Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Imbroglio (9/?)

*Peaks in tentatively*

Okay, before I start, let me just point out that the last time I posted a part of this, it WAS April. *cough-justnotthisyear-cough*

OMG don’t hurt me! I know, it’s been ages. A billion years, even! Well, a billion minus 999,999,999 years… In the grand scheme of things, not too long, right?

…Right?

Yeah, I didn’t think so, either o.O

Okies, so as it turned out, a good portion of this part had already been written. *Dodges thrown things* But there was still a lot of tweaking to get done, and things to add (which, I'm not sure if my writing style has changed too much, something I was worried about), and things to move, and…

Not sure when part ten will be done. I want to say it will be done soon, but we all know how long my soons are… >.< I just hope I can guarantee it won’t be a year… *knock on wood*

So anyhoo.

Thanks to carolm for betaing this thing crazy-fast! And also for helping me out when I was stuck XD Which, this having been a year since I looked at it, was quite often :p And if I’m not mistaken (though I may be because it has been a ye- er, awhile) Saskia and LaraMoon also looked this over when I first started writing this part, betaing what I’d had done. Of course, any mistakes left are mine, and I hoard them greedily

Also, thanks to everyone who wanted me to continue!

And the people who put up with my incessant sporking!

And I should just let yall go forth and read, now…

ETA: *cough* Well, someone pointed out a TOC link would be nice. It HAS been awhile, I suppose XD

Imbroglio TOC

***

Part Nine

-

“Lois? Clark?” Martha called as she opened the front door. Her daughter-in-law had given them a spare key shortly after the newlyweds had moved in, saying how it was much easier than waiting on a cold porch stoop if something had happened that needed some attention from a superhero.

“They must still be out,” Jonathan noted as he came in after his wife, arms loaded with luggage. He stumbled a bit over the entry way rug before righting himself, but not before two suitcases tumbled from his grip and crashed to the floor.

“Well, if they were asleep, they’re awake now,” Martha said with a chuckle before bending to retrieve the fallen cases.

“Do you really think that Clark came home by now?” her husband asked as he set the remaining suitcases down on the floor. “From what you said, Lois sounded pretty adamant that he didn’t have plans of coming back any time soon.”

“Now, Jonathan, you know our son as well as I do. If there’s anything I know for certain, it’s that he wouldn’t leave her alone for too long.” She walked over to the staircase and peered up, as though she could see what was going on through the walls. “Maybe he is home, and they’re in their room… reconciling.”

“Martha!” Jonathan’s horrified voice caused her to turn around. “It’s way too early for those two kids to be…”

“Talking?” she suggested as she rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Mr. Kent, what did you think I meant?”

“Well… um… it is almost three in the morning… far too early for any sort of talking…” Jonathan trailed off as his face flushed a bright red.

Martha laughed as she took to the stairs. “And far too late for us ‘old folk’ to be up and about. Let’s go see if the guest bedroom is still available.”

-

Lois stood in her apartment by her window, looking up towards the night sky. She was waiting for someone, hoping he would come. She had been waiting for an eternity, always standing there, never knowing what it was that she kept a vigilant eye out for.

Then, her curtains billowed towards her, reaching out with wispy arms as a cool breeze caressed her skin. Closing her eyes, she enjoyed the sensation.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw herself standing before her. She was no longer in her apartment, but in the living room of the brownstone house on Hyperion Avenue.

“Where is he?” she asked herself, looking around for any sign of him.

“I had to hide him,” came the response. Her twin’s voice was ethereal, echoing through the room. “They would have hurt him.”

“But that’s impossible,” she replied. “Nothing can hurt him.”

Instead of answering, her double seemed to float towards her, arm outreached. The cool press of a soft hand against the side of her face caused her eyes to drift close. She felt herself relax into a sort of meditative state. A calming warmth spread through her, starting in her chest and extended out towards her limbs. There was such a sense of safety and security, a feeling that no matter what the world brought, there would always be this to come to.

“What is this?” she asked, trying to draw as much of it in herself.

“This is what can destroy him, but also what can save him.”

Lois’ heart fluttered as she felt an intense need to always be with… someone sweep through her. “I know what this is,” she said as she jerked back, eyes shooting open. “I didn’t ask for this.”

A slow, knowing smile spread across the other’s face. “Neither did I.”

“He can destroy us too, you know.” Her pulse hammered in her chest as she took a step back.

“But it’s also what saved us.”

