Here you go, folks!
I promised I'd post this by Friday. In my timezone, it's still Friday -- albeit just barely. And I really have only my terrific BR HappyGirl to thank for that, because she did a really quick editing job on this one. So another gold star goes to HappyGirl.
I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.
***
“You have bilateral optic nerve atrophy, Mr. Superman.” Doctor Bannergee declares, after having poked and prodded me for the better part of an hour. It hasn’t exactly been what I’d call a walk in the park, but at least I didn’t have to see all the instruments before he used them on me. Thank God for small favors.
The diagnosis, however, takes me by surprise. Damage to my optic nerve?
“I’m Superman, Doctor. I’m supposed to be invulnerable. Under normal circumstances, something like this doesn’t happen to me.”
Doctor Bannergee sighs. “Well, given your condition, then, I think we can safely conclude that the present circumstances are not exactly normal.”
“No, they’re not.” I tell him, willing myself to act calm and composed, even though I am anything but. “That still doesn’t answer my question, though: how could this have happened to me?”
Doctor Bannergee sighs again. “You have to understand, Mr. Superman, this is all very new territory for me.”
I just nod. He’s told me that at least twice before, and it doesn’t really help.
“One of the most common causes of sudden-onset blindness in humans is methanol poisoning. Now, I don’t suppose that you have reason to assume you would be susceptible to that. But maybe what we are dealing with here is some other form of chemical poisoning.”
“Kryptonite.”
It takes me a second to realize I just said that out loud. It doesn’t really matter at this point, though. If I’m going to expect this man to help me recover, the least I can do for him is be honest about the one weakness I do have in the physical realm.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Kryptonite.” I repeat. “It’s a kind of crystal that came with me when I…”
I halt in mid-sentence when I realize that I’m about to contradict the public version of the truth about me. I’m perfectly willing to expound on my vulnerabilities to this man if it will help him at all to figure out what to do about my blindness. To tell him that I actually arrived here as a baby in 1966, however… That might make it just a tad too easy for him to connect the dots. Especially since he’s met my parents now.
“I have every reason to believe it is a remnant of my destroyed home world.”
“And do you think you may have been exposed to this… Kryptonite… recently?”
I frown. “I’m not sure. Usually when I am exposed to Kryptonite, it hurts, and I temporarily loose all my powers. This time, I didn’t really feel anything… or nothing painful, in any case. And I only lost my eyesight — which in and of itself, isn’t really a superpower.”
Surprisingly, only when Doctor Bannergee chooses not to reply to that immediately does it occur to me for the first time just how much communication actually takes place beyond the realm of the spoken word. I try to envision the expression on his face, the way he’s holding himself, the position of his hands, his movements around the room.
I can’t.
He’s not you. He’s not one of my parents. This is not a man whose every habit, every nervous tic, every embarrassing quirk I am intimately familiar with. There is no way I can imagine his normal behavior in a moment like this.
For a fraction of a second, I wish that whoever or whatever rendered me blind had at least had the decency to grant me telepathy in return. I dismiss that idea almost as soon as it comes to me, though. It’s bad enough that I can hear every sound in a thirty-mile radius. I try not to imagine what it would be like to hear every *thought* in a thirty-mile radius, too. But I strongly suspect it wouldn’t be too far from the truth to call that pure, unadulterated torture.
Then Doctor Bannergee speaks again, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“You told me you and Miss Lane were led to believe the blinding took place through exposure to infrared light…”
I nod. “Yes. That’s what Doctor Leit told us it was. I remember a purplish light. He said he had merely added some visible light in order to be able to guide it into my eyes, but now I wonder…”
“You think it might actually have been a Kryptonite beam?”
That’s my mother. I almost jump when I’m reminded of her presence, and I fleetingly wonder if I should have sent her and my dad out of the room before this conversation. Doctor Bannergee might find it odd that I’m willing to speak so freely in their presence. But it’s too late for second-guessing, so I just nod.
