I'm heading out of town for a few days and so hurried to finish it.
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TOC ----------------------------------------
“Miss Lane?” a soft woman’s voice called out from the doorway.
Lois blinked against the bright light as she tried to get her bearings – she was in the hospital. The imposter was dead.
“It was just a bad dream,” Lois assured the nurse.
The nurse came in and turned up the lights in Lois’s room. Behind her Lois could see a uniformed officer standing guard in the hallway. With him was…
“Lucy!”
Lucy Lane hurried into the room and gave her sister a gentle hug. “I got here as soon as I could,” she explained. “Daddy’s here too. He’s in consultation with Doctor Prescott, the guy who’s going to take care of your hand.”
“But how…?” Lois asked. The last she’d heard Doctor Sam Lane had been in Nairobi.
“The military located him at his clinic and flew him back here,” Lucy explained. “He wanted me to tell you that even if… you know… the new prosthetics are almost as good as the real thing.”
“Miss Lane, it’s time,” the nurse said.
“Lucy, you’ll be there when I wake up?” Lois asked.
“Sure thing, sis.”
-o-o-o-
Lois wasn’t sure if she was dreaming. She was in a place of bright lights and annoying beeps and hisses. She saw her father leaning over her, worry written across his broad face.
“It’s going to be fine,” he assured her before fading away.
When Lois finally opened her eyes and actually looked around she was back in her hospital room. Lucy was dozing in the chair and her father was inspecting the wrappings on her hand. They extended up past her elbow, completely immobilizing her arm below the shoulder. Except the wrappings were too short – her hand was gone.
“Hi Daddy,” Lois managed to croak out. “I guess you couldn’t…”
“The ER doctor was overly optimistic when he said he thought it could be saved,” Sam said. “Sorry, Princess. The bones were completely pulverized. It should have been taken off last night. You were lucky none of it made it into your bloodstream.”
“Is there any good news?” Lois asked.
“Prescott installed the fittings for a prosthetic so you won’t have to go through more surgery. The new hand won’t be as good as the old one, but you’ll get used to it.”
“Any thing else?”
“The news is full of reports of your heroism,” Lucy said. “I’m getting calls from publishers and producers wanting your story.”
“What are you telling them?” Lois asked.
“To wait until you’ve recovered,” Lucy said. “Then you can decide what you want to do.”
“Has anyone heard from Perry?”
“He called this morning. He wanted you to know you could take as much time as you needed, but the Daily Planet has first dibs on the story. He’d like you to call it in as soon as you’re up to it,” Lucy said. “I have the feeling he means yesterday.”
“Did he say anything about Clark?” Lois asked.
“I thought Clark was dead,” Sam said.
“That’s what was announced to keep Superman from going after him and finishing the job,” Lois explained.
Lucy shook her head. “Perry didn’t say anything about Clark.”
Lois turned her head away from them. She didn’t want them to see her grief – she had hoped to hear that Clark had just been hiding out, staying out of harm’s way. But if Perry hadn’t said anything about him… Maybe Clark really was dead and Perry and Bill Henderson hadn’t wanted to burden her with the knowledge until the imposter was dealt with.
Lucy seemed to understand. “You need to rest but I’ll be back later.”
Lois simply nodded. She heard the door close behind them. Then she cried herself to sleep.
-o-o-o-
Lois was alone when she woke up. Despite working one-handed she managed to climb out of bed and got to the adjoining rest room to relieve herself. When she came out the nurse was waiting.
“Doctor Lane warned us you’d be up and about as soon as you could manage it,” she said with a chuckle. She threw a robe over Lois’s shoulders. “The sooner we get you moving the sooner you can get out of here. Are you up for a walk down to the patients’ lounge?”
Lois nodded and the nurse guided her past the guard and down the hallway. The police officer fell into step behind them and the people in the corridor nodded and smiled at her. A few reached out to touch her sleeve, pulling back when the officer glowered at them for coming too close. “Thank you,” they murmured to her before moving on.
At the double door to the lounge Lois stopped. “Do you know if there’s a patient here named Clark Kent?”
“No, I don’t think so, but I could check,” the nurse said.
“Would you?” Lois said.
The nurse nodded and pushed the door open for her.
The room beyond was bright and cheerful, with large windows overlooking West River. Along one wall was a counter with coffee urns, pastries and a bowl of fruit. Lois grabbed a cup and managed to fix herself a cup of coffee. It was harder than she’d thought it would be with just one hand but she figured she needed to learn.
She looked around the room. A woman with graying hair was seated by the windows. With her was a dark-haired man in a wheelchair. Their backs were to Lois.
Then the woman moved and Lois felt an almost electric shock go through her.
“Martha?”
The woman’s face lit up with recognition. “Lois…” Then her eyes filled with tears. “We heard what that monster did to you… I’m so sorry.”
Lois swallowed hard. If Clark’s mother was here then the dark haired man…
“Clark?” she murmured.
The wheelchair moved and the man’s face came into view.
Clark.
He was thinner than she remembered. The brown eyes behind the glasses had a haunted look – a look she was sure she would see if she looked into a mirror. She stepped closer and sank into a chair to face him.
