Last time:
Clark
"We love you, very much."
"I know, Mom. I love both of you, too."
"You sound tired."
"I am."
"Then why don't you get some rest and we'll talk again soon."
"Thanks, Mom."
"I mean what we said though. If you don't get a job and tell her everything by the time you talk to us over Spring Break, the checks *will* stop."
"I know, Mom. I get it."
"Give Lois a hug for me."
"Will do." Well, I wouldn't really, but she didn't need to know that.
We said good night and hung up. She'd given me a lot to think about, but it was nice to know that they were still going to send some money. It wasn't much but it would help. And we weren't going to have a place to live come mid-May. Many of the other couples in the building – those that wanted to live on campus – had applied for the apartments that would be vacated in mid-May by graduates or couples moving for other reasons. Those now had a waiting list. Getting us into this apartment had been a minor miracle. Getting us into one for the summer was going to be impossible. Unless Sam, by some chance, decided to let us stay with him and Lois was willing to do so, we were going to have to find a place off-campus to live.
I'd had my head in the sand for way too long already. I needed to figure out how I was going to provide for my wife and baby no matter how we'd ended up here.
*~*41*~*
March 2004
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
I held the paperwork in my hand and just stared at it.
Lois Lane no longer existed.
I was now Lois *Kent*.
I couldn’t even hyphenate my last name because of the Latislani bastard. At least, Daniel had recommended against it.
And I hated what my life had become. I had become a recluse. I rarely saw Joe or Les or Debbie or Julie or any of my other friends. Instead, I was in this shabby hole of an apartment virtually any time I wasn't in class or grocery shopping or something equally mundane.
But I didn't see much choice in the matter. When I was in public, I needed to be with Clark and be all lovey-dovey. I preferred a life of solitude to that. And I did still manage to chat with them from time to time – but online using AIM or Gmail, not in person. It had both advantages and disadvantages.
Of course, Clark also had my dream job. Okay, not my *dream* job, but for my dream employer. He'd managed to get on in the mail room at the Daily Planet. A foot in the door for someday, he'd said.
The key turned in the lock and I sighed as I set the papers down and picked up my laptop, popping it open. I waited for it to come out of hibernation or whatever it was called when it was closed and went back to the Word document that was waiting for me.
"What are you working on?" Clark asked as he set his backpack down.
I shrugged. "American Lit."
"Ah. The Mark Twain paper."
I nodded. "Did you get yours done?"
He shook his head. "Not quite. About half, I guess. What about your English paper?"
I sighed. "I haven't started it." It was a hard paper to write. The instructions weren't easy in the first place, but it was more than that. The topic was what was so hard.
We had to write a paper, in first person. And it had to be partially from our perspective and partially from the perspective of at least one other person. The event or events we wrote about had to be pivotal points in our lives. And – this was the kicker – as much as possible, the other person or persons involved had to read the paper and write a note to the professor saying that they had read the paper and that it was a reasonably accurate depiction of events.
There were a number of things I could go with to write about. Heck, I could probably write about my marriage to Clark, except that I couldn’t tell anyone about that – and I really didn't want to try to get in his head to write part of it from his perspective. And I really *really* didn't want to give it to him to read. The most obvious story to write would be about the death of my mom and sister, but that would entail writing about my dad's pain and suffering and then having him read it – after trying to get into his head about what he was thinking and feeling when Mom and Lucy were killed in a car accident. I sighed.
Clark was speaking. "Why haven't you started it? It's due the week after Spring Break."
"I know when it's due, Miss Moneypenny," I snapped at him. I'd wondered a time or two what he was writing about and if it had anything to do with his desire to name the baby 'Christopher' if I had a boy, but I hadn't been able to bring myself to ask him about. The night he'd told me that much, he'd refused to explain any more about why that was the name he wanted, but he did promise to tell me someday.
"Sorry," he mumbled. He sighed. "Spring Break is in eight days. Have you decided if you want to go to Smallville or not?"
"Do you want to?"
"Of course, I'd like to go home and see my folks, but I'd understand if you didn't want to go."
"And since we need to do whatever over Spring Break together..." I sighed. "You wouldn't be able to go either."
He shook his head. "I should probably tell you something, though..."
"What?"
"I told you Mom and Dad said they'd pay for gas and a hotel room each way, right?"
I nodded.
He leaned forward in the kitchen chair and rested his elbows on his knees. "There was a stipulation with that."
"What?"
