From last time:
“And you can get a terrorism financing charge to stick?”
“The U.S. Attorney certainly can. The bombing was a deliberate attack against innocent civilians for the purpose of intimidation and of course, to kill Superman and Ultrawoman. They might not be governmental actors, but the message was pretty clear – the Triads were telling the government not to mess with them and they decided to use innocent civilians as their medium of communication. The money to fund the attack, to buy the Kryptonite, I’m betting dollars to donuts it passed through Macau at some point, even if it was just a correspondent bank somewhere. I’ll call the Assistant U.S. Attorney. If we coordinate with Macau, we can have Jiang indicted on terrorism charges here in New Troy. We’ll defer prosecution, assuming he’s indicted and convicted on charges of terrorism financing in Macau.”
“Macau gets the glory; the FBI does most of the heavy lifting.”
“So long as Jiang spends the rest of his life in prison I couldn’t care less whether it’s in Macau, Metropolis, or on Mars,” Brewer replied with a grin.
“Dave, has anyone ever told you you’re way too competent to be a government employee?”
“Lois, has anyone ever told you you’re way too useful to be a reporter?” he retorted.
********
New Stuff:
“You know, I was happier before I knew what a spider web chart was,” she complained as she turned the page sideways in an attempt to make more sense of it. All of the shell companies and intermediary banks with their complicated relationships of transactions – money flowing in and out at mind numbing intervals and in obscene amounts – were making her head hurt. Lois heard her husband chuckle softly.
He dropped down next to her on the couch and picked up a carton of lo mein noodles. “Yeah, well, we need to learn how to figure them out if we’re actually going to get the charges brought against Jiang.”
“Isn’t this why the feds have forensic accountants?” she asked between bites of steamed dumplings.
“Trust me, with the amount of data they’re looking at, they need the help.”
“So they asked for Superman’s assistance, of course.”
“And he brought it to his good friends, Lois Lane and Clark Kent.” He deftly grabbed a piece of shrimp with his chopsticks and offered it to her.
He really did know where all the best food in the world was she thought with a dreamy smile. “I really like you flying all over the world to bring me whatever I want. Even if I could do it for myself.”
“Guess I’m just making up for lost opportunities,” he said wistfully as he placed the carton back on the coffee table and leaned back against the couch. She hadn’t meant the comment to be an indictment and she felt awful that he took it that way. Clark draped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. He caressed her cheek. “Hey, I’m really happy that I get to be here with you, to be a part of this. Of course I regret missing out on this stuff when you were pregnant with Jon, but I know I can’t dwell on that. What we have is amazing. And just because I missed the beginning doesn’t mean I can’t do my best to be a good father to him now.”
“You are an amazing father,” she replied. “And Jon and well…junior here, are the luckiest little kids on the planet.”
He pulled a face. “Come on, you have to do better than that,” he said flatly.
“Sally?”
He shook his head.
“Susie?”
Again, he signaled his disapproval with a dismissive shake of his head.
“Flopsy? Mopsy? Moe?”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Clark chided.
“All right, Mr. World’s Best Dad, you pick a name,” she retorted.
Her husband frowned, apparently deep in thought. “Elizabeth,” he suggested at last.
It was a perfectly fine name. Nothing ridiculous or overly trendy. “Not bad,” she replied with a shrug.
“But not doing it for you, huh?” he asked. “Okay, how about Katherine? No awful teasing nicknames. Keeps the family tradition of alliteration alive,” he said with a wink.
“Is that important to you?” she asked, trying to gauge how this negotiation between them was going to proceed over the next five months.
He shook his head with a smile. “No. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the sound of Katherine Kent, though.”
“Or Katie?” she offered.
“Exactly, the name works for a little girl, or an all grown up and sophisticated ‘Kate.’”
“Hmm…” she let the thought roll around in her mind as she leaned closer to her husband, letting her head rest on his chest. She felt him press a kiss against her hair.
“Was it tough for you, picking out Jon’s name?” he asked softly.
“Only because I really didn’t want to do it…it was something we were supposed to do together. I didn’t want to pick something you wouldn’t have been happy with. So I waited as long as I could. Naming him after your father was always a possibility, but I didn’t settle on it until after he was born. Now, I couldn’t imagine calling him anything else. Would you have picked a different name for him?”
“Wow, huh. I don’t think I’ve ever even really thought about it. He’s always been ‘Jon’ to me,” Clark replied. “I’m not sure I would have picked his middle name. Naming him after myself seems a bit egotistical. But Clark is also Mom’s maiden name, so it’s kind of like he’s named after her, too. But the fact that you wanted to give him my name means a lot to me.”
“Nah, I was naming him after your mother, too. ‘Clark’ just seemed like a better option than calling him ‘Martha,’” she teased.
