The presence of the exquisite, gentle beauty that was perfectly nestled behind him on the bed Wednesday morning normally wouldn't have given Clark reason to worry. Sitting indian style, she was chuckling softly as she ran her long, slim fingers through his tousled hair, just imagining the look on his face as she continued playing with his hair.
"Now Clark, hold still, will ya? How do you expect me to get it straight?"
"Straight? Was that your intention, because it doesn't really have the feel of 'straight' to me," he smiled, reaching around a hand to grab one of her own, groaning when she escaped his grasp.
"I'm almost done." With a few more swipes, Lois scooted off the bed to face him. "There you go. Perfect!"
Clark reached up a hand to feel the mess that he knew she had surely made of his hair. "Honey...did you put anything in my hair?"
"Just some gel," she smiled sweetly.
"*Some* gel?" He tried running his fingers through his new haphazard style again, finding more goo. "This is more than just *some*."
"Oh come on- in case you never noticed, Superman's hair always has a slightly slick appearance. You're telling me that's not from gel?"
"I just use water when I fix my hair in the morning, and whenever I spin into the suit it just sorta gets blown down that way."
"Uh-huh. Try and do your husband a favor," Lois mock pouted, turning her back to him as she headed towards their bathroom.
"Come here," he went to reach for her, wimpering softly as he saw her brush him away.
"No, no...I know when my efforts aren't appreciated." Clark grabbed her around the waist, pulling her into his arms.
"You are always appreciated," he smiled against her neck as his hand made a trail along her stomach, his fingers beginning to tickle her. "Even when you make a mess of my hair."
"But the messy look is good on you," she reasoned, pulling him down to her for a kiss. "Any look is good on you," she corrected herself, eyeing him appreciatively.
"I thought you said my hair needed a change?" his eyes lifted up, recalling the conversation they'd had the other night over dinner.
"Well, sometimes change can be good. For example, the messy 'wet' look on you is sexier than the messy 'dry' look...although, neither one of them is my favorite look for you," she slyly smiled, pulling him along with her as she walked backwards towards the bed.
"And which one would that be?" he raised an eyebrow, intrigued by her comments.
"The look that you give whenever you look at me," she smiled, pulling him down ontop of her as she relaxed back onto the mattress. "I never knew that a person's eyes could say so much, but...whenever you look at me...I feel everything. Feelings I never even knew existed until us."
"Excitement," he began for her, just barely grazing her lips with his own.
"Trust..."
"Bliss..."
"Comfort..." she wrapped an arm around his neck, bringing him closer to her.
"Acceptance..." he smiled, nuzzling her neck.
"Safety..."
"Home..." he pulled away from her neck to face her. "My life...my heart...my world." He softly brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers come to rest on her cheek. "You've given me everything, Lois. Everything..." he finished with a gentle kiss.
"And speaking of giving..." she quickly shifted gears, her true intentions now coming to the surface, "...care to drop any hints as to what you're getting me for our anniversary?"
“Uh-uh...you’ll just have to wait until Friday. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”
Wrapping her arms around his waist, she gave one more attempt to interrogate him about her gift. "Clark," she crooned as they kiss, "how about you just tell me what my gift is?" Kissing her while laughing at her attempt, Clark answered, "cause that would ruin one of my greatest surprises ever for you, and you really don't think I'm about to do that, do you?"
Lois was relentless though, continuing to work on him, kissing her way down his neck. "If you tell me now...I'll be your best friend," she gushed, not being able to hold back a laugh for her last remark.
"First of all, you're already my best friend," he said with a final kiss, pulling her up as he saw the digital numbers on their alarm clock draw closer to 9:00. "And second...no. You'll just have to wait and be surprised." Seeing Lois' immediate mock-pout, he kissed her, and dragged her to her feet to get ready for work.
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Clark sat at his desk later that morning, the terminal’s display casting a bluish-white hue to his face as he scrolled through the massive computer databanks in the Planet's archives. What he was hoping to find, he wasn't quite sure of yet. His current dive into research was a futile effort to distract himself from his earlier appointments- first with Klein, then unexpectedly with Braden himself. He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. He blinked his eyes several times, and then rubbed his neck, as he tried to turn his attention back to the display. He was having trouble concentrating; time and time again, his mind would drift back to that image from his dream, back to that instant when he had caught a brief glimpse of himself wearing that long-since forgotten black suit. It had haunted him again, relentlessly. He looked down from the display, and rested his elbows on the desk in front of him as he clasped his hands behind his neck, and took a long, deep breath.
