Disclaimer: I don’t own anything in the Lois & Clark universe except the plot to this story and one new character (Jillian). All other characters belong to Warner Brothers and DC Comics. As most FoLCs will realize, this story is a spinoff from the events of the episode ‘That Old Gang of Mine,’ which was written by Gene Miller and Karen Kavner. Some dialogue was borrowed from that episode. I have also borrowed a few lines of dialogue from the episode ‘And the Answer Is…,’ written by Tony Blake & Paul Jackson. I would guess most fans of L&C will recognize all of the borrowed lines when they see them. Character and plot points from the episodes ‘The Green, Green Glow of Home,’ written by Bryce Zabel, and ‘Vatman,’ written by Michael Norell, are also mentioned.
My thanks to Iolanthe and Corrina for their fantastic, thorough, and rapid beta reading. This story is much the better for their suggestions. Any remaining errors in structure or content are, of course, solely my own.
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That Old Clone of Mine
By Lynn S. M.
Rated: PG for "off-screen" violence
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Lois’ eyes flew open and her entire body stiffened as she realized the implications of what “Clark” had said earlier that night:
“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, so it's as if I never died.”
In her earlier excitement of having Clark back, she had overlooked what was now obvious to her. Professor Hamilton had grown new bodies from tissue samples taken from the gangsters; in other words, he made clones. So the person who spoke those words to her tonight was NOT Clark. It was only a clone of him. Clark -- her Clark -- had died. And she hadn’t even mourned for him since that conversation with his clone.
***
As Jillian Trask put her late brother’s key into the appropriate slot of his safe deposit box door, she thought back to the reading of his will.
“…And to my sister Jillian I lovingly bequeath my music collection, the contents of my safe deposit box, and all my stocks, bonds and bank accounts.”
The probate process was coming to an end, and the safe deposit box was at last unsealed. After months of waiting, Jillian was finally going to have access to its contents. She waited while the teller put the bank’s key into the other opening on the front of the box door. When the door finally opened, she slid the box out of its cubby and brought it into one of the designated private rooms.
Jillian hurriedly opened the box. On top of a stack of papers were two glowing green rocks and an envelope addressed to her whose contents she rapidly unfolded and read.
My dear Jilly,
If you are reading this, then my mission to neutralize the alien has failed. The two rocks in this safe deposit box are now the most valuable assets on earth. They, and they alone, will protect you against the alien invasion force. They will kill the aliens if they get too near. I wish I had more to give you, but these small pieces were all I could obtain from the one sample to which I currently have access; I dared not take more lest their absence be discovered. I hope to get more on my coming mission; but if you are reading this, then I did not succeed. Use the rocks wisely! Use one as you see fit to kill Superman, if he is still alive; for your own protection, keep the other one on you at all times.
I wish you a long and happy life. Take care of yourself and never let your guard down.
Love,
Jayjay
***
The daily staff meeting had just wrapped up, and Clark could finally ask the question that had been uppermost on his mind the entire time.
“Hey, Chief, where’s Lois?”
“Oh, uh, Clark. She asked for a few days personal leave. I guess seeing you ‘killed’ and nearly dying herself was a bit too much even for her. She’ll be back on Monday.”
Clark decided to swing by her apartment on his way to his first interview of the morning. His concern was heightened by her delay in answering his knock. He could hear her shuffling her feet, so he knew she hadn’t gone anywhere for the day. But he was not prepared for Lois’ appearance when she finally opened the door.
She was dressed entirely in black. Her eyes were as puffy and her cheeks as tear-stained as he had ever seen them. Her shoulders drooped. She was devoid of all her usual drive.
“Lois, what’s wrong?”
He went to give her a comforting hug, but she pulled away. She still clung to the partially opened door, blocking him from entering her home.
“*You* are what’s wrong. Clark died last night -- for me. You aren’t Clark; you’re just a clone -- a copy of him.”
Clark cringed. He apparently hadn’t salvaged his Clark Kent persona yet, after all. Of course Lois would believe the lie he had told her -- but oh! The horrible implications of it were now apparent! He let the hurt and rejection he felt enter his voice. “Lois, in every way that matters, I *am* Clark.” He tentatively tried to cup her cheek with his hand, but she knocked his arm away.
“Don’t you know how easy it would be for me to pretend you were him? You look like him, you sound like him, you even act like him. But you are NOT him. And I’m not going to cheapen the friendship I had with him by using you as a substitute.” She took a step forward to close the door. “I think you had better leave.”
