From Part Three:
“Clark,” his father began, “I wish we could tell you that everything will work out. But we can't. All we *can* say is a lot of people you care about are still in danger. And Metropolis needs Superman.”
He was right. Clark sighed. “Yeah, well... I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them. All I have to go on is a ticket stub that Dillinger dropped.”
Jonathan’s eyes widened in excitement. “Clark, don't you know? That's how they caught him sixty years ago. He was coming out of a theatre. Dillinger's a real movie buff.”
Suddenly a look of hope flared in Clark’s eyes.
*.*.*.
Part Four
*.*.*.
Lois grimaced as another one of Professor Hamilton’s sneezes condensed against her skin.
“Instead of DNA you should have found a cure for allergies,” she sniped at him, but her words did little to abate the flow of constant sneezes beside her. She rolled her eyes. Was she really this useless without Clark’s help? Oh, she had found the gangsters easily enough, and now she was stuck in a hole with this man who was allergic to everything as cement slowly covered them. In fact it was now racing up their chests towards their faces.
Just a few feet away lay her beeper which, adding insult to injury, was constantly beeping away. This was not the way she wanted to die. However, the thought of calling Superman for help never entered her mind. As much as she wasn’t looking forward to an ending encased in cement, she didn’t really feel much like living either. At least this way, she’d be reunited with Clark.
God, she really was pathetic without him, wasn’t she?
The cement had made it up to her chin before she felt herself being pulled out of the pit, along with Hamilton. Then she noticed that Superman was there, breaking the ropes that the gangsters had tied them up with.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Lois rubbed her arms. “Just a little stiff,” was her emotionless response.
“I'd take you home but there's something I have to do first,” Superman told her before he swiftly flew off.
A memory came back to Lois, Capone talking about the Planet.
“Superman! Wait!” she called but it was too late, he was gone. She felt herself begin to break down again, not caring that Hamilton was there to witness her weakness. “I can't believe this is happening. First they take Clark away from me, and now if Capone has his way, I'll never see Perry or Jimmy again.”
Hamilton seemed a little uncomfortable with her sudden burst of emotion and also looked a little guilty for her loss. “I want you to know, I'm really sorry about your partner.”
Lois made no reply. He eyes caught a glimpse of movement in the darkness. She focused in on it, and it took the form of a man who was walking towards them. A very familiar shape.
“Clark?” she whispered to herself in disbelief, then as the figure emerging from the shadows took on more and more the form of her partner, she let go of her emotions and ran into his arms, sobbing, hugging and kissing him.
“Clark! Clark! I can't believe it! You're alive! You're here. How's that possible?”
“Well, Superman found me just after they dumped my body. He froze me with his super-breath to preserve my tissue, then took me to Professor Hamilton's lab and followed the procedures in his manuscript...”
Hamilton seemed to get excited at Clark’s explanation, “Of course! Freezing the tissue means no permanent damage.”
“So it's as if I never died.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh Clark, I don't care if he used Crazy Glue. You're back!” She hugged him again.
“Mr. Kent, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. Thank God some good finally came of my work.” The Professor seemed almost as happy to see Clark as Lois was.
The reason Lois had been crying the last time suddenly came back to her and she grabbed Clark’s arm importantly. “Clark!... The Planet! We've got to warn them! Capone and his gang are going to kill everyone at the party tonight!”
“You two go. I've got something very important I have to do.” Hamilton rushed towards his lab, leaving the reporters alone.
Lois started walking off, but Clark seemed reluctant to follow her. “Lois, I'll meet you there. I just have to...”
“Don't even think about it.” She gripped his arm, determined to keep a hold of him, “I'm not letting you out of my sight. C'mon.”
*.*.*.
Clark paused as he exited the Planet after all the excitement of Capone’s gang gate crashing and being stopped by Superman with the help of the rest of the Planet staff. A few cops were still hanging around, both out and inside the building; the blue flashing lights caught his eye as he followed Lois outside.