<How could it be possible?> Clark thought to himself; it wasn't just the presence of the suit, but the eyes- his own eyes- looking back at him, as if from a distorted, evil mirror, glaring at him, filled with a hatred and rage unlike any that he had ever seen before. He had felt it; the dark tremor vibrated through the core of his being, and he could still feel its icy chill as the haunting face appeared, over and over again, in his mind.
Fear was something that seldom manifested itself in his heart. But now, as he watched those cold eyes stare back at him from the dark corner of his memory, he felt a different kind of fear; a sense of dread, a deep foreboding, that somehow, what he had seen could have been real. With his head bowed, he closed his eyes, tightly.
/"One day..."/
A voice invaded his mind.
/"One day you are going to lose everything you have. Nothing will prepare you for that day. Nothing."/ Clark's eyes bolted open, only to find the source of the voice staring back at him, casually sitting atop his desk.
/"When someone you love dies, you will know emptiness..." Through Clark's hazy mind, the apparition of his father continued. "You will never forget and never forgive. So think. Think about what you have to lose. And learn."/
Clark jumped out of his seat, earning more than a few stares from his surrounding co-workers.
"Clark?" Lois called over. She'd been refilling her own coffee mug, and had stood watching him from behind the railway. Clark met her midstride as she approached him. "Did you just...? My father..."
"Your father? Clark, is something wrong with Jonathan?"
"No, he was...well, he was *here*." He turned and looked back toward his desk, his father gone.
"What do you mean he was here?" She looked at him quietly, her hands resting along his arm. "Clark, what's wrong?"
Struggling to get his father's ominous image and words out of his mind, he pulled away from her sharply. "I've gotta get some air."
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Afternoons were always the most hectic part of the day at the Daily Planet. Staff members with their seemingly endless energy dashing in and out to cover breaking stories. However, this afternoon was shaping up quite differently. Lois had cancelled a meeting with a source about the recent arsons in the city; partly because of her first hand look the other night at their most likely suspect, but more so because she was anxiously awaiting Clark's return from his uneasy departure. Sitting behind at her desk, she took a hasty sip from her mug. Her eyes were fixed on the computer before her, its soft but rapid humming drawing a pleased smile from her at its speedy progress in searching the LexCorp archives. Toying with the mouse, she highlighted a column of text.
"Lois?" a hesitant Jimmy approached the desk, fearful of interrupting her work. "I've got the pictures from Dr. Braden's press conference," he placed the larger of the two folders he carried on her desk. "And I thought you guys might be interested in this."
Briefly glancing up at him with a half-attention, her eyes forward but not yet engaged, Lois reached for the second folder. "What's this?"
"Well when Braden started talking about wanting to experiment on Superman, it got me thinking about what other projects he's done. Here's everything I could dig up from his work at LexCorp."
"Thanks, Jimmy. I was actually just doing some research on this guy myself," she nods to her screen, quickly thumbing through what Jimmy had brought her. Leaning over the desk, the young photgrapher narrowed his eyes as he read aloud from the computer screen. " 'Biotech experiment goes awry. Physician's son found dead.' This was Braden's son?"
"Braden was the only one being investigated in the death," she replied, returning to her keyboard.
"But he wasn't the only one involved," Jimmy said matter of factly. The confused stare that he received from Lois prompted him to explain. "Braden became obsessed with curing his son. Even before he officially joined LexCorp, he'd approached several of its researchers to help develop a vaccine for his son's disease." He rifled through the pages of information he'd compiled, finally finding the article and picture he'd been looking for. "Eventually, the only scientist who didn't dismiss him altogether was Dr. Rayne Evans."
As she shifted in her chair, Lois scanned the article. A grainy black and white photograph displayed a young man, with an almost cherubic face, alongside the familiar figure of Lucas Braden. "So they worked together before. Interesting. See if you can get together a list of all of the other projects Dr. Evans was involved in at LexCorp."
"Olsen!" Perry's booming voice was enough to startle the both of them. "What are you doing hanging around here? Why aren't you downtown with your camera?!" Without giving him chance to answer either question, the agitated editor continued his rant. "Two newstations just caught film of Superman, literally falling in mid-flight! Now where were you?!"
"What?!" Though Lois' shout was loud enough to be heard down in obituaries, her immediate concern fell on otherwise occupied ears, as Jimmy flustered to get a word in edgewise.
"I'm on my way, chief-"
"Well don't even bother with it now, he's long gone. Eyewitnesses say he was only grounded for a few minutes before he took to the sky again. But man oh man- they said it was a scary sight. Even when he finally got up, they said he looked pretty shaky on his feet," he said heavily, hiding his emotions with a tight voice. "C'mere."