“It would have to have been an infinitesimal amount, or else I would have known, but… Doctor Bannergee, is it possible to make a green light purple by adding a differently colored light source to it?”
“Well…” I think I can hear him scratch his head. I’m guessing that means no. “I suppose it is possible to mask a weak source of green light, using a much stronger white light source filtered through some kind of purple-colored transparent material. I don’t understand why someone would want to do that, though.”
“Because it would make it easier to mislead Lois!” I blurt out.
“Excuse me?”
“Doctor Leit knew that Doctor Faraday had used his device on her before he died, so he must also have known that Lois now has the potential to understand the properties of light in a way that most mere mortals don’t! Just in case that knowledge were to reveal itself to her at an inopportune moment for him, he had to come up with an explanation that even Doctor Faraday would have taken at face value — and one that Lois would believe had an antidote!”
“Oh? And why is that?” I can hear the confusion in Doctor Bannergee’s voice.
“Because he needed blackmail material to get her to give up the location of the knowledge transference device…”
It all makes perfect sense to me now. Not to Doctor Bannergee, though.
“I still don’t understand, Mr. Superman. This substance you call Kryptonite is something I had never even heard of before today. I doubt that doctor Faraday knew anything about it. So why the hiding game?”
I sigh. “Doctor Faraday may not have known about Kryptonite, but Lois does. If she had known the cause of my blindness was Kryptonite exposure, he wouldn’t have been able to blackmail her at all, because she is fully aware of the fact that the effects of Kryptonite exposure usually wear off on their own after a while.”
There is a pause again, and I try not to think of it as ominous.
“I’m afraid we may not be so lucky this time, Mr. Superman,” says Doctor Bannergee eventually.
“I’m not surprised to hear you say that, Doctor. If this was truly caused by Kryptonite exposure, both the exposure time and the amount itself must have been almost negligible. If not, I would instantly have known there was Kryptonite nearby that night. And yet, I’ve been blind for more than two days now.”
“Well…” Doctor Bannergee replies, sounding very uneasy to me, which I know can’t be a good thing. “As far as I can tell, your eyes are anatomically identical to those of a human being, Mr. Superman.”
I just nod, sensing there is more to come. “Yes. And?”
“And the nerve cells in a human eye simply lack the capacity to regenerate at all, not to mention regenerate at super speed. I’m afraid the damage done might very well be permanent.”
***
“Hey, Lois. Where’s that cute partner of yours?”
Bobby Bigmouth puts a hand on my left shoulder, and only then do I realize that he’s in the backseat of my jeep. Maybe he’s been there a while already; I never heard him get in. Oh, I just hate when he does that! But in this instant, I have to admit that I’m glad it’s not the first time he’s pulled that particular trick on me, or I would have probably jumped through the roof of my car by now. Instead, I just swallow hard, ignoring his comment about Clark, even though I’ve been asking myself the same question since last night.
“Geez, Bobby, one of these days, you’re going to have to explain to me how you keep managing to pull that one off.”
He just smirks at me, by way of the rearview mirror. “What, and say goodbye to all the bragging rights I get for being the one man in the business who knows how to scare the hell out of Mad Dog Lane once in a while? Truly sorry, doll, but I don’t think so.”
I turn to look at him, folding my face into what I hope looks like a condescending smile. “You think I’m scared of you, Bobby? Dream on.”
His smirk just widens. “Sure, little girl. You just keep repeating that to yourself. Somehow I don’t think I’m here just because you wanted to remind yourself how not scared of me you are, though. So what’s the deal, Lane? What’s this all about?”
“A guy named Harold P. Leit.” I tell him. For some reason, his eyes light up.
“And here I thought you already had as inside a scoop as inside can get on that one.” he says, wagging his eyebrows at me. I ignore him.
“Fine…” he relents with a shrug. “You brought payment?”