“I don’t want it!” Lois cried. “Why can’t you just show me where he is instead? Take this back!”

“It was always here,” the other woman said calmly. “Just as he is. But I can’t bring him to you.”

“Why not?” she demanded angrily. “You brought me… this! Why can’t you bring him here as well?”

“Stop being so afraid, Lois,” the woman replied. Then, slowly, her face changed to one of fear and panic. When she spoke, her voice changed to something deeper. “Don’t leave me. Not again.”

“What?”

“Lois, honey, please. You have tobreathe,” the voice was deep now, frantic. Both of the other woman’s hands found their way to Lois’ face as she pulled her closer. Her lips sealed over hers as breath was forced into her lungs, and then she was shoved out of the apartment and woke up with her lungs and throat burning.

Her first gasp of air felt like thousands of red-hot needles as the world slammed back into her.

She was being held, almost too tightly, and the last thing she remembered was a pale copy of Superman trying to kill her. Lois began to struggle, shoving at the thick wall of muscles and slippery fabric. “No – get away – don’t-”

“Lois, calm down, you’ll hurt yourself,” she heard above her before fingers began brushing against her cheek.

She kicked her legs, jerking her head away from the touch. Invulnerable or not, she would find some way to get away from him. “Stop it!” she tried to scream, but her voice came out cracked instead.

“Honey, it’s me!”

Lois stilled in her struggles, heart still pounding, as she looked up at the person who held her captive. “Clark?” she asked, but she knew that this was him. His eyes held none of the darkness that the other man’s had. “He tried – he was – and I couldn’t-”

“I know, I’m here now, I’m right here,” he murmured as he pulled her close, cradling her as he moved to get up. Her grip around his neck tightened, afraid that he was leaving. “I’m not leaving, but we have to get home.”

Clark effortlessly stood up with her in his arms, positioning her just right so that she was equally balanced before walking towards the window. On the way by the groaning double, who was trying to get to his feet, Clark let out a sharp violent kick, striking the fallen man in the abdomen. With the sound of all air escaping lungs, the man came up a few feet before crashing back into the floor.

At her look, he mumbled out with a slight sheepish shrug, “I didn’t want him to follow us.”

In the next move, they were airborne. With an involuntary gasp, Lois pulled herself closer to Clark.

As a small girl, she remembered wanting to be invisible. She recalled the game that she and Lucy used to play, Invisible or Fly, and had always chosen the first, always wanting to get closer to people’s secrets.

However, high above Metropolis, with the cool night air flowing over her and the man who held her, she came to the startling realization that she had been born to fly.

The curtains stirred around their bodies as Clark brought them in through the bedroom window. Carefully he carried her over to the bed before lowering her to the mattress. When he made to move away, Lois instinctively held on tighter. She didn’t want to face the darkness alone, unsure if that nightmarish ghoul would find her and finish what he had started.

“Don’t leave.” Lois wasn’t aware that she had spoken out loud until she felt him hesitate.

“I have to go make sure he didn’t follow us,” Clark started feebly, and she could feel the pulse in his neck begin to thrum beneath her fingers.

“I don’t think he could have,” she lied, desperate to get him to stay. She hated how weak she felt right then, how her sore throat made her voice come out more strained and raspy, making her sound more desperate than she cared to show. Of course, that didn’t explain her own racing heart or the trembling in her limbs. “Stay?”

-

Michael fumed slowly and quietly as he nudged a broken piece of dry board with the toe of his soft leather dress shoe. When he had gotten the call from a harassed-sounding Alex, he had been livid. His bedroom wall sported a hole that, compared to the war zone damage of his once pristine office suite, seemed like a nice wall decoration. His fist still ached.

“That bitch needs to pay,” Alex grumbled from his slouched position in one of the only chairs not in shambles. His brows furrowed deeply, and his lower lip was in danger of jutting out childishly. Michael had to remind himself in times like this that, despite the man’s adult appearances, he had only been an adult for little over three months.

“That bitch needs to stay alive for now,” he snapped irritably. He sighed, running a smooth hand across his stubbly chin. He hadn’t even had time to shave in his hurry to get here. “How do you think it would look if the prolific Ms Lane were to die just days after miraculously returning from the dead? You need to be more careful, Alex!”

Satisfied at the flinch his rebuke caused the younger man, Michael turned to face the shattered window. The moon still hung high in the night sky, scarring the inky black expanse with its bright fluorescent glow. He is still just a child in many ways, he reminded himself, trying to resist the urge to throttle the boy senseless.