This was it, the life he’d thought he’d lost. He’d got it back. And it wasn’t just him that was happy about it: Lois, Jimmy, Perry, even the guy investigating his murder was happy to see him alive again.
He felt a brief pang of guilt as he thought about his past. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a position where he’d been forced to leave the life he’d built for himself. It was the first time he’d gone back. He’d always assumed that he’d never made much of an impression on people; that they’d get on with their lives after a very short mourning period. He got the impression that it would have been a long time before Lois, Jimmy and Perry had forgotten about him, if ever. But then, the only place he had lived longer than Metropolis was Smallville, so maybe he hadn’t left a trail of sorrow behind him in his travels. Still...
“Clark?”
“Huh?”
Lois smiled at him, “Get in the car.”
He followed her advice. Sure, he’d just come back from the dead, but he really didn’t care if that was the reason. Lois was talking to him again, more than civilly. In fact, he couldn’t think of any previous time when Lois had seemed so sociable. He liked it.
“Do you wanna go straight home or do want to pop by my apartment first?”
Clark looked quizzically at Lois as she drove away from the Planet.
She glanced at him and caught his eye. “To see Lucy.”
He sighed. So much for things getting back to normal.
He looked back at her then he worked it out. She wasn’t thinking about Lucy at all, she just wasn’t ready to lose him again so soon. Truth be told, Clark wasn’t looking forward to saying goodbye to her either. He wasn’t sure if it was because he’d been convinced that he’d completely lost her with his ‘death’, or just because he knew that once she’d got over his resurrection she’d go back to the cold and spiky woman who hated him because her sister had forced him into almost dating her.
“I suppose I could.” He yawned and a sudden wave of tiredness overtook him. “If I don’t fall asleep first.”
“I’ll wake you up,” Lois assured him.
*.*.*.
“Lucy!” Lois called as she entered the apartment, Clark following in her wake. “Lucy, you’ll never believe what’s happened!”
Clark lowered his glasses and scanned through the apartment when Lucy made no response. It was empty.
“It doesn’t look like she’s here,” he told her.
Lois made a strange noise that Clark could only interpret as disapproval. “It could be afternoon before she returns. I cannot believe how well she dealt with your death. It was like she didn’t even care.”
“People deal with things differently, Lois.”
“There isn’t much point in you staying. I might as well drive you home.”
She had actually picked up her keys and turned back to the door. Clark grabbed her arm and stopped her in her tracks. “No, it’s OK. I can hang around a bit longer and wait. I don’t mind.”
The simple touch from her best friend brought tears to her eyes. “I hate her.”
“Who?”
“Lucy.”
Clark smiled at her. “Come on, you don’t mean that.”
“Sure I do.”
“Why?”
She gazed up at him, and almost involuntarily she reached up and claimed his lips for hers. Clark moved his arms so that he held her body close to his as he caught her top lip and nibbled gently on it.
Lois pressed herself into him, pushing him backwards towards her bedroom. All coherent thought left the pair as they gave in to the passion that had been simmering beneath the surface of their relationship since the moment they met.
*.*.*.
“Lois?”
The door hadn’t been locked properly and there was an odd array of lights on in the apartment. There were articles of clothing discarded on the floor. Worry gripped Lucy. Surely Lois hadn’t gone and picked up some guy to use to get over her grief for Clark? She’d hate herself if she had. This couldn’t be good.
Lucy plucked up her courage and walked over to her sister’s bedroom door, pushing it open with one decisive shove. “Lois?”
“Lucy!” her sister gasped in a bizarre mixture of horror and ecstasy.
As Lucy’s eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, she recognised the man who had been pleasuring her sister so much. Her throat went dry.
“Um, I’ll just go and... go.” Lucy gently shut the door as she returned to the living room in a state of shock.
*.*.*.
Lois pushed Clark away as she hunted for her robe, desperate to do something to alleviate her feelings of guilt.
“Lois--”
“Don’t,” she hissed.
“We need to talk,” Clark insisted.
“I need to talk to Lucy first. She’s my sister.”
