Thanks - as ever - to Alisha, Beth and Nancy.
In case I don't get to post tomorrow, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Last time:
Clark
I watched as she left, sighing as she turned the corner. "What's up, Jim?" I asked, turning back to my friend.
He held out an envelope. "This came for you. It fell on the floor in the newsroom, but I thought you might want it before you left for the day."
I took it from him and turned it over in my hands. There was no return address and the postmark was too smudged even for me to read.
I opened it carefully, pulling out the single sheet of paper.
I could feel myself going pale as I read.
"What is it?" Jimmy asked.
"It's him." My voice sounded strangled, even to me.
"Who?"
I hesitated. "Nothing, Jimmy. Nothing I can talk about anyway. When I can, I'll let you know. I promise." I looked him in the eye. "I need you to do something for me. I need you to call Sam and tell him I said 'Rosebud'. Just like that. 'Clark said Rosebud', okay?"
He nodded and I turned and ran back inside, zipping up the stairs as fast as I could.
Navance was back and it was the worst threat yet.
*~*76*~*
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
Clark's face looked grim as he came through the door. I was sure no one but me had noticed the 'whooshing' sound that directly preceded his entrance.
Instead of talking to me, he headed straight for my boss' office in the corner. A minute later, he was at my side.
"We have to go now."
I looked up at him, fear beginning to fill my stomach. "What is it?" I asked, turning back to my desk and shutting down my computer with a few keystrokes before grabbing my purse.
"Not here," he said quietly.
"Is Christopher okay?" Tears filled my eyes.
"As far as I know."
That wasn't good. He should have said 'yes'. We hurried to the stairs and ran down them.
"You're scaring me, Clark."
"I know. Just a minute, okay?"
We reached the main floor and burst through the doors. Clark's cell phone rang.
"Do you have him?" he asked without any preamble. He waited a second. "Good. We're on our way."
We jogged towards the exit to the parking garage. Jimmy was next to us before we got there.
"What's going on, Clark?" he asked as he trotted along with us. "What's 'Rosebud'?"
I stopped in my tracks. "No," I whispered. "Daddy has him?" I asked, remembering the brief phone conversation.
"He's fine," Clark reassured me.
"For now," I whispered.
"What's going on?" Jimmy demanded.
Clark turned to him as tears coursed down my cheeks. "I don't have time to explain. Come over when you get off okay?" He put his arm around my waist and hustled me towards the door.
Jimmy stopped and watched as we ran to the car.
As soon as we were safely inside, I turned to him. "What happened and why aren't we flying?"
Clark pulled smoothly out of the parking space and concentrated as we left the parking garage. "A letter came."
"What did it say?"
He sighed. "I'd rather wait and tell you and your dad and everyone all at once." He reached over and grasped my hand. "Your dad has Christopher and he's fine. No one's going to get near him. The house is locked down. The FBI has been called. He's going to be fine. If something had happened, if I wasn't sure he was safe, we'd be flying; I promise."
The forty-five minute trip took just under thirty. I thought Clark was using his special vision and hearing to figure out where the police cars were. He slowed down a couple of times – too quickly for it to be explained by anything else.
There was a guard with a mean-looking German shepherd standing in front of the gate.
"Password?" he asked.
"Constitution," Clark replied.
Each of us had silent alarms we could trigger if we were in danger. We also each had a series of code words that would put different plans into action and different passwords that went along with them.
The gate opened and Clark sped up the drive, screeching to a halt in front of the main entrance. I ran to the door, but it was locked. I growled in frustration as I remembered that I'd have to punch my code in if the house was locked down. "Where is he?" I demanded as soon as I saw my dad.
He was pale and grim – just like Clark. "He's in his crib. The house and the wing are both locked down and security is being raised all over the grounds."
I headed for the stairs. I needed to see my son.
"Lois, wait," Clark called. "He's fine." I turned to look at him and he nodded slightly. He'd peeked. "Jessica has him. Everything's locked down."
"Then tell me what's going on."