I grab the paper bag off my dashboard and hand it to him over my shoulder. Then I look him in the eye through my rearview mirror.
“Lunatic of the mad scientist variety.” I tell him. “Works with a block of dumb muscle called Munch, who allegedly does all his dirty work.”
“You mean he did.” Bobby cuts in, munching happily on a chocolate-covered doughnut that I was very much looking forward to eating myself some time soon. ”Until both of them got themselves inexplicably killed right on your doorstep last night.”
I have to consciously suppress the urge to raise an eyebrow at that little tidbit. Word travels fast in Metropolis.
For Bobby’s benefit, I shrug. “It was unexpected, I guess, but I don’t know that I’d call it inexplicable. They weren’t exactly choir boys.”
Bobby grins, while he digs through the paper bag once again and fishes out another chocolate-covered doughnut. “Oh, yes, that’s right, I almost forgot. You do have a bit of a history with the good Doctor Leit and his goon, don’t you? First they break into your apartment, then they kidnap you right in front of a grocery store in broad daylight. Next thing we know, you’re back to your good old nosey reporter routine, and they are both on a slab in the morgue. Word on the street is you were the last one to see them alive. Juicy.”
“Oh it is, is it? Tell me Bobby, what else is the word on the street? Harold P. Leit was Doctor Faraday’s personal benefactor; that much I’ve known for a while. So I did some digging into the guy’s finances. All that money he’s been giving to Faraday? It came from some obscure research fund based on the Cayman Islands. So far, I haven’t been able to trace it back to anyone — or any legitimate research organization, for that matter. So he was what? Playing stand-in for a self-declared visionary bent on world domination who, for his own tragic lack of the requisite brains, had no choice but to hire someone else’s? Or is he a straw man for Intergang, or some other organized crime syndicate? My money is on the latter. So what is it going to be?”
Bobby holds up his hands. “Hey, hey. Listen, Lois; I don’t know anything about that. And even if I did, do you really think I would be giving it to you for two doughnuts and a chicken sandwich?”
I shrug at him. “I was in a hurry. You’re eating my lunch. So am I going to get anything in return?”
“Like I said, Lois,” he replies around a mouthful of my chicken sandwich. “I don’t know anything about that Leit guy that you don’t. I’d watch my back if I were you, though. Get yourself a good, conscience-free lawyer and put him on speed dial.”
I look at him skeptically. “And why would I want to do that?”
He shrugs. “I hear that Inspector Ferreira dude doesn’t much like you. You’re number one on his list of suspects right now.”
With that, he opens the backdoor of my jeep and he gets out.
“Bobby, wait!” I yell after him. To my surprise, he stops in his tracks and turns, and then sticks his head back into the car.
“Yes, Madame?”
I roll my eyes. “You mean for the murders on Leit and his goon?”
“No, Einstein, I mean for the gruesome hit-and-run of that nice Mrs. Connelly’s cat. What do you think?”
I frown. “Who told you about it?”
He smiles. “I never reveal my sources, Lois. You of all people should understand that.”
I look at him incredulously. “Is that really all I’m going to get from you today? The advice to get myself a good lawyer?”
“No, it’s not,” he says. “I also ate your lunch. And believe you me, I did you a big favor there. You need to change delis ASAP. Do that, and I might have something better for you next time.”
With that, he swings the door shut behind him, and he’s gone. I can’t help but groan in frustration.
***
My mother is desperate.
That’s a first, from my perspective. I’ve never, ever known her to be desperate about anything before — and that only heightens my admiration for the amazing woman that is Martha Kent — but now she is. I can hear it in the way her voice almost breaks when she quietly thanks Doctor Bannergee at my front door and then tells him goodbye before showing him out. I can hear it in her ragged breathing later, when she’s busily making tea for the three of us in my kitchen and she’s talking to my father in hushed tones. I can even hear it in the soft, restrained voice that she uses with me when she brings me my cup of Oolong and asks me hoarsely if I want a cookie with it. I turn her down and she doesn’t try to argue, which is another bad sign.