“OK,” Clark replied, his voice small. Lois finally looked over at him. He was sitting on her bed wearing only his glasses with his pants in his hands.
He looked up at her, sorrow written across his flushed face. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Lois pulled securely on the belt that held her robe together. She nodded. “OK.”
She left the room and was confronted by Lucy pacing across the carpet. She didn’t look shocked anymore, she looked angry. Her pacing stopped when she noticed Lois watching her.
“Lucy.”
“What?”
Lois shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. I didn’t mean to.”
“Do you know what hurts?” Lucy’s gaze flickered to include Clark as he finally followed Lois out of the bedroom. “That you didn’t tell me. Clark and I were never anything. I was only dating him to try and get you to realise that you were in love with him. And ‘cause he was nice to me, a genuine nice guy. Like you keep telling me to date. All you needed to do, Lois, was tell me that you liked Clark as more than a friend. Didn’t you know that? I like him but I don’t love him. I don’t like that he slept with my sister behind my back but not because I’m in love with him, but because you should have told me. And it hurts.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” Lois snapped. “Lucy, I didn’t even know what I felt for Clark until he died.”
“He didn’t die!”
“Lucy, I was there. I saw him get shot. There was no way he didn’t die. Dr. Hamilton--”
Lucy’s gaze had turned ice cold. “I can’t believe you slept with my sister without telling her that you were Superman!”
“Clark’s not--” Lois turned to look at Clark and her voice caught in her throat. His eyes were practically popping out of his head as he stared at Lucy in horror. “Oh my God.”
“H..how?” His voice was practically a whisper.
“I followed you. I wanted to know what those excuses were really about. I can’t believe Lois didn’t. I mean, I could never keep up with you but I normally saw Superman fly off from somewhere nearby and you’d completely vanished.”
“You didn’t die?” Lois hugged the robe tighter around her body.
Clark moved to touch her, but she practically ran to her sister’s side. “Get out.”
“Please, let me explain,” he begged.
“You let me think you’d died. Then you took advantage of my grief and joy at having you alive again to get me into bed.”
Clark looked horrified. “No, it wasn’t like that. You can’t think that I’d--”
“I thought I told you to leave,” Lois snapped, unwilling to look at him. “Use the door or the window, I don’t care, just get out.”
Lois didn’t care that most of his clothes were still scattered about the apartment, she wanted him out. Luckily he seemed to notice this. His shirt happened to be draped across the back of her couch, so he grabbed it and wordlessly left the apartment.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have kicked him out,” Lucy said as he left. “You need to talk. I think we all need to talk.”
Lois sniffed and looked coldly at her sister. “I’m going to bed. I’m not kicking you out tonight, that wouldn’t be fair. But I expect you to find somewhere else to stay from now on. I can’t be around you.”
“Hey, what did *I* do?!” Lucy called after her but Lois didn’t even falter in her steps that took her back to her room, alone.
*.*.*.
Lucy had tried to speak to her the next morning. Lois had steadfastly ignored her. That was until she was about to shut the door as she left for work. Then she simply reminded her sister that she expected to find her gone when she came home.
And that was the easy part of the fallout from the night before. Now, as Lois stood in the elevator, waiting for the doors to open onto the newsroom, now was the hard part.
Any hope that Clark had chosen to fly away to some far corner of the world to escape her wrath vanished as her eyes automatically fell on his desk. Where he was sitting. Working. Among a rainforest of cards and flowers. Lois didn’t even know that they made cards with the message ‘Congratulations on Coming Back from the Dead’ emblazoned across them, but the Planet’s employees must have found the one store that stocked them.
She strode directly over to his desk. Her face never faulted from her hard, steely stare, even when his hopeful, chocolate eyes gazed up at her with intense longing.
“You’re my colleague,” was her opening statement, “and there’s nothing I can do to change that. I’m not going to quit my job over you, you’re not worth it. But that’s all you are and that’s all I’ll treat you as. I will talk to you as little as I need to in order to get my work done. You will accept that and not expect, hope or pray for more. That is the price of my silence.”