Clark sighed and carefully pulled the letter out of his pocket, holding it by the corners. "Jimmy chased me down before I left. It fell on the floor in the newsroom so I didn't get it earlier." He set it on one of the tables so we could all see it. "He said he's sending a team to get his son. He said they were coming in a week, but I don't trust him. As soon as I read it, I told Jimmy to call your dad while I went to get you."
"Why?" I whispered. "Isn't enough to make vague threats or innuendos? Why does he have to *actually* threaten my son?"
Clark put his arms around me and pulled me to him. I crumpled against him, my fists balled in his shirt. "Why?" I whispered again.
"He's crazy," Clark told me, holding me tighter.
A minute later, I took a deep breath and pulled back. "I want to see my son."
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
It had been two days. The stress was starting to get to all of us.
They'd contemplated moving us to the cabin, but it was actually harder to protect. The house could be locked down and there were lines of sight all around the house – around all the buildings, actually. Ollie, Vicki and their family had moved into the apartments for the time being.
Lois hadn't left our wing. Christopher hadn't left her side the whole time. I'd had to pry him away from her so they could both get some sleep and then she'd only agree if I set the playpen up in our room where she could see and hear him in the middle of the night.
I had been the one to go down and get us all something to eat and to confer with Sam and security and the FBI. They were studying the threat. The early assessment was that it was an empty threat, but none of us were willing to let it go just yet.
It had stayed out of the news. Jimmy had been appropriately appalled when he'd heard the whole story – he was staying in one of the spare bedrooms for a few days – and had promised that he wouldn't be the one to break the story, even if it would get him in good with Perry White.
For now, Perry White only knew me as the 'hey, kid' guy who brought his mail sometimes and Lois as the clerical girl who helped Norcross and Judd sometimes. For the moment, we'd prefer to keep it that way.
Lois sat in one of the chairs and stared out the window. "What'd they say?" she asked as I came back in.
I sighed and pulled on her hand until she stood up. I sat in her spot and pulled her down onto my lap. I wrapped my arms around her and held her to me. "So far there's no evidence of a credible threat."
She relaxed nearly imperceptibly. "That's good, right?"
I nodded. "They haven't found any connection to anyone coming to the States from Latislan or any of the known groups of thugs that might kidnap kids like he threatened to. Or any ties to any terror groups or anyone else possibly capable of doing something to the two of you."
"That's good."
"You need to get some sleep," I told her softly, brushing the hair off her face.
"I don't think I can," she said honestly.
"Would a bath help?"
She shook her head. "I already took one."
"Trust me?" I asked.
She hesitated before nodding. "Okay. Some warm milk remedy from Great-Grandma Davis?"
I laughed lightly. "No." I managed to stand up with her in my arms. I carried her to the bed and gently set her down. "Lay on your stomach."
She rolled over and rested her head flat on the mattress.
"This is where you trust me," I said quietly. I pushed her shirt up until it was bunched under her armpits. "I'm not going to do anything untoward, okay?"
She nodded slightly. "I trust you."
I used little darts of heat vision and started to massage her shoulders and back. Before long, her deep, even breathing told me that she was asleep and I pulled her shirt back down. I leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Sleep tight," I whispered, crawling under the covers next to her. I didn't want to be too far from her and Christopher – who was right next to her side of the bed – even in the middle of the night.
As soon as I pulled the covers up, she rolled onto her side, snuggling back into me. I wrapped my arm around her and held her as tight as I dared. "I won't let anything happen to either of you," I promised her.
I closed my eyes, and listening to the sound of both of their heartbeats, I fell asleep.
*~*~*
June 2004
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
I sank into one of the chairs to stare out the large picture window in the cabin's living room.
"How're you doing?" Jimmy asked, sitting in the chair next to me.
"Ready for this to be over," I said honestly. "I wish he'd drop off the face of the earth or piss off some guy who would have no moral compunction about shooting him."
"Yeah, Clark's not going to just shoot him."
"No, he's not." I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm sorry we didn't tell you sooner."
Jimmy didn’t say anything for a long minute. "I won't say it doesn't hurt a bit that you didn't tell me, but I understand why."
"I'm glad you understand. It wasn't intentionally to hurt you or anything like that. We figured the fewer people that know, the better. Especially people at work – even though we knew you wouldn't tell anyone or whatever."