He didn't look at me. "Well, I told you they'd keep sending money if I got a job, which I did, but for this they said that we have to at least offer to bring Lana with us since I was supposed to be her ride home and if we didn't want to share a room with her we'd have to spring for another one ourselves."
I sighed. That would be just great. And we'd have to take my Jeep. I'd figured we would anyway, but with Lana... That would be just peachy.
"What do you want to do?" he asked.
Tears filled my eyes as I thought of the letter I'd received the day before – the one I hadn't shown him yet. "Go," I whispered.
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
I stared at her for a long minute before nodding. "Okay. I'll tell my folks." And talk to Lana. I didn't think she'd actually go with us. I didn't think there was any way she'd want to subject herself to that or something. "We can leave about noon on Friday, we'll probably get there sometime Saturday evening and stay until the next Saturday sometime depending on how far we want to drive on Sunday."
She nodded.
"Are you sure?" I asked her. I couldn’t believe she'd really be willing to drive twenty hours each way with Lana in her Jeep – or any other vehicle for that matter.
She nodded again, before sighing and reaching into the top of the desk drawer next to her. She handed me a piece of paper.
I glanced at it and froze. "When did you get this?"
"Yesterday."
"Why didn't you tell me about it?"
"I didn't see you yesterday after I got it. I was asleep when you got home," she reminded me, a hint of accusation in her voice. "And I really didn't want to tell you before class this morning."
I read the letter from Navance. It was the third one we'd gotten since we left Latislan. The first one had come the day after the big fight Lois and I had over what Lana had said to her. The second one had come about three weeks later and now this one. It was essentially the same as the other two had been. Threatening us, the baby, everyone we knew basically. The last line caught my attention. 'Don't forget what I told you, boy.' Apparently, it had caught Lois', too.
"What does he mean by that last bit?"
"About what he told me?" I tried to play innocent.
><~><~><~><
He practically hissed at me. "There is no way you will be able to claim her child."
"Why not?" I asked, arms crossed in front of me in the hall of the hospital.
"She will not be able to leave the hospital except under the escort of my men. And if you did manage to get her out, I would come after her and her child. You would never know when – day or night – my men will arrive and you will never see either of them again. No one will see her again and, if she has a son, no one will see him until he takes over my empire. When she leaves here, she will be taken to my house where she will live in my care until the child is born. At that point, I will decide what to do with her."
"You'd kill her?" I whispered. I'd fly her out of here before that.
He laughed – one of those evil laughs I thought only existed on TV or in bad movies. "Oh, no, child. I will decide if I want to keep her for myself or share her with my comrades. It all depends on how satisfied she keeps me between now and then. And I will make sure she sees exactly how her child is being raised and unless she cooperates, her child will die. I could marry her but that offer her some protections, and I wouldn't do that."
My stomach churned at the thought of how Lois would be treated. "How is the child going to be raised?"
"Ah, the baby will be taken from its mother at birth and raised as I wish. If the child is a boy, I will raise him to be what I wish him to be. A man after my own heart, if you will." He leered. "And if the child is a girl, as soon as she is old enough, she will follow in the footsteps of her mother. Until then, she will be a servant in my house."
My eyes went wide. "You wouldn't."
Navance moved closer to me. "There are many men who like very young, innocent women," he whispered in my ear. "I'm sure you do, as well."
I wanted to retch at the insinuation. I *had* to get her out of there. I *could* *not* let him get his hands on Lois or the baby.
Not here.
Not now.
Not ever.
><~><~><~><
"Just what I told you before. That you didn't see his face when he threatened you and the baby." I couldn't tell her the truth. Not what he'd planned on doing with her and the baby once he got his hands on them. That was why I'd helped set up the break-out and helped her get into the embassy and married her.
And why I was going to stay married her until the baby was five years old or someone else decided they'd had enough of Navance and shot him.
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
I closed my eyes. I had to pee and they weren't going to let me.
"Ready, Mrs. Kent?" the technician asked.
I hadn't gotten used to that at all, but I nodded, pulling my pants down a bit further as she tucked a washcloth into the waist band.
Clark sat next to me and stared, seemingly unseeing at the monitor.
"Here we go." The woman pushed a couple of buttons and pressed the wand into my stomach. A minute later, she pointed to the screen. "There's your baby."
Tears filled my eyes as she continued to take measurements and pointed out things like the spine and heart and eye sockets.
"Do you want to know if it's a boy or a girl?"
