Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Imbroglio (10/?)

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I wanted to get this out before I left tomorrow for a few days. I have an appointment at the VA and we're gonna see some relatives while out that way

I had originally intended this part to have more scenes, but dang, can Clark get verbose :p Lois ain't so quiet herself, either. So, I'll cover the other parts in part eleven

Thanks to carolm, for her kick-heiny Betary, and also for helping me through a rather tough spot that had me wanting to bang my head against the wall before all was said and done. XD

I would add more, but sadly my brain is still in slurpee mode after work, so I apologize if I'm forgetting anything D:

***

Part Ten

-

Henderson had arrived at the prison the previous evening for his meeting with Ms. Carlin, only to find the prison in an uproar. Someone had attacked the woman in her cell, but before the assailant could finish the job, he had been caught by the security guard doing her nightly rounds. Henderson had then spent the better part of his evening interrogating the man, but Berry had kept his mouth shut.

Now, the next day, he found himself in the center of the crime scene, trying to figure out if the now comatose woman had left anything behind, something that would be useful. She had seemed all too eager to meet with him, and he was certain she had an ulterior motive.

The room was sparse, with furnishings that made his old Army barracks look more hospitable. He was sure that if he lay down on what passed for a bed, there would be that one spring that jabbed uncomfortably into his lower back. In the Army, the spring was there to build character. In prison, it was undoubtedly a form of passive aggressive torture.

Of course, character building and torture had always seemed to go hand in hand to him.

Of course, he had a roommate in his old barracks. PFC Dyer had not been a very clean person, which had driven the young SPC Henderson insane. He had also been a nosy bastard, and had been caught on more than one occasion snooping through Bill’s things. So when the lock had broken on his footlocker, Henderson had taken to hiding his letters from Caroline, his high school sweetheart, between his copies of War and Peace and Sun Tzao’s The Art of War. Last he had checked, she had ended up running away with some rich playboy type, who had dumped her ass for a more recent model shortly thereafter. And if he remembered correctly, that rich playboy ended up knocking boots with another rich playboy…

His mental trip down memory lane came to an abrupt halt and backtracked a few steps. If he was a prisoner, and he wanted to keep some semblance of privacy in the otherwise public cell, he would use whatever form of hiding he could.

Walking over to the desk, he didn’t see any copies of War and Peace or The Art of War, but there was a hint of white poking out between two battered hard bound copies of generic pulp fiction published at least twenty years ago.

He snapped a pair of gloves on before pulling the envelope from between the books and flipped it over. His eyebrows rose as he realized who the letter was addressed to.

As he left the cell, envelope tucked safely in the inside pocket of his long coat, Henderson grumbled that he may as well just move into the Kent house.

-

Lois stared at Clark for a moment after his parents left the kitchen, giving the two some privacy. There was something she was forgetting, the events of the past couple days fuzzy, but the more she tried to think about it, the more her head ached.

“Lois, ho- are you okay?” His voice was concerned as he gently grasped her by the shoulders. The action triggered something that Superman had done before, and Clark, but she shook away the errant thought.

“I’m fine, I think. Things are just a bit… fuzzy, I think, from yesterday.” What had happened? She had argued with Superman, accusing him of not being there. Then he was… gone. Between her yelling at him and his leaving, her memory was blurry, like looking through a frost-hazed window pane. Clark had been gone, for some reason. She remembered a phone call. They had fought, right? Then she had called Martha, and not long after Henderson showed up, she had gone to investigate Biotech on her own. Perhaps not the brightest idea she’d had, but then she had been short on back-up.

Then, Superman, who wasn’t Superman, was trying to kill her, and the next thing she knew Superman, who really was Superman this time, was calling her back from a really weird dream where she had kissed herself. And now, because of this dream that involved an unusual form of self-discovery, she was suddenly finding herself saddled with all these… emotions that made her want to be all… wifely. She was determined to do her darnedest to ignore this last one.

The thought of Superman – both the original and the twisted doppelganger – made her realize that Clark might not know everything that had happened. She remembered asking him to stay with her the night before, so he knew something about what happened, but she couldn’t be sure how much Superman had let him in on.

“Clark, how much did Superman fill you in on last night?”

Clark stared at her in disbelieving shock. “Lois, what are you talking about?”

There was no way that Clark wouldn’t know about Superman bringing her home last night. Clark had been there, right? She specifically remembered asking Clark to stay with her last night.

“You know, with the doppelganger? The choking?” she pointedly jabbed her finger towards her neck. “He did fill you in, right? Otherwise, I would remember you asking me about this.”