Before Clark could fully take in what Lois had said, the door had been closed in his face. He briefly considered trying to get her to open the door again; but if she did so, what could he possibly say to her? He could just imagine himself saying, “Hey Lois, guess what? I really am Clark. I’m not a clone; I’m just a liar. And -- oh yeah, I meant to tell you, but it must have slipped my mind -- I’m also Superman.” Yeah, right! That would go over well. And no matter how prettily he dressed it up, anything he could possibly say would have to boil down to that.
Clearly having a discussion with her right now would not help matters any. It would be better to give her a few days to calm down. And perhaps after they worked together again for a while, he could regain her trust, or at least be able to talk some sense into her.
In the meantime, he reluctantly went to conduct his first interview. Although he managed to do a passable job, neither his mind nor his heart was in it. He kept replaying their conversation in his mind. Lois was behaving worse to him now than she ever did toward the “hack from Nowheresville” she believed him to be when they first met. And at least then, he wasn’t having to compete with himself. (As if he hadn’t already had enough of that this past year with Superman!)
***
Jillian Trask smiled. She had figured out a way to kill Superman. That *thing* had killed her beloved brother. Oh, a small-town sheriff may have been the one to shoot Jayjay, but that wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been trying to keep the world safe from that alien and its ilk. The alien was responsible, and now she knew how she could make it pay for its crimes against her brother and all of humanity. She knew just how she could get the rock to it.
She and Jayjay had spent many happy hours as children playing with rockets and making homemade fireworks. Jayjay taught her everything she knew about explosives. He was always so patient with her! He was the brains of the family, and could plan out just how much of the explosives to use and how to set them off to get the biggest boom and still keep the two of them safe. And after a lot of coaching, she also learned how to do so, as well. She would send the alien atrocity a mail bomb with the rock in it. When the alien opened the package, the bomb would detonate and hurtle the rock at Superman, thereby maximizing its impact.
But her brother had always emphasized the importance of attention to detail and practicing critical moves, if possible, before executing them. She would need a dry run. She would build a mail bomb with an ordinary rock about the size and weight of the green ones. And she knew just who she would mail it to -- that pesky neighbor of hers who always played her music so loudly. If the ordinary rock killed her neighbor, then the green one should kill the alien. A thought struck her: She’d be using a rock to silence the rock music. She couldn’t help but laugh at the irony.
She began to collect the materials she would need to assemble the bomb.
***
“Lois! Clark! In my office, now!”
When the two reporters came into his office, Perry noticed that Lois kept her distance from Clark and refused even to look in his direction. This was bad. She was acting even worse toward him than she had when he was first hired. This had to end; he would not let his star reporting team break up. They were too valuable to the Daily Planet, and they meant too much to each other personally. Lois had had her time off to regain her emotional equilibrium; now she would have to deal with the fallout of that awful night. And if she wouldn’t interact with Clark voluntarily, it was time to force the issue.
“I have a lead on a mail bomb story. Woman killed out in the Greenwood development. You two are on it.”
Right on cue, Lois began objecting. “Perry, this doesn’t sound like a story that needs two people. Let C.C. follow it up. I’m busy with the Anstruther trial.”
“C.C.?”
“Clark’s Clone. I won’t call him Clark; that’s not who he is.”
This was even worse than Perry thought. She wasn’t even acknowledging her partner by name. A glance over at the male reporter revealed that her words had cut him deeply.
“Uh, Clark, would you mind stepping outside for a few minutes? I need to speak with Lois privately.”
Clark answered quietly, deflated. “Sure, chief.”
When Clark had closed the door, Perry addressed Lois. “I’ve got a paper to run, and Clark has proven himself to be one of my best journalists. That man out there has Clark’s memories, his personality, and his investigative and writing abilities. You two are partners, and I expect you to work with him.”
“Clark was my partner, and Clark is dead! Whatever else that clone out there may be, he is *NOT* my partner!”
“Lois, honey, I know you feel bad about everything that happened, and this is a hard time for you. You don’t know exactly what to make of the man out there. Heck, I don’t know what to think about him myself – I know as much about metaphysics as Elvis did about rocket science. Could the clone have Clark’s soul? I don’t know. But what I do know is that whoever that man is out there, he’s probably hurting as much as you are.”
Lois muttered, “Not likely.”
“It can’t be easy to be rejected by the people he thinks of as friends. Could you at least try to be civil to him? If that really is ‘our’ Clark returned from the dead, doesn’t he deserve that? And even if he isn’t ‘our’ Clark, don’t you think ‘our’ Clark would want that man to be treated civilly? Clark was the politest man it has ever been my privilege to work with, and I can’t see him wanting anyone to be treated the way you have been treating the man who just left the office.”