“So, what do we do now?”

Michael smirked before turning to the youth. “We? We will do nothing. You will have to learn how to control your childish impulses.”

Fire danced in Alex’s eyes. Michael allowed himself a moment to be thankful that it had been anger only, and not the kind that burnt him to ash where he stood. Before he could go on – again – about Kryptonian instincts, the older man continued. “You will tail them. Stake them out. But you will not engage under any circumstance. Is that understood?”

“What is the point of that?” Alex demanded as he stood abruptly, causing the chair he had been sitting in to groan weakly before sputtering and dying in a heap of metal and leather upholstery.

“The point, my dear boy, is that we need to know what she knows. What she remembers. And if it turns out she does know more than she should, only then will we take… appropriate measures.”

“You want me to do recon?” Alex spat, disgusted. “That’s what your precious Tom is for.”

Michael stared at the boy, this young Kryptonian test-tube freak. “But you can be far enough away to not be detected and still hear and see everything. That, and you need a lesson in patience.”

-

Sunlight poured in through the open window and directly into Clark’s closed eyes. He tried to roll away from the offending light, but his movements were hampered by a familiar weight settled against his side. At his movements, Lois grumbled something about buttered toast before settling back into a deep sleep.

For a moment, falling back into the limbo between consciousness and dreams, he allowed himself to pretend that everything was okay, that she remembered. Today was just a rare lazy Saturday morning, one where nothing else existed but them. Not even the excitement of The Daily Planet could move them from their bed on days like today.

And then she coughed in her sleep, a harsh ragged sound that reminded him of what had happened the previous night, and the fantasy slipped through his fingers like fine grains of sand.

With a heavy sigh, Clark became fully awake as he stared up at the ceiling. The world was no longer peaceful, not even the cocoon that he and his wife would weave for themselves.

Carefully, not wanting to wake her sooner than necessary, he maneuvered himself out of the bed. With a quick spin, he was out of the black suit and into faded denim and cotton.

His ears pricked as he caught the sound of a pan clattering in the kitchen, sending him into instant alert.

Had the Superman imposter somehow followed them home?

This thought sent him through the house in less than a second, ready to face the intruder.

-

Anger seethed just below the surface as Alex flew carefully through the night air. He knew where he was going; he had been to the Lane-Kent household before. He would have followed them sooner, but he just had to call Michael to let him know about this new… development. That, and it had taken slightly longer than he would have liked to admit to recover from the fight.

He had always wondered what would happen when two invulnerable beings went against each other.

Landing on top of the building across the street, he concentrated on the brownstone in front of him. The window was open, the soft curtains swaying in the night breeze. He could clearly see Superman and that bitch reporter sleeping on the bed, and a part of Alex wondered just how her dearest husband would take the news that someone else was under his covers.

His breath caught in his throat as Superman stirred, thinking for a moment that somehow he had been discovered. He relaxed slightly as his genetic donor swung his legs over onto the floor, obviously still half asleep. Superman turned slightly, gently tucking Lois’ hair behind her ear before he stood up.

What happened next nearly forced Alex’s knees to give way beneath him in shock. One moment, Superman stood there giving a slight stretch and a yawn, and in the next, followed by a brief blur of motion, was Clark Kent.

He barely suppressed a bark of laughter at this revelation.

He now knew what it was that Lois Lane had fought so hard to protect.

He knew he should have stayed longer, but this revelation was just too good. And he wouldn’t tell Michael, not yet.

It’s nice to have an ace up your sleeve, Alex thought as he rocketed back to the skies once again.

-

The sight of his mother pushing enough eggs and bacon around in a skillet to feed a small army, and his father rustling through the newspaper while sipping a steaming cup of coffee at the breakfast table, greeted him as he rushed into the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks, his heart taking a moment to lurch back into his chest, as he watched the unexpected scene of domesticity before him.

“Mom, Dad? What are you…” Clark muttered dumbly as his body still thrummed with adrenaline.

“Oh, good morning, dear,” Martha said as she scraped portions of the breakfast onto three separate plates. “We could ask you the same question. Last we’d heard, you weren’t here,” she said pointedly as she took another plate out of the cupboard.

He sighed as he sat at the table, mumbling a thanks as his mother set his breakfast before him. He wasn’t very hungry though, and just picked at his eggs with his fork.

“Oh, honey, it will be okay,” Martha whispered as she rubbed slow circles across his back. He was surprised when the gesture, the same one she had used since he was a little boy, soothed away some of his anxiety. Not all of it, though.