“Yeah, Lois,” he responded in a peculiarly strangled voice. “I know what happened. I was there, remember?”

“No, you weren’t,” she insisted, her brain starting to pound. “Superman was there, he flew you home, and then I asked you to stay.”

“Lois-”

“Look, can you just… get me an ibuprofen?” she asked with a sigh.

“An ibuprofen?”

“Yeah. My head is suddenly killing me.” She needed some pain relievers, and a bit more to eat than the few bites of Martha’s breakfast she had managed to get in before this erupted into a full-fledged migraine.

The buzzer at the front door sounded, and as Clark was finding her ibuprofen, she went to see who it was, one hand pressed firmly against her temple. She greeted Bill Henderson with a brief nod as she moved over to allow him in. With all the comings and goings that he did to the Kent house, she was about ready to set him up a cot in the den.

“Lane, you look like hell,” he greeted with his usual bluntness.

“Good morning to you, too,” she grumbled, dropping her hand down her side wearily.

She winced when she heard his slight intake of breath. She had somehow forgotten about the nasty purple bruising on her neck, which was odd since it constantly felt as though thousands of fire ants were feasting on her trachea.

“Damn, Lane, what did you get yourself into?” There was a hint of concern in his voice, and the unusual display of emotion caused Lois to feel suddenly self conscious.

She cleared her throat, which had suddenly become dry. “Remember how I told you that there was no way Superman was responsible for those murders?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I was right.”

“You saw the perp?” Gone was the concern, replaced instead by the excitement of the investigation. She could see the sudden shift in his eyes as he became an inspector before her. “What did he look like? How did you survive? Was his intent to kill you?”

“Yeah, I saw him. And, the thing is, he looks just like Superman.”

“How do you know it wasn’t?” he demanded.

“Because Superman’s the one who saved me,” she shot back.

They were interrupted as Clark came up beside her, a beautiful vision of ibuprofen, water, and Michelangelo’s David come to life. She could feel her headache dissipating already as she greedily snatched both from his hands, gobbling the pills and gulping the water in quick succession.

Henderson gave Clark a curt nod before continuing. “So you’re saying that this man, who looks like Superman, but isn’t, attacked you, and that you were then saved by the real Superman who no one has seen in months?”

“That about sums it up, yeah,” she nodded after a brief moment of thinking.

“Lane, I’m a supporter of the big guy, but even I’m a bit skeptical at this point,” Henderson sighed. She was about to object, to proclaim his innocence, when he held up a hand to cut her off. “Look, he’s been missing for three months. He took your death pretty hard, a lot harder than he should have. A lot harder than a man would for a woman who was only a friend. Now, I know that that nonsense about you and Superman a while back was just a bunch of hearsay that a two-bit rag wrote to sell papers, but… Lois, no one would be surprised if he turned vigilante after you died. No one.”

Lois didn’t know how to respond to that. She cast a glance towards Clark, to see if he would agree or disagree with the inspector, but was surprised to see that he looked… guilty?

“Anyway, if you want Superman to start proving his innocence, he may want to start with a press conference.” Henderson pulled out sheaf of paper from his coat pocket, abruptly changing the topic. “As shocking as it is, I didn’t come here to debate the morality of Superman. I actually came by because something was left for you.” He held out the folded photocopies to Lois.

“For me?” She asked as she took it, eyeing the unfamiliar fancy script on the crisp white paper. “Who’s it from?”

“Arianna Carlin was found unconscious in her cell. Someone attacked her last night. No one knows how, or why. But, she seemed pretty eager to get a hold of you. Of course, the originals were kept for evidence, but I was able to make copies.”
She only half listened as she scanned through the neat photocopied print. The letter was brief, almost clinical, and she could read the barely restrained disdain through the lines. It was obvious that Arianna still held no love for Lois, but it was even more obvious that she believed the old saying ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’

“What does it say?” Clark asked from right beside her, suddenly so close that she could feel the heat of his skin through her shirt.

“It says that she knows what’s going on, and to meet her at my earliest convenience. She also gave me an address and some series of random numbers to check out so that I know that she is serious,” she muttered softly, folding the letter quickly and slipping it in her pocket before taking a step back. “I assume they’re passwords of some kind, so I’ll check them out, probably later on today or tomorrow, and the address looks like it’s in that district down town full of abandoned warehouses, so it’s not like it would be too difficult to get into.”

She was babbling, she knew, but he was just too close.

“Lois, you don’t know that this isn’t a trap,” Clark told her. “It could be dangerous.”