Lois thought for a minute before giving a grudging reply. “Fine, I’ll do it in memory of the real Clark. I’ll be civil, and I’ll be his work partner. But that’s *all* I’ll be.”
“That’s all I’m asking you to be, darlin’.” Perry knew that, for Lois, being civil was not only all that he could ask of her, but also almost more than he could hope. Time would tell how successful she was at keeping her promise.
***
As Clark walked back to his desk, he struggled with the temptation to eavesdrop on the conversation taking place in Perry’s office. He knew Lois thought of him as only a clone of himself; but when he had heard that she wouldn’t even call him by name, his despair deepened. How could he win back her confidence? If he confessed everything to her, she would know that he was really Clark, but she would probably feel so betrayed because of all his lies to her that she would treat him even worse than she was doing now, if that were possible. And there would be no recovering from that.
No, he would just have to be himself around her and maybe over time she would come to develop the rapport with him that they had had until just recently. Of course, he knew that consciously trying to be himself wouldn’t be easy. How do you do deliberately what used to come naturally? Well, he would just have to do his best.
When he heard the office door open, he looked with trepidation to see Lois approaching him.
“All right, C.C.. Our first stop is to see Inspector Henderson.”
She was being all business, but at least she was talking to him. It was a start. He smiled. “I’m with you, partner.”
***
Lois was true to her promise to Perry. Although she did not initiate any conversations with C.C., she responded to any he began. They mostly discussed business on the drive to see Inspector Henderson. But even so, C.C. surprised her by thinking and responding so much like Clark would have done. If she didn’t keep up her guard, she could easily forget that he was only a clone.
The Inspector took in her attire. “You changed your clothes. Cement was a good look on you, Lane.”
“Ha ha. Very funny. What can you tell us about the mail bombing in Greenwood?”
“I’m feeling well; thank you for asking. Now that’s what I like about you, Lois. You always make time for the pleasantries.”
The inspector changed his tone from bantering to business. “The victim was Heather Meese. Twenty-three. She might have survived the bomb blast, but she was brained by a rock that had been in the package.”
Lois asked, “Could we examine the remains of the package and its contents?”
“The remains of the bomb are in our labs being analyzed. The rest are being held in evidence, but I’ll send a uniform over to retrieve them.” Henderson reached for the intercom.
After Henderson had made the request, they resumed their conversation. C.C. chimed in with a series of questions. “What do we know about Ms. Meese? Was she married? Working? Any enemies?”
Henderson replied, “She was single. Waited tables at the Greenwood Pink Lobster Grill. No known enemies. No known friends, for that matter. Near as I can tell from the neighbors, she pretty much kept to herself. Spent her free time listening to music on her stereo.”
“Anything else to go on?”
“Nada. And unless something else turns up, this case is likely to remain one of our unsolved mysteries.”
The uniformed officer knocked on the door, and then presented the two reporters with an evidence bag containing a few charred scraps of cardboard and a nondescript rock about half the size of Lois’ fist. The latter had dried blood on it; blood that had already been identified as belonging to the victim. Lois grabbed the bag, studied the contents from all angles, and passed it along to C.C. for his inspection. He apparently didn’t learn anything more from it than she did, and he rapidly gave it to the uniformed officer to return to storage. Lois noted that C.C. thanked the uniformed officer every bit as politely as Clark would have done. In fact, throughout this entire interview, he had behaved just as Clark would have. She really was already finding it increasingly difficult to remember that he wasn’t Clark. She didn’t really believe in an afterlife; but if there were one, she only hoped that if Clark were somehow watching her and possibly even reading her thoughts, he would forgive her for occasionally mistaking his clone for him.
***
Jillian could not have been more pleased with the results of her experiment. Her noisy neighbor would never bother her again. The mail bomb performed exactly as she had hoped. She once again thanked Jayjay for teaching her so much about explosives. Now that the dress rehearsal was complete, it was show time. She assembled a new package, almost identical to the first. But in this one she placed one of the glowing green rocks instead of the more common one she had used in the other package. She had done her research. She knew that Clark Kent wrote many of the Superman-related articles in the Daily Planet. And since her brother died on Kent’s parents’ farm, it was only fitting that Kent be the intermediary to give the alien the deadly present. A quick check in the phone book revealed his address. She wrote on the outside of the package:
Superman
c/o Clark Kent
344 Clinton Street
Metropolis, New Troy 10134
She smiled all the way to the nearest post office collection box.
