why did you… What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving Metropolis, Lois,” he answered. “For good.”
Still bewildered, she said, “But… Leaving? You can’t leave, Clark. We have to… Here,” she continued, pushing a stack of papers and files toward him, “we need to start looking through all these to see if…”
“Lois,” he interrupted gently, “It's over. Superman's gone and there's nothing we can do about it.”
“Clark,” she said, dismayed, “you’re not a quitter!”
He sighed. “I guess I can't live in a place that would do something like this to someone who was only trying to do the right thing.”
“Clark,” she protested, “the Daily Planet needs you. *I* need you.”
This was heartbreaking. He took a deep breath, fighting to keep his composure. She was sitting at her desk, looking up at him with suspiciously bright eyes. He’d known it would be hard to leave her, but this… this was almost impossible to bear.
“Trust me,” he finally replied, “it'll be better for you this way. You don't need a partner, Lois. You never did.”
As he turned away again, he heard her whispered reply, “I know. But now I want one.”
It rocked him.
He wasn’t supposed to have heard that.
Devastated by her comment, by what he was going to be missing, he stood partway up the ramp for a moment, head lowered in defeat. Everything in him was screaming at him to turn back, to drop the box and take her in his arms and comfort her, to never let her go.
“Goodbye, Lois,” he finally whispered, and walked up the ramp and into the elevator. He didn’t look back. If he did, he would lose his last shred of resolve.
The doors closed behind him, and he slumped back against the elevator wall and let the tears come.
He couldn’t even take solace in flight; he’d promised not to do anything Super.
-----
While he’d sat in his apartment, mourning his losses, Lois had been doggedly pursuing anything that might solve the heat wave situation.
She’d gone through reams of maps and charts, looking for some clue to what was causing the heatwave.
While he’d been wandering through the city for one last time, she had been matching heat distribution charts and geological surveys and Superman rescues, having Jimmy scan the charts and maps into the computer and then overlay them.
While he’d been putting the last of his things into boxes, she had discovered a leak at LexCorp’s nuclear plant only hours before the plant was to be activated.
While he’d sat on his couch, watching a TV reporter wishing Superman good riddance, she had commandeered the man’s microphone and put out a desperate plea
<< Superman, if you can hear this, come back! Or if any of you out there know where Superman is, get him this message. We've figured this out. It's not you. You're not the problem and you never were. But it's an emergency and we need you *now*! Meet me at the LexCorp Nuclear Plant and I'll explain everything. And Superman… *hurry*! >>
In a move that would have been amusing if there hadn’t been so much at stake, the TV reporter had grabbed back his microphone and promptly changed his tune. << You heard it here first. There's an emergency at Lex Corp's nuclear plant, maybe even a melt down... >>
Clark hadn’t stayed to listen. He’d spun into the suit and headed at top speed for the nuclear plant. With literally only minutes to spare, Superman had managed to avert a serious disaster, and the weather had reverted to its normal patterns.
Both Clark and Superman had returned to Metropolis, each in their own fashion.
Lois had let Clark off relatively lightly for his perceived desertion. “That heat made us all more than a little crazy,” she’d said.
Life had also returned to normal.
Normal for Lois and Clark, anyway.
-----
tbc