“She doesn’t seem the type to allow herself to be put in a coma for a trap,” she snapped. “Besides, I have to do something. I can’t just sit on the sideline because something is dangerous.”

“It’s not like it’s stopped you before, Lane,” Henderson muttered. Lois didn’t miss the glare that Clark shot the inspector.

“Just… promise you won’t go anywhere with this unless you tell me?”

The pleading in his eyes caused her to cave slightly. “Fine. But you won’t stop me.”

She would tell him. He probably just wouldn’t be awake to hear her.

-

Taking Henderson’s advice, Superman saw himself staring into the faces of the press. Once, he saw these men and women as his peers, but now it seemed as though thirty years had passed instead of three months since he had been on the other side of the podium. For a second, he couldn’t remember what questions to expect, or what curveballs he should avoid, but as he looked towards the back of the crowd he saw the familiar faces of those that worked at the Planet. Jimmy was there taking photographs of the press conference. Even Perry had seemingly decided to dust off his old typewriter and stood next to the young photographer, ready to get the scoop.

And next to the editor stood Lois, who had managed to convince Perry to let her come, to dip her toes in the water once again, so to speak. While she wasn’t there on an official capacity, he could see her eager expression as her pencil poised over the narrow journalist pad, hungry for the story.

She glanced up and caught his eye, giving him a tentative smile, which he returned before she quickly looked back down. She was nervous, and he was afraid he knew why. Though she had tried to brush it off in front of him earlier, while he was still ‘Clark,’ he could tell that Henderson’s earlier visit had left her shaken.

There was nothing he could do about it at the moment. There was a camera flash from his left, and he was reminded where he was, and why he was there.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he began. It felt like a safe way to start, even if a little generic. “As you know, there has been a series of brutal murders that have occurred over the past several weeks. I am here to tell you that I am not the one behind them. There was a murder scene where my prints were found, but I had reached there too late to apprehend the guilty party. The reason I had not gone to the police is a simple one. I believed that, until I could prove it wasn't me doing those things, it was better to keep my return as quiet as possible so as to not warn the imposter. Was this right? Perhaps not... And for that, I apologize. However, I feel that it is for everyone’s best interest, not just my own, that I continue to lay low until I feel that the threat from the imposter is gone.

“I also would like to mention that I have run across this vigilante,” he tried to smother the wry grin as he echoed Henderson’s earlier expression for himself. “I regret to say that this man has been attempting to impersonate me. I do not know the whole reason for his being here, or where he came from. While his intentions may seem noble, to carry on where I have left off, his methods of doing so are immoral. I do not condone his actions, and ask everyone to remember to be safe.”

Finished with his predetermined speech, he rocked back slightly on booted heals, waiting for the onslaught of questions he knew would come. The press, as always, never failed to disappoint him in this expectation. Of course, the first question that popped out from the crowd did take him rather by surprise.

“Superman, what’s with the costume change?” There was a twitter of laughter that rippled through the crowd.

For a brief moment he faltered as the society reporter form the Planet who had replaced Cat Grant waited patiently for his answer. “As I said, there is a man attempting to impersonate me. He seems to also favor my taste in Suits. So, for the time being, I am disassociating myself from my former image to avoid confusion.” That seemed an appropriate answer. Truth was, he wasn’t sure why his subconscious had selected this particular outfit when he had gone on his nightly rescue missions.

Because we weren’t Superman then, a voice whispered from deep within his mind. And, we were in mourning. Seemed appropriate at the time.

Clark shook his head briefly, not having time to question why he was answering his own question – and just how crazy that made him – when another question popped out from the crowd. This time, it wasn’t a light question that could be laughed off by the gathered media.

“Does your sudden ‘sabbatical’ have anything to do with the supposed death of Lois Lane? Does your also-sudden revival have anything to do with her return? And, how does it feel knowing that you are not responsible for her death, after all?”

The air seemed to escape from the open area, and for a moment he could not speak. Apparently, neither could anyone else, because the atmosphere took on an electrifying silence. Fortunately, whether by accident or with a keen eye and knowing that he needed rescue, he heard Lois speak up from the crowd. “Hey, Nick, I am standing right here, you know.”

The hush was broken, and reporters broke out with another, albeit more nervous, round of laughter. He caught Lois’ eye briefly, and felt a slow rush of strength at the small but warm smile she gave him. Giving her a brief nod of thanks, he turned back to face the crowd.