We talk quietly over our teacups, my parents and I, and I know from the way that they mostly just listen and nod and agree with whatever I say that they don’t really know what to do. But then, that’s OK, because neither do I. I tell them about my plans anyway, and I know they will argue tomorrow, or maybe next week, but right now they just don’t have the energy. For a while we just sit, and I feel for my mother who silently cries and my father who silently broods, and I search for the right things to say, but I fail.
I want very badly to be here for her; be here for them, because both of them have always been there for me. But right now, I just don’t have it in me. I feel like a blow-up toy with a hole in it. I am completely empty.
I am, therefore, also ridiculously grateful to my dad when he moves to Mom’s side and sits by her, whispering sweet, reassuring nothings to her. It’s almost as if he’s deliberately relieving me of the responsibility to put up a front for Mom’s benefit. He’s got that part covered; and if it turns out that he doesn’t… well, she’ll be there with him.
Which is exactly why it also tears me apart to know how they’re sitting there together on my couch; to know that they’ve found each other, and no matter what happens, they will never be alone again. It makes me think of you. It makes me wish you were here, but it also makes me wish I could stop wishing for what I can’t have. It doesn’t really help, that sweet and beautiful and sad and heartbreaking image of you in my mind where I hold you in my arms and you hold me in yours, and maybe we both cry a little bit and smile a little bit through our tears when neither of us wants to cry anymore, and then you tell me that we will get through this together. And maybe there’s even a sweet, slow, bewildering kiss in there somewhere and maybe I know, in that moment, that I am complete. But every time I think of you, of that image I have where you’re holding me and I’m holding you and we both know it’s right, the realization that my life in Metropolis is over hits me like a ton of bricks.
There is no place for me here as Clark Kent, the investigative reporter who has become your partner-in-crime. There is no place on Earth for a superhero with ruined eyes. There may a place in your life for me as a friend, but what I really want from you is so much more than that. What I really want from you is something I can never ask you for again.
I pick up the phone to call the Daily Planet for the second time today and when it’s Jimmy on the other end, I’m relieved. I give him a message to relay to Perry and tell him goodbye, after promising him there will be something in the mail from me shortly. I hang up before he can start protesting.
When I’m done, I pull out the phone plug, and I cry.
***
When I get back to the Planet with a still-empty stomach, thanks to Bobby Bigmouth, most of the police are gone, but the tape is still there so I can’t get to my desk. There’s still no sign of Clark anywhere. I wonder if Perry has heard anything, and when I enter his office to ask, he looks up and frowns at me.
“Ah, Lois, just the person I was looking for.”
I’m a little confused as I stop in front of his desk, and he doesn’t immediately say anything. This is not plain-bad-mood Perry, or let-me-tan-your-hide Perry, or get-on-with-the-story Perry. This is a man I have seldom seen in my time at the Planet. When he heaves a deep sigh and then asks me to sit, I realize that something is greatly troubling him.
“Chief, is everything all right?” I ask, true concern welling up in me.
“Lois,” he starts quietly “are you and Clark in a fight over that Mayson thing or something? Because if you are, please tell me now.”
I shake my head, my confusion growing. “No, Chief, I… We… Well, yeah, so maybe I was a little ticked off at him because I thought he’d run off to the mountains with a woman he barely knows, but that was… I mean, we’re not actually *fighting* over it or anything. I mean, how could we? I haven’t even *seen* the man since Thursday!”
A familiar mixture of worry and annoyance is finding its way back to the forefront of my mind as I think about you, and the trouble you’re in, and how your best friend somehow can’t find it in his heart to be there for you now that you need him the most. But one look at Perry stops me short.
“Chief, have you talked to Clark recently?”
Perry nods. “Talked to him this morning, when he called in sick. He told me he’d been under the weather all weekend, that he thought he’d caught a bug or something.”