With Lois rushing ahead of him, Jimmy followed Perry into his office, the three colleagues' collected attentions on the gleaming TV screen. It was a terrible drop- two-hundred feet, at least- it was hard to tell from the camera angle. But there, in the most unlikliest of scenes, was the man of steel...awkwardly tumbling head over heels from the sky. Halfway down, an awning broke his fall, then he landed bone-crushingly hard in a jumble of old packing cases and other alley trash, sending a dozing wino scampering for cover. He struggled to his feet, staring up at the vacancy he'd just left, soaring high above the city street. Looking dazidly at the crowd that was beginning to gather, he staggered out of the alley. He crashed into the side of the building with a groan as his ravaged body tried and failed to obey his mental command to fly; then finally, with a visibly convulsive effort, he threw himself back up, taking to the sky once more.
"Lois, I want you and Clark on this, pronto."
Unable to move, her eyes transfixed by the replaying images on the screen before her, Lois finally breathed out the only reply she could formulate. "Uh-huh."
Her body involuntarily pivoted on the spot, the sudden need to avert her eyes too great. A lingering moment of fear cut like a knife of ice through her stomach. But in an instant, her eyes snapped into sharp focus at the sight of her husband emerging from the elevator doors, slowly making his way down the ramp towards his desk.
He was met halfway by Lois' arms, clutching him to her. "Oh my god...are you okay?" she whispered against his neck. Grabbing onto his arm, she steered him towards the conference room. "What happened?"
"I don't know." Making a quick check for any listening passerbys, he continued as he ushered her into the room, closing the doors behind them. "It was like I had no control over my flying."
"Was it kryptonite?" she prodded, keeping her voice low.
"I didn't feel anything. One second I could fly, the next I couldn't," he shrugged in an uncharacteristic manner. "It came back, so no big deal-"
"No big deal?!" she couldn't help the aggravated tone that her voice took. "Clark?!"
"I'm fine," he shifted his tone to match her's, trying to slip by her but finding his attempts useless as she grabbed him firmly with both arms, holding him in front of her. "What is going on?" she pleaded with him. "Clark, please. The other morning you were kinda out of it, earlier you seemed to be seeing things-"
"I wasn't seeing th-"
"-and now this." She lifted a hand to his chin, making him face her. "This is scaring me...now what's wrong?"
"Lois, really...I'm fine," he tried assuring her, placing a gentle kiss ontop of her head before pulling her alongside him with his free hand, the other still holding the video cassettetape he'd been carrying. "I guess I'm just more tired than I thought. Probably not getting enough sleep, that's all." Hoping to distract her with work, he produced what he'd been given at Star Labs. "Here- I've got the security tape from the break-in." As Clark set the tape into the nearby console, Lois grabbed the remote to play the recorded video. But when the screen came up, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The corridors of Star Labs had been seemingly empty, with no visible signs of the break-in.
"Well no wonder the police don't have any leads."
"There!" Clark's finger stabbed at the monitor screen as Lois quickly froze the screen on a barely noticeable blur. "I don't believe it."
"Who do you see?"
"It's that kid." Clark said, staring at the screen in confusion. "The one who started the fire."
"Well, it looks like our thief knew what he was doing. And what he was after."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you think it's too much of a coincidence that this same kid attacked you, broke into Star Labs, and took something from their genetics department...the same department that Lucas Braden is now the head of? There's a connection in there somewhere," she sighed, her voice quickly giving way to her building sense of distrust in the doctor.
"You think this guy's working for Braden?" Clark asked, a new wave of concern hitting the both of them. "Jimmy!" Spotting him out of the corner of his eye, Clark motions for him to come in. "There's a tiny image in this one frame. See if you can have it blown up and put a name to the face."
"You got it. Say CK- did you happen to see Superman after he took that fall? I mean, is he alright?"
"Yeah, he's fine," Clark assured him, though the weary sigh that underscored his voice was enough to let Lois know that he was anything but. "Just a little 'burned out' so to speak from fighting all those fires lately."
He watched his friend leave, but just as he spun around in his chair, he picked up the far-off sound of a wailing siren. Seeing him turn his head, Lois groaned. "What do you hear?"
"Police siren."
"Is it another fire?"
"Not sure yet."
"Clark..." Lois didn’t understand the tremor that she felt inside her heart; it was somewhat strange, almost as if a small, faint voice were speaking to her, as she looked quietly at her husband. She looked at him intently as she felt the tremor in her heart grow stronger. "...just be careful." She reached up to capture his lips with her own in a pleading kiss.