“Ms Lane’s safety is a great relief, not just to me, but to everyone, I am sure. However, there is still a murder that is still under investigation. As for my departure..." He hesitated, unable to lie wholly but unable to divulge the true nature of where he'd been. "I'm sure you all are aware that my very existence proves that life exists outside of this Solar System. My presence was required elsewhere, and that need coincided with the supposed death of Ms. Lane. I am certain that you will understand and respect my inability to tell you precisely where I was during the last several months. Now if you will excuse me, I must go.”

Instead of flying off, he stepped down from the podium, ignoring the questions that erupted from behind him as he strode for the alley. He didn’t realize until then how much he missed the cape. Leaving without the yards of fabric flowing behind him left him feeling exposed. He had intended to stay longer, but the question that Nick had blurted out with crass bluntness had taken him by surprise, much to his embarrassment.

How could I have let him get to me? He demanded of himself as he leaned against the wall, pressing fingers against the bridge of his nose as he resisted the impulse to kick a nearby dumpster; he didn’t really want to explain to NASA how a dumpster suddenly found itself in orbit, or why.

Flying into orbit seemed like a good idea right now, really. After all, no one could hear him scream out his frustrations in space.

He was about to fly off, in fact, one foot had been off the ground, when his name sounded from the alley’s entryway behind him. Had it not been Lois, he would have acted as though he hadn’t heard. But, as always, she tethered him securely to the ground, whether he wanted to be or not.

Clark turned towards her, wishing it hadn’t been the name of the superhero she had grounded him with. “Yes, Lois?”

She hesitated for a moment, and the look in her eye made him wish he had responded with anything other than resignation in his voice.

“I just wanted to say thank you. For saving me last night. And that I’m sorry.”

“Lois, as much as I hate you being in danger, you don’t have to apologize for my saving you.”

She huffed out a breath of laughter, embarrassed, with a wide nervous grin he hadn’t seen on her since their first year together. “No, I don’t mean for that. I meant I’m sorry about the other day.” Her hands wrung nervously in front of her and she stepped towards him, slowly coming closer. Her smile was gone, and her eyes were wide with seriousness. “I don’t blame you. I never did. I was just… frustrated over so many things and I took it out on you. That’s what I’m sorry for.”

She should blame him. She should pound her fists against him and call him every name in the book. It may not have been her, but the thing that kept him from falling into a peaceful sleep at night when she wasn’t there beside him, was that it could have been her. “Trust me, Lois. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“But I do,” she argued irritably. An aggravated rush of air left her lungs. “Look, you’re my friend, right? And I’m yours. And I know that things aren’t exactly okay at the moment, but I should have known that you would have done whatever you could have. Just like I knew it couldn’t have been you who committed those murders. You’re not the murdering type, and you are a good friend. I know that much about you, at least.”

“But Lois, I have killed. It may not have been you, but someone is dead.” And then there had been the others he had killed, when he had woken up and realized what he had done. While he still felt to this day very little guilt over the fact that they were dead, he did feel a keen sense of remorse that he had been the one to take their lives.

“Oh would you stop it, Mr. Mopey?” That, and a sharp thwack against his chest, something else he hadn’t felt since their first year together, although at that time it had been directed towards Clark and never Superman, broke him out of his reverie. “I’m apologizing here. Either you forgive me, or you don’t.”

“Lois,” he urged, trying to make her see reason.

“Superman,” she mimicked, crossing her arms over her chest much in the same way he had subconsciously done. Her eyebrows rose as she looked at him demandingly.

He realized then why he felt so off-kilter all of a sudden. During their first year, she had gazed adoringly at Superman while her partner took to the shadows. Now, the way she was acting around him was very reminiscent of the way she had been around Clark, back when she didn’t know what to make of him, yet knew he was a friend. For some reason, this small bit of understanding lifted some of the weight from his chest, and he suddenly found himself smiling.

“Fine, Lois, even though there’s nothing to forgive, I forgive you. Happy now?”

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, grinning her wide Cheshire grin the way she had when she would get her way with Clark during those early days. He suddenly felt nostalgic. “So, now that that’s done, I need to get home. I want to type up this story while it’s still fresh in my mind. What do you think of this headline? ‘Metropolis Star’s Nick Masen Makes Ass of Self’?”

“Sounds great,” he admitted with a light chuckle. “But I doubt your editor would go along with it. Would you like a lift home?”

She blinked, puzzled. “You brought a car?”

“No Lois, I don’t need a car. Remember?”

“Oh, right,” she remembered abashedly. Then without warning, she leapt up and he caught her. Pointing skyward, she demanded, “Take me home, flyboy!”

-end Part Ten