“Hey!” Taking advantage of the fact that his arms were already wrapped around her, he started tickling her sides.
Lois couldn’t stop laughing. Between gasps for breath she shouted, “no fair.” How was it that her invulnerable body was ticklish anyway?
Finally, he relented. She swatted him playfully on the chest as she repositioned herself to get comfortable, leaning against his shoulder. “Okay, your turn. And no more characters from Peter Cottontail.”
Lois hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should give voice to the idea that had been swirling in her mind since they’d learned the baby was a girl. How would he take it? Would he be touched? Would he find the thought too painful? “What about Keira?” she asked after a long moment.
She looked up to see the various expressions flit across his face, like he himself wasn’t sure what to make of it. She could tell he wasn’t sold on the idea, but there was a softness in his eyes. “You mean after my sister,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah,” she replied softly. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he took in a deep breath and she wished she could just take it back.
“Can I think about it?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied. “I mean, we’ve got another five months, longer even. We could just call her ‘Baby Girl Kent’ until we come up with something,” she joked.
“No,” he said firmly. “It has to be ‘Baby Girl Lane Kent.’ She has to have your name as her middle name.”
“Oh yeah?” Lois replied with a half smile.
“Yeah. I’m putting my foot down on this,” he said with mock sternness. “Is it okay if I put my foot down on this?” he asked teasingly.
“Sure, I mean, since I unilaterally picked Jon’s whole name, I guess you can pick her middle name.”
“Good,” he said definitively as he tilted her chin up with one crooked finger and kissed her tenderly.
********
His body curled around Lois’s as they lay down in bed. His hand came to rest against the swell of her abdomen, still fairly small, but definitely noticeable. The way her body was changing, the slow, but steady progression as their daughter grew bigger, amazed him. He stroked her soft, smooth skin, and closed his eyes, once again imagining what it would be like to hold his daughter, to be there when she was born.
A sudden fluttering under his hand caused his heart to stop. He felt Lois place her hand on top of his. “Did you feel that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he managed, his mouth dry. “She kicked! She’s moving!” The sensation was incredibly faint to him, and he wasn’t sure how much he really felt the flutter, as opposed to picking up the sound of it. He doubted he would have been able to feel it if he were an ordinary person. Just days ago, they were wondering if their baby was going to be all right. Now, she’d decided to make her presence known ever so clearly to Mom and Dad.
Lois looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“Completely amazing,” he agreed. “Has she been moving a lot?” he asked.
“This is the first time I’ve felt it, too. It’s a little earlier than it was with Jon,” she explained as she turned around to face him. He caressed her cheek and kissed her lips softly.
She smiled at him. “This is exactly how I imagined it would be for us, getting to experience all of this together, seeing how happy, how excited it makes you.”
“Me too,” he said, his voice a soft whisper. After the long, nightmarish experience of the first half of this pregnancy, they were finally getting to experience all the things that he’d yearned for, the things he’d missed with Jon. And it no longer took any effort to smile and act happy, now that it wasn’t an act, now that there wasn’t an intolerable knot of worry in his gut. They could just enjoy this and not worry about when the other shoe would inevitably drop.
********
“Did they have it?” she asked expectantly as he walked through the door.
He held up the paper bag with a triumphant smile and pulled out the colorful hardcover. “Before You Were Born,” the title declared over a picture of a smiling baby growing inside a pregnant woman’s belly.
“Was it any good?” she asked as he handed it to her.
“I found it riveting,” he said with a grin.
She took the book and flipped through it, reading it at super speed, smiling at the silly watercolor illustrations as she did. Lois looked up at her husband. “Are you ready to do this?” she asked.
“Definitely,” he replied. He took her hand and followed her up the stairs to their son’s room.
“Jon, sweetie?” she called as she pushed open the door to his room. Jon looked up from where he was playing with all the new dinosaurs he’d gotten for his birthday on the carpet.
“We have something very exciting to tell you,” Clark said as he sat down on the bed. Jon rushed over and allowed his father to pull him into his lap. Lois sat down next to both of them.
“You’re going to be a big brother,” she began. Her little boy’s eyes lit up. “In the summer time, we’re going to have a new baby girl.”
“Are you sure it’s a girl?” he asked warily.
“We’re very sure,” Clark said as he kissed the top of his son’s head. “Your baby sister is growing inside Mommy’s tummy.”
“Babies grow in tummies?” Jon asked as he regarded first his mother and then his father curiously.
“Well, there’s a special place in a mommy’s body, next to her tummy called a womb, where a baby can grow,” Lois said as she placed her hand on her expanding abdomen. “My womb is getting bigger because your sister is growing in there. When she’s big enough and strong enough, she’ll come out and you’ll have a little sister.”