I shook my head. "No. I want to be surprised." It was so counter-intuitive. I normally had to know everything, but for some reason, I didn’t want to know. I had when I'd had the first ultrasound, but not this time. Maybe it was the insinuations from Navance about what he'd do with the baby if he ever got his hands on him or her. Maybe by not knowing if I was having a boy or girl, I could keep that piece of information from him and keep us both a bit safer or something.
She smiled. "That was always my choice."
A few minutes later, she removed the wand and used the washcloth to wipe off my stomach. "Why don't you go to the bathroom? There's a cup in there for you so Terri can check it for you."
I nodded and headed that direction. When I came back out, Clark was standing by the door waiting for me. We headed out to the waiting room to wait for our turn to see Dr. McConnell.
"Here," he said quietly, handing me the slips of paper with pictures on them.
"Thanks," I said in similar tones. I flipped through them, staring at each one. This was the life growing inside me.
"Pretty amazing, huh?"
I nodded, tears in my eyes. "Yeah. Pretty amazing."
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
I took the pictures back from her when she offered them.
This was the reason I was doing this. This was the reason why I'd married Lois and why I was staying married to her. To keep Navance away from her and from the baby, I'd do just about anything.
I turned my hearing on and listened to the fluttering sound that had lulled me to sleep so many nights recently. I stared at the picture of the baby sucking his thumb as I listened.
I couldn’t let anything happen to either one of them.
"Lois." I looked up and saw a nurse standing there, holding the door open.
"Hi, Terri," Lois said with a smile.
"How're you feeling?" Terri asked as she took us to a room.
This was the first visit I'd made with Lois. So far, she'd managed to schedule them while I was in school, but she'd mentioned that she figured I ought to be here for this one, with the ultrasound and all.
"We won't check the heartbeat since Lydia just did that with the ultrasound."
Lois kicked her shoes off and stepped up on the scale. "Do we really have to do this *every*time?"
Terri laughed. "Nearly everyone says that."
"I wonder why," she muttered.
Terri laughed again and I sat in one of the chairs along the wall as Lois climbed onto the table. "Kristi will be in in a few minutes." She left and closed the door behind her.
"Does everyone call your doctor Kristi?" I asked. "Back home, everyone would say Dr. Kristi."
She shook her head. "She was my mom's doctor for a year or so before she died. She'd worked with both my parents while she was in med school. When she did that other ultrasound, she told me we'd been through enough together that I could call her Kristi." She shook her head slightly. "I still can't bring myself to do it though."
There was a knock on the door. "Hello?" The door swung open and the woman I recognized from the brief meeting in the ER entered. "How are you two doing today?"
She seemed slightly uneasy.
"We're good," Lois said. "As long as you don't tell us that something's wrong with the baby."
Dr. McConnell smiled and shook her head. "Nope. Everything looks great. You look about three or four days farther along than you should be, but that's no big deal. It's pretty common actually. The baby could stay a few days ahead, or slow down a bit later, but either way is fine. Do you have any questions for me at this point?"
Lois glanced at me. "Is it okay for me to go to Kansas next week? We're driving."
She nodded. "You'll probably need to take frequent restroom breaks and you need to stretch your legs at least every couple of hours." She took a piece of paper out of a drawer and wrote on it. "That's my home and cell phone numbers. Call me if you need anything while you're gone."
"Thanks, Dr. McConnell," Lois said, taking it from her.
"Kristi, please." She leaned against the counter. "I talked to your dad last week. How're things going with his girlfriend?"
Lois glanced at me. "I haven't really been home much. Things have been pretty crazy."
The doctor looked Lois straight in the eye for a long moment, then nodded. "I bet." She set the file on the counter. "Why don't you lie back and we'll measure that stomach of yours?"
Lois did as she was told and a minute later the doctor said she was measuring half a week bigger than she should be, but that was in keeping with the ultrasound. She reiterated that it was nothing to be concerned about.
A few minutes of chit chat after that, Lois hopped down from the table and slid her tennis shoes back on.
Dr. McConnell gave her a hug. "Have a safe trip and I'll see you in a month."
"Thanks." Lois headed out into the hall.
I started to follow her, but a hand on my arm stopped me.
I found myself looking down into the brown eyes of the doctor.
"I know this isn't easy, Clark. Becoming a parent so unexpectedly and all, but please... Take care of her."
Something in her tone made me wonder if Lois, feeling comfortable with the doctor-patient confidentiality thing, had told her everything.
"I will," I promised. "I'll take care of her."