Oh, well, that could explain his absence in the past few days. Except that it doesn’t, because Clark’s parents have been to his place in that time, and he wasn’t there. Was he?
“OK… so what did you tell him, when he called?”
“Told him to hurry up sleeping it off, and that I’d be expecting some serious front page material from him for tomorrow’s evening edition.”
“Oh. So did you want me to come in here so you could tell me that Clark called in sick this morning, and he’ll be back tomorrow?”
Somehow, I doubt that, but I guess it’s worth a shot.
“Well, not exactly…”
I frown. “Go on, Chief. What’s the big deal?”
He sighs, and pulls a slip of paper out from under one of the stacks on his desk. He shoves it towards me.
“This afternoon when I came back from a management meeting, I found this on my desk. Jimmy took a message from Clark in which he resigned from the Daily Planet, effective immediately.”
I just stare at it. How could he do that? Leave the Planet, break up the team, leave *me*, and not even *try* to tell me anything about it?
“If you have any idea what in the *Sam Hill* is going on here, Lois, consider your input very much appreciated.”
I look at the Chief, and back at the paper, and back at the Chief. “I, uh…”
“I take it you didn’t see this coming any more than I did, then,” Perry concludes grimly, and I can only shake my head.
“You’re sure he hasn’t said anything to you? Hinted about a new job? Or that he was even looking for one? Was he planning on relocating somewhere? Anything?”
I shake my head. “No. Nothing like that, Chief, I… I thought working at the Daily Planet was exactly what Clark wanted. At least, he always told me so.”
I frown, as I think back to the past weekend. “His parents were here, though. When they found out he wasn’t home, they came straight to my place for some reason. I always found that a little odd. Maybe they know something that we don’t.”
“Yes, well… when I tried to call Clark earlier, I got the busy signal. Is there any way you could get in touch with his parents?”
I shrug. “I guess I could try, if you want me to…”
“Consider it an order, Lois. I think a little outside intervention is in order here.”
***
An explanation. If nothing else, I owe you that much. If I’m going to disappear from your life, I should have the guts to tell you why.
I’m sure that if I tried, I could come up with an at least marginally plausible story that wouldn’t require me to tell you I’m blind; and if I chose my words right, you might even believe me. I’m a reporter, after all; my job security depends on the number of people I manage to captivate with the stories I tell on a daily basis — or at least it used to. Now, I’m not even sure I will ever have a job again.
But I’ve decided that you deserve better than that. You are not some nameless, faceless Daily Planet reader. You are my best friend. If you happen to also be the most tenacious and strong-willed and daring and stubborn investigative reporter I’ve ever met, well… at least you’ve proven beyond reproach that there are some lines even you won’t cross for a story. You deserve nothing less than to finally hear the truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
I have considered many options – some even more cowardly than others. I’ve thought about sending you a voice recording at the Planet; I’ve seriously considered writing you a letter from Smallville, or wherever it is that I’m going to be going next, once I’m safely out of your reach. I even briefly contemplated the possibility of guilt-tripping someone else – my mother, most likely – into playing messenger for me. Not that I could ever have convinced Martha Kent, of all people, to do anything as wrong-headed as that; but believing I had the option was kind of comforting while it lasted.
In the end, though, all any one of those half-baked attempts at long overdue honesty would have done was make this a tiny bit easier on me. For you, it would have been just one more slap in the face; one more drop in the bucket full of tiny betrayals I’ve been foisting on you since I came here. Every time I left you hanging with another exceptionally lame excuse; every time I consciously tried to steer you away from finding out who I really am; every time, I could see it in your eyes – the confusion. The hurt. What was so bad that I should feel the need to lie to you about it time and time again? Why didn’t I trust you enough to just spill the beans and take it from there? Weren’t we supposed to be best friends?