“Did I come from there, too?” he asked.
“You sure did,” she said. “And we got you a very special book all about it.” They sat together and read the silly picture book about how babies developed and what they were doing while they were growing and getting bigger inside their mommies’ bodies. When they’d finished, Jon looked up at her, his features settling into a look of consternation.
“How come the baby’s a girl?” he asked.
“Well that’s just how it works,” Clark said simply. “Some babies are boys and some babies are girls.”
“I guess that’s okay,” Jon conceded at last. “Mommy and Grandma are girls and I like them.”
“Me too, buddy,” Clark replied with a laugh.
********
“The U.S. Attorney is ready to indict Jiang,” Brewer said triumphantly as he jogged down the steps of the federal courthouse. The gloom of the gray, drizzly morning had lingered into the early afternoon of the cold, mid-March day.
“And then Wan will move in and arrest him on the racketeering and terrorism financing charges?” Superman asked as he turned to walk with the agent down to the sidewalk.
Dave Brewer nodded and grinned. “And he wanted me to pass along his thanks to Lane and Kent for helping his guys make the final link between the accounts in Macau, Hong Kong, and Dubai to the Kryptonite purchase.
“I’ll relay the message,” Clark replied. It had taken them weeks of begging and cajoling every disreputable source they’d ever had to figure out where and how Johnny Tai, the Triads’ most notorious street enforcer in Metropolis, had initially procured the Kryptonite. Between that and ‘Superman’s’ unraveling of the complex web of accounts used to funnel money for the transaction, Macau had gotten everything it needed to put together the terrorism financing charges. “When does Wan plan on moving against Jiang?”
“He didn’t say, but he did mention that he wants to talk to you,” Brewer replied. He made his way to the small lunch kiosk in the tidy little park next the courthouse. Their presence—or rather Superman’s presence—started to attract the notice of the park’s few visitors. Lawyers in suits, cops, and tourists turned to look curiously at them. Brewer seemed oblivious to it all as he ordered and paid for his salad.
“I’ll stop by when it’s not two in the morning his time,” Clark said.
“Thanks, Superman. And thanks for all of your help with this case,” the agent replied as they started walking toward the federal building adjacent to the courthouse, where his office was located.
“I feel like I should be thanking you,” Clark said.
“Tell me about the look on Jiang’s face when you finally pick him up,” Brewer replied. “That’ll be all the thanks I need.”
********
He hovered over Jiang’s latest apartment—the man had started moving weekly—staring down grimly at his target. Jiang tossed fitfully in his bed, seized in the grip of a nightmare, it seemed. Clark felt no sympathy for him. He deserved to have his nights haunted. But Clark knew that what plagued the other man wasn’t remorse for the many lives he’d ruined. It was nothing more than fear. Jiang Jai He had an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation. It was about the only trait he shared in common with anything else that had a spine.
Clark wanted to fly through the window, shatter the glass and startle the bastard awake. He wanted the man to know what a real nightmare was. He wanted to see his eyes go white with horror, to smell the acid sting of fear on his skin. His hand started to tremble and he flexed and un-flexed his fist in a vain attempt to make it stop. His heart was thundering, his mouth had gone dry, his body tense with righteous fury. Soon, the only sound he could hear was his own pulse beating an insistent rhythm, like a war drum, in his ears.
He tried to shake himself out of his fugue state. He’d known this kind of hatred before. It had almost destroyed his life. It had torn him to shreds, leaving barely a scrap of his humanity intact. From those tattered remnants, he’d been forced to put himself back together. It was a task that had very nearly defeated him. And now, when everything was going right in his life, when he had every reason to be happy and hopeful, he was entertaining these destructive fantasies of an almost holy vengeance.
Clark had to get out of there. He took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then repeated the actions a few more times. Forcing his heart rate to slow, he flew away.
********
He walked through the deserted corridors, his boots thudding dully against the cold, hard metal floors. He turned a corner and saw nothing but another long, empty hallway in front of him. The doors were all closed, the emptiness of the place reinforced by the way his every step echoed loudly.
“Kal El!”
He turned around at the sound of his name. Well, not his name, exactly, but what his birth parents had once named him, and what another world had once called him for more than four long years. But he was on that world again, wasn’t he? These corridors were the familiar maze of the main colony.
Nor stood at the other end of the hallway, his arms folded across his chest, a smug smile etched into his expression. He dropped his arms and sauntered coolly toward his hated adversary. “Why is it that you still haven’t figured out how to get out of this place?” Nor asked disdainfully. “I know that you aren’t terribly intelligent, but by the fates, Kal El, it’s been years.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Clark growled.