“Nobody would tell me anything,” she said simply. “I didn’t know if you were alive or…” To her horror her eyes filled with tears.
Clark cupped her cheek with one hand and brushed away the tears with his thumb. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. I should have…”
“Clark, there’s nothing you could have done,” she said. “How can you expect to win a fight with Superman, even if he wasn’t the real thing?”
“I just… If I had just realized what he was, if I’d fought a little harder maybe none of this would have happened. You wouldn’t have lost a hand and I… I wouldn’t be just half a…”
“Clark,” Martha warned. “We’ve been over this. Just because he put you in a wheelchair doesn’t mean he made you less of a person.”
“Mom, what good am I? I can’t help out on the farm. How am I supposed to work like this, see sources, run down leads, when I can barely take care of myself?”
“I thought a writer was supposed to work with his mind instead of his feet?” Martha said. It sounded to Lois like it was an old argument.
“The way I see it, we’re both lucky to be alive,” Lois said. “How bad was it?”
“Bad enough,” Clark said. “He shattered two vertebrae in my lower back. The spinal cord was crushed. I’m paralyzed from the waist down and without a major medical breakthrough on regenerating nerve tissue, I’ll never walk again.” There was a bitterness in his voice that didn’t go with the upbeat Clark that she knew from before.
“What about the other stuff?” she asked softly.
“What other stuff?”
“Clark, you faced down Superman,” she reminded him. “You fought back and you lived. No ordinary Kansas farm boy could do that.”
He looked away from her, staring out the wide window at the glistening river. “Considering everything, would it be so bad if I stayed an ordinary guy?”
“Clark Kent,” she intoned solemnly, “since when have you ever been an ordinary guy?”
-o-o-o-
The Daily Planet ran the exclusive on the death of Superman. The by-line read ‘by Lois Lane and Clark Kent’. Daily Planet sales broke records – everyone wanted to read about how the reporter helped take down a god.
But the stress of the previous weeks didn’t vanish with the waving of a magic wand. Lois still had nightmares and they became worse after Clark moved back to Smallville – the stress of Metropolis wasn’t making his own recovery any easier and although he hadn’t said anything, Lois suspected he was hurting from the fact that he couldn’t help people the way he’d been able to before.
Superman was dead. He could never return to Metropolis.
A week after the story broke Lois got up the courage to walk into Perry’s office to tell him what was going on with her. “I need to take some time off,” she finally said. “I don’t know how long.”
“Hon, you know you’ll have a place at the Planet so long as I’m here,” he assured her.
“Thanks, Perry.”
“Just let me know where you end up,” Perry told her. “And let Clark know we’re all still thinking about him.”
She just stared at him for a moment. “How did you know…?”
“That you were heading for Kansas?” Perry asked. “I didn’t become editor here because I can yodel.” His expression turned solemn. “Have a good life, Lois. You deserve it. You both do.”
EpilogueLois watched the holovid with rapt attention. ‘Superman Returns’ the ticker across the bottom read. The news outlets were gushing with excitement – even the first baby born on Mars hadn’t created quite as much furor. On the vid Superman smiled and waved to the people of the world.
“Looks like he’s off to a good start,” Clark Kent said from his place beside her on the sofa.
“Not quite as spectacular a first day as the original had,” Lois Lane reminded her husband of twenty-five years. “Not much can beat lifting an entire space habitat into orbit.”
“But admit it, it’s nice to have Superman in the skies again,” he said with a grin.
“Okay, I’ll admit it. But invulnerable or not, I’m still going to worry about him. Especially since there may still be people around who didn’t get the memo that he’s not one of the bad guys,” she said.
“I think that’s a mother’s prerogative,” Clark told her.
It had taken years for Lois Lane and Clark Kent to convince the world that the homicidal creature that Lois had helped take down hadn’t been Superman at all but a copy created by a megalomaniacal mobster whose creation had turned on him. The police and military had been easy to convince compared to the general public.
It had taken years for Metropolis to recover from the events of those few weeks and return to her former glory.
Clark Kent and Lois Lane never did fully recover. While prosthetics had improved to the point that her artificial hand was almost like a natural one, it was still artificial. And while neural regeneration had given Clark back the use of his legs, the scarring interfered with his bio-electric field – his invulnerability was gone, as was his ability to fly.
It had taken a long time for him to forgive himself for all the people who had died because Superman was gone. There were still times, even after all these years, that Lois would find his side of their bed cold. He would be watching the disasters on the news or staring out the Kent farmhouse window into the distance. Sometimes she would watch him unbeknownst as he tried to will himself into the air only to fail time after time. She hid her own tears at his pain.
Having children helped. They had been told they probably couldn’t have any but Christopher arrived in time for their third anniversary. Laura appeared just after her father’s thirty-second birthday.
“The uniform looks good on him,” Lois said. “I think it’s going to be okay.” She chuckled. “And I can’t wait until they see his kid sister.”
A/N: I didn't want extend this out into Lois and Clark coming to terms with their disabilities - especially since Stopquitdont did such a great job in
Unexplained Events If someone else wants to take up the challenge of Lois with a fake hand and Clark in a wheelchair making a life outside of Metropolis, feel free.