“That’s just the problem, Mom. I’m not sure it will be,” he groused as he nibbled on a bite of eggs, more for her sake than his own.

“Yes they will,” she countered firmly. “Lois will get her memories back-”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he interrupted. When she looked down at him dubiously, he backtracked. “Well, yes, I am worried about that. But there’s… other things.”

“You know, son, you would feel better if you cut the crap and got straight to the point,” Jonathan said as he turned the page of his newspaper.

Clark blinked, taking a deep breath as he realized his father, while slightly more blunt than usual, was right.

-

Tired, sore, and cold. These were Lois’ first thoughts as she drifted from dreamland to semi-consciousness. She was pretty sure that there had been something – or someone, rather – occupying the other half of the bed not too long ago, chasing away the chills of the early morning.

Clark slept here last night. The thought didn’t terrify her as it should have. The cooling warmth of his body in the sheets didn’t make the walls close in around her as it should have. These abnormalities alone would have been almost enough to send her in a state of hysterics had she been more awake. Added to that the fact that she actually missed the fact that she didn’t wake up next to him, or the fact that there were those disgusting warm and fuzzy feelings sifting through her body at the thought of him, she should seriously want to hurl right about now.

But she didn’t. And it terrified her.

So, she did what was best to do in a situation that terrified her. She repressed. Rolling over, she buried her face into her pillow – well, it was his pillow actually, but she wasn’t about to let herself know that – and tried to get back to sleep.

As she drifted back to the edge of the sleeping world, her mind lazily strolled through the past few days. Things were hazy. She remembered arguing with Superman. Yelling at him for not being there. For not owning up now and doing what he was supposed to do about the killings. He had then yelled back, passionately, about why he couldn’t come back. He thought it had been her he had killed. And he couldn’t stand that because she was his…

The rest of the argument was hazy. He had left, she had screamed after him, but she couldn’t hear her own voice, even in her thoughts. And Clark had ended up missing. And then he had called her from… somewhere.

And Henderson came by. Finger prints belonging to Superman. Her adamant denial that he had killed anyone. She was so sure of the superhero.

Then there was the dream, right after Superman – who wasn’t really Superman – tried to kill her. It was hazy, but she knew, there was something she had to protect. Something to do with Clark. Something to do with Superman. But what?

Then there was nothing as she dreamed of flying over Metropolis, feeling safe for the first time in ages…

-

Clark sighed, frustrated as he continued to relate the past few days to his mother. “He looked just like me, mom! And he was trying to ki-” his voice cracked on the word, forcing him to swallow before he could continue in a low voice. “He was strangling her, and if I had gotten there any later…”

Martha gasped at that, her hand covering her mouth as her eyes widened. “Strangled? Is she alright?”

Clark stopped her when she seemed to start for the kitchen door. “She’s alright, just… bruised,” he spat in a venomous voice, the memory making him want to race out and track that bastard down and finish what they had started.

His foot hadn’t even left the ground when he heard a yawn followed by a scratchy cough just beyond the kitchen door. His head jerked around and watched as a sleepy Lois shuffled in, her hair a mess, and one palm rubbing lazily at her eye. She stumbled past him to the counter, where Martha handed her a large cup of coffee, which earned her an incoherent reply that could have been ‘thank you’ or ‘muffin.’ Maybe even nuclear launch codes.

As she drank tentatively from her mug, Clark couldn’t help but notice that, despite the harsh purple bruising against her pale skin and the obvious fact that she had been sleeping deeply not five minutes before, she was still easily the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He watched in awe as she seemed to come to life as the caffeine hit her system, her eyes slowly going from blurred drowsiness to alert clarity before his eyes.

“What are you guys doing here?” she asked as she seemed to notice his parents for the first time, somehow managing to slink gracefully into her seat even without all of her usual grace.

“Well dear, when you called us, we-”

“I called you?” Her brows scrunched together in confusion as she picked a piece of bacon from the plate Martha set before her. Clark felt his body freeze for a moment as he realized that something, he wasn’t sure what, wasn’t right.

“Yes, dear,” Martha said slowly. “You called us after you hung up with Clark.”

“Right,” Lois said slowly. Her eyes slowly turned to his, and he could see as she tried to remember. “We had… fought. Over… something?”

His mother, perceptive woman that she always was, ushered his father out of the room, calling over her shoulder as she went, “Well, dear, we’ll let you two talk things out.”

-end Part Nine