"It caught me so off-guard, but I'm glad I could help."
One side of my mouth tweaked a bit into a tiny half smile. "I'm sure Clark telling you to call Daddy and tell him 'rosebud' wasn't what you expected."
He shook his head. "No, we were standing there talking to some friend of his from Smallville and then she took off and the next thing I know I'm in a James Bond movie or something."
"James Bond might be pushing it a bit," I told him with a small chuckle before the rest of what he said sunk in. "Friend from Smallville?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Some blonde girl was looking at the pictures in Clark's wallet. She took off just a minute after I got there."
Lana.
It had to be Lana.
And Clark hadn’t told me about it.
In his defense, though, a minute later, our world had gone to hell in a hand basket so it was possible he'd forgotten all about it.
Maybe.
I sighed. "I'm just glad that it seems to be almost over."
It had been two weeks. Two long weeks. Christopher hadn't left our wing of the house until we'd headed to the cabin. Clark and I had stayed home for a couple of days but went back to work after that. I was glad the semester was over and we didn't have to worry about school on top of everything else. Security was deployed unobtrusively around the Planet – and without the Planet's knowledge. It was risky and had caused a big fight with the different security gurus but one thing we *did* *not* want was the press getting a hold of our names. Fortunately, a few members of security were able to get temp jobs – through the cooperation of a temp agency – and so it wasn't just us without anyone else. With Clark nearby, I wasn't too concerned about my safety. I wasn’t concerned at all of his and I knew he'd keep me safe if it came down to it; the threat wasn't against me anyway.
My mind had only been half on my job. The rest of it had been at the house in Pittsdale. With my son.
I sighed. There was absolutely no indication that Navance was actually going to try anything – other than the letter, of course. The FBI, Daddy's security and private investigators and anyone else who had been looking couldn't find anything linking him to anyone. I knew Daddy didn't know they'd looked into Mindy again and still hadn't found anything.
The lack of anything was frustrating. It wasn't like we could say we'd found the culprit and close the case. All we could say was that there wasn't anything to find.
Yet.
Security would remain tight for another week or so and then slowly deescalate until things were back to normal – whatever that was when a maniac threatened your family.
Several hours later, I was in bed, nearing sleep when Clark came in.
"There's something I didn't mention to you," he said, sliding under the covers.
I rolled to face him. "What's that?"
He looked hesitant. "Right before all this started... When I was on my way to get dinner... I ran into Lana. Literally. I was checking to see if I had any money on me and I bumped into her. She saw the picture of Christopher in my wallet and asked to see it. She looked at it and we talked for like a minute and a half and then Jimmy came up with the letter."
"He told me you were talking to a blonde you described as an old friend from Smallville," I told him. "I wondered if it was her."
"When did he tell you?" he asked.
"This afternoon." I flopped onto my back. "After we got here."
He breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad you haven't been wondering about it for two weeks or anything like that. I really was going to tell you but with everything that happened..."
"I figured it was something like that," I told him honestly. "And you did tell me."
He reached out and turned my head so he could see my face. "I told her I was happy."
My eyes left his. "Are you? Or did you just tell her that?"
"I am happy," he said quietly. "I have a good life for just finishing my sophomore year of college. We're friends again. Christopher is great. We live in a great house and have virtually no expenses. Do I wish things were different? Sure. Do I wish that he wasn't after you two? Of course. But I *am* happy."
He wished things were different. He wished he were married to Lana was what he meant by that. I believed him when he said that he was happy, but I would bet money that he thought he'd be *happier* with Lana.
"I'm glad," I finally whispered and I was.
I was glad he was happy.
I was sorry he'd sacrificed five years of his life to protect us.
I was sorry he was going to be a part-time dad to Christopher once this was over.
I was sorry Lana might decide not to take him back after everything that happened.
I was sorry he hadn't been able to tell his parents the whole story and that they were going to be hurt when they realized that Christopher wasn't really their grandson – though I doubted genetics would actually matter given their history with Clark.
But I was glad he was happy.
*****
TBC