Well, yes Lois. We were. And we still are. I hope we will be for a long time to come. And that’s why I’m sitting here right now, on the steps in front of your apartment building, wearing sunglasses with my long overcoat, and steeling myself for what I’m sure is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life while I wait for you to come home from the Planet.
I’m nervous enough that this might as well be a repeat performance of my original job interview at the Planet, and I know I have reason to be. You’re Lois Lane – my hard-edged partner-in-crime on some of the biggest triumphs of investigative journalism since Woodward and Bernstein snatched the inside scoop on Watergate. You just don’t *do* easy; especially not when it comes to this kind of revelation. You’re going to have a truckload of pertinent, jarring, insightful questions, like you always do. And I’m not sure I’m going to have adequate answers to any of them.
But I know I have to do this regardless. So I remind myself to breathe deeply, I rake a hand through my hair, I polish the tops of my shoes on the back of the charcoal dress pants that my mother picked out for me, and finally, when I think I can hear your jeep pulling up to the curb, I stand up.
I was right. I can hear the door of a car being swung shut, followed by the beep of the central locking mechanism as you push the button on your key, and then, finally, your heartbeat coming my way. You stop when you’re mere inches away from me.
“Clark?” you ask, and your voice conveys an incredible mixture of emotions that makes my heart lurch for you. Anger. Concern. Confusion. Dread. And is that a touch of cautious optimism I hear?
“Hi, Lois.” I greet you calmly, because I know you’re going to need that calm to keep you grounded through the next thirty minutes or so.
“Oh my God, Clark, what are you doing here? Do you know I’ve been trying to call you for the last three hours or so? Perry has, too, and we tried your folks because we didn’t know where you’d been the last three days or why you’d suddenly decided to resign, which, by the way, I have a thing or two to say to you about, but anyway, we thought your parents might know something we didn’t and then nobody picked up the phone so I figured they must still be on their way home, and…”
I hear you screech to a halt, probably when you realize I’m not going to be the one to stop you in mid-babble this time. Even though I can’t see your face, I still feel your eyes going up and down my body, and then back up to the glasses I’m wearing.
“Clark, why are you wearing sunglasses this time of year?”
I sigh. I still haven’t decided what would be the best way to go about this, but I know I can’t go up the stairs and into your apartment with you without giving myself away. So I take one last deep breath, and then I remove the glasses.
“Because I’m blind, Lois.”
I can hear your heart literally skip a beat while I quickly put the glasses back on, in case anyone else decided to take a closer look at me.
Silence stretches out between us. It feels to me like an eternity goes by. In reality, it’s probably closer to two minutes.
“Clark, are you…?
You put your hand on my chest, fumbling with one of the buttons on my shirt. For a fraction of a second, I’m confused, but then it dawns on me what you’re trying to do. I smile.
“I left my usual underwear at home today, Lois. There’s not much use wearing it now that I’m… well, you know.”
Then your hand is on my face, pushing the one stubborn lock on my forehead out of the way.
“Oh my God, Clark, you’re…”
I cut you off. “Lois, can we take this conversation inside, please?”
“Eh… Yes. Yes, of course we can… Eh, do you need a hand?”
Another car chooses that moment to pull up by the curb. You turn around and gasp. A rain of heavy footsteps is coming our way. “Clark, it’s the police. They’re coming right at us!” you say, and ten seconds later, the gravelly voice of a man who has seen far too much in his life confirms what you just told me.
“Lois Joanne Elizabeth Lane?”
“Yes…” you answer, dazedly.
“You are under arrest for the murders of Doctor Harold P. Leit and Mr. Thaddeus Munch. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?”
I hear you mumble a shocked, incoherent reply in the affirmative. Then the cuffs are slapped onto your wrists and you’re being dragged away from me. I realize they must be taking you to the station for further questioning. Or maybe you’re going straight to prison.
That’s when I know that running away is no longer an option. If there was ever a time for me to stand up for truth and justice, this is it.