“I belong here. This is the corner of your mind you relegated me to. The question is, what are you doing here? You have everything you’ve ever asked for, everything you’ve ever wanted, and you still keep finding your way back to this place. It’s pathetic really.”
Clark seized Nor’s shirt in both fists, shaking him violently. “You’re dead. I killed you. You don’t exist anymore!” Clark yelled in the other man’s face.
Nor chuckled as he shook his head. “It’s amazing how simple you really are. I exist because you can’t let go of me. You run away, but you can’t help yourself. You come back here, time and again, looking for…I don’t know, abuse, self-loathing, something equally ridiculous.”
Clark shoved him away, disgusted by his words. Filled with a terrible dread that Nor might be right.
No, wait.
Nor wasn’t right.
He was dead.
Cold, bloated, lying in a morgue with a hole ripped in his gut.
By now, rotting somewhere in an unmarked grave. Un-mourned. Remembered only with fear, hatred, and loathing.
“I killed you because I had to,” Clark spat. “You were a threat to every man, woman, and child on that planet.”
“How very noble of you, Kal El. It couldn’t possibly have been your craven desire to survive that made you pull the trigger. It was your duty.” Nor’s voice dripped with bitter sarcasm.
Clark turned away from him and stared at the ground. “I wanted to live,” he admitted. “I love my family. I love my life.” He turned back around on his heel and stepped toward Nor, forcing the other man to back up. “But I would have died to stop you. If that’s what it took, I would have given up everything to make sure you never harmed another soul.”
“And so it must be with this Jiang fellow. You don’t really want to kill him, do you? You’re just doing your duty. Oh, but I forgot, you don’t need to kill him. You just want to. You’ve developed a taste for blood, haven’t you, Kal El? I loved my life. Enough to fight for it. And you took it from me.”
“I had no choice!” Clark yelled.
“Then why does it plague you? If you had no choice, why are you still haunted by me? You may have killed me, but you clearly can’t let me go.” Nor turned and started to walk away.
Clark rushed to follow him and then stopped suddenly, realizing he was just proving Nor’s point.
“Clark? Honey?”
The sound of Lois’s voice cut through the fog of his dream. He opened his eyes to the darkness and realized he was in bed, safe in his home, an eternity away from New Krypton. Clark rolled over to look at his wife. “You okay?” she asked. The concern was evident in her voice.
“Yeah,” he whispered, but he could taste the lie. “No. No, I’m not,” he confessed.
“Another nightmare?” she asked, gently encouraging him to talk about it.
“Sort of,” he replied. “Not like the usual. But it was still about Nor. Or maybe it wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nor was in it. Just taunting me about the fact that I can’t get over killing him. That I can’t…” He sighed, trying to make sense of it all in his head. But it didn’t make any sense. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep trying to wall off the different parts of my life from each other. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m me. Like I’m the guy I’ve been trying to be this whole time. But with Jiang…I spend so much time just thinking about what he did to us, what he could have done…and all I feel is rage. I spend a lot of my patrols just following him…and it’s so easy to imagine tearing him apart. I killed someone once…and it almost destroyed me. Now I want to do it again.”
“You would never hurt someone unless you had no choice,” she insisted as she reached out to touch his face.
“No, Nor was right….”
“Nor?” she asked incredulously. “Nor was a raving psychotic from the way you described him.”
He shook his head. “Not the real Nor. The one in my dream. How can I even be thinking of doing to someone else what I did to Nor?”
“Because he threatened your family. He could have killed us all,” she said simply. “It’s only because of you that he didn’t. Killing Nor still bothers you because no matter how awful he was, it goes against everything you are to hurt someone else. That’s why I know you won’t hurt Jiang. Even if that means you have to recuse yourself from the rest of this and let the police do their own work, then that’s what you’ll do.”
“Isn’t that just running away?”
“Clark, you have done everything superhumanly possible to make sure this guy never hurts anyone else again. You’ve done your job. You don’t have to do the rest. Let someone else handle it – someone whose family wasn’t nearly murdered by the bastard.”
He shrugged. “It still feels wrong; like I’m taking the coward’s way out.”
“Honey, you are the strongest person I know. And that has nothing to do with how much you can bench press. I would never have made it through these last few months if it hadn’t been for you. And I know it was just as hard for you as it was for me, but you pretended it wasn’t. Because you knew I needed you to. It’s because of you that Jiang will be spending the rest of his life behind bars. Who cares if you’re not the one who arrests him? Though personally, I wouldn’t believe for a second you were dangerous to him. You’ve had every chance to hurt him and you’ve never done it. Because you’re better than that. Because you still know what you believe in. And you know those things are worth fighting for. Especially when it’s hard.”
He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t think of anything to say except, “I hope you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right; I’m always right,” she replied matter-of-factly.