He turned his gaze away, sadly. “So, if I tell everyone the truth of why I’m alive, you’ll be my friend again?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “I’ll never tell, you should know that. Apparently you didn’t, otherwise I’m sure you would have told me. The revelation of your secret wouldn’t change anything in our relationship, but it would change your life irrevocably.”
“I know. And I also know that you’d never--”
“Good. Then there’s no more reason for us to talk.”
Clark bit down so hard on his lip that it actually hurt as he watched her walk away. He should have argued the point, then she would have stayed and spoken to him. Maybe she would have listened. He sighed sadly. No, she wouldn’t. She wasn’t ready for that yet.
Two weeks, he suddenly decided. If things with Lois hadn’t improved at all in two weeks time, he’d leave. He’d only been subjected to this for less than two minutes and he couldn’t stand it anymore. If Lois truly meant that she now saw him as nothing more than Ralph, he had no desire to work at the Daily Planet anymore.
*.*.*.
“I told you I didn’t want to see you again,” Lois’ voice said.
Clark looked up from his work and saw Lucy, who appeared to be on a path to his desk, turn to look at her sister.
“I didn’t come to see you. I came to see Clark. Besides,” Lucy’s voice grew louder, “I don’t know what your problem is with me. *I’m* the one who came home to find my sister in bed with my boyfriend.”
There was no doubt in Clark’s mind that Lucy’s statement had been heard by the entire newsroom. He could have been blind and deaf and he’d have known. For a split second his eyes met Lois’ over the deafening silence as they mirror each other’s fear and horror at what Lucy had just said. The tension between Lois and Clark had been obvious to everyone, and he had heard more than a few people speculate on what the problem was this time. Rumours were one thing, this was something else.
“Sisters! Way to go Kent!” Ralph’s callous voice carried across the silent void that should have been normal background noise.
“Hey,” Jimmy’s voice piped up in his friend’s defence. “The guy’s just come back from the dead. Give him a break.”
This little exchange seemed to break up the atmosphere enough for people to start talking amongst themselves again, although Clark could tell that there was little chance of anyone concentrating on anything else while the three of them were still in the room together. He stood up and strode over to Lucy, unmasked anger clear on his face.
“Lucy, why don’t we discuss this somewhere a little more private?” He grabbed her arm and pulled her into an empty conference room.
He shut the door and blinds, while Lucy rubbed her arm in shock. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her but he hadn’t spared his strength in bringing her into the room. He had practically carried her by her arm. Happy that they were as invisible as they were going to come, he turned his attention back to her.
“Well?”
“I... I came to speak to you.”
“I heard. What about?”
Lucy, who had been leaning against the table, collapsed into a chair. “Everything. I want you to know that your secret’s safe with me, first off.”
Clark laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. “Lucy, you’ve just blurted out to all our colleagues that Lois and I slept together. Last night you showed no hesitation in telling my secret to Lois. Why on earth should I trust that my secret’s safe with you?”
“That was a mistake, what happened just now. I just got annoyed with Lois taking this out on me, it’s not my fault. And I told Lois because I thought she had a right to know.”
Clark sighed as he sat down and morphed back into the easygoing, yet utterly miserable Clark he had been before Lucy’s outburst.
“You know, Lucy, I have to trust you with my secret, because you know it. There’s nothing that can be done on that point.” He buried his head in his hands briefly before looking up again. “And you’re right. Lois had a right to know. I should have told her a long time ago but I didn’t because I was afraid. Of this.” He gestured to the door of the newsroom.
Lucy leant out and touched his arm. “She’ll forgive you.”
He shook his head. “No. She’ll forgive *you*. Blood is thicker than water. She’ll never forgive me for lying to her. You know, I should feel some validation in being proved right but I can’t. I’ve only had to endure one morning of this and I can’t go on any more. I knew that she’d be angry when she finally found out, I expected her to lash out at me, but I don’t understand this cold Lois. She’s so detached. I know I’ve lost her for good. I love her so much Lucy, and it’s killing me.”
To Be Continued...
