I started this back in January in what was supposed to be a short two part story. After encouragement from my beta to develop the A-plot, this is what it has turned into. It starts shortly after the Foundling and references previous episodes. As for a posting schedule, I’ll start with once a week until I wrap up the last two chapters, then I’ll try to speed it up.
Many, many, many thanks to my beta, Virginia, for sticking with me on this story throughout the year. I never anticipated it taking so long but sometimes RL gets in the way.
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Beneath the Surface
By Chickberry
Rated PG
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I hope you all enjoy it.
As always the usual disclaimers apply. Lois and Clark aren't mine as well as references and lines taken from episodes. I can only claim the characters I've made up.
CH 1
“Hey Clark, I hope you don’t have plans for tonight,” Lois barked as she scurried over to Clark’s desk and took a seat on the corner. “I just got a tip on a doctor, who seems to be holding some extra clinic time way past normal hours. We should check it out.”
Clark relaxed back in his chair, crossing his hands behind his head, before looking up at her. “Well, that doesn't seem all that unusual. Maybe he’s helping out the homeless or something.”
Typical Clark, she thought, always seeing the good in everyone. “He’s holding them at two in the morning, and it seems like it’s only athletic teenage boys on the invitation list.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.” Clark said with a look of disgust on his face.
“It’s not what you’re thinking. My source hinted more towards performance enhancements.”
“Steroids?”
“Possibly. That’s for us to find out. So, are you in?” she asked, nudging his shoulder.
“Like I have a choice. What time?”
She knew he couldn’t resist and gave him a quick smile. “I’ll pick you up at midnight, and don’t think of falling asleep on me.”
“I promise. See you at midnight.”
It was six now, and Clark needed to get out of here if he was going to get a patrol done before she picked him up. He grabbed his coat and headed to the elevator. As he entered, he heard Lois calling to him for one last word. “Don’t forget all black.”
He just smiled as the doors shut.
**********
Lois arrived promptly at midnight and, as Clark had promised, not only was he awake but he opened the door before she could ball a fist to knock.
She didn’t seem surprised by his promptness at answering the door. “You ready?”
“Yep.” Clark stepped aside to give her room to enter and pointed towards his kitchen. “Do you want any coffee or anything?”
“I already have some waiting in the car. We should get going,” Lois replied anxiously and remained outside his door.
“Lois, we have two hours. What’s the rush?”
“I just want to make sure we don’t miss anything. What if he opens up early, and they’re all leaving as we arrive? Or there’s not a good place to park and we have to circle around for a while looking for one. Or…”
“Fine. Let’s go,” Clark interrupted.
He followed Lois out his front door and locked it behind him. By the time he finished, Lois had already bolted to the car and started it. He hurried to catch up and only had time to climb in and shut his door when Lois pulled away from the curb, speeding down the road.
“What’s the rush? You could have at least let me get seated.”
“Sorry,” said Lois, even though he knew she wasn’t. She was a woman on a mission.
Clark knew it had to be a mission more important than just some kids taking illegal steroids. He would just have to wait for her to get off her chest whatever had her breaking driving speed and safety laws.
Lois continued her fast pace through the streets, occasionally weaving in and out of her lane to pass, as they headed northeast towards the doctor’s office. Twenty minutes later, she pulled over the Jeep against the curb, a block from the building.
“That’s it; that house over on the right between those two taller buildings. Do you see a good spot to park, Clark?”
Clark looked down the street and, without needing to slip his glasses down for a closer look, easily spotted a hiding place.
“If we go past the building and turn left down that street, and then pull a u-turn and park on the other side facing it, we’ll be sufficiently hidden in the shadows. The street lamp on that corner seems to be out.”
Lois agreed with his assessment and pulled back onto the street following Clark’s directions. Within five minutes, they were parked and had the surveillance equipment sitting out on the dash.
“So, what’s this doctor’s name, anyways?” Clark asked. He had agreed to this stakeout, but Lois hadn’t informed of any details. He was just hoping that Lois’s source was reliable, and that this wasn’t a wild goose chase. She wouldn’t be the acclaimed reporter she was if she didn’t have good sources, except something seemed to be off about tonight. He wasn’t sure what it was yet, but Lois was more energized and antsy for this time of night than a normal person should be. Then again, he thought with a secret smile, he liked that Lois wasn’t normal.
“Dr. Goldberg,” she replied as she peered through her binoculars at the building.
“Do you mean Dr. Heinrich Goldberg?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’ve heard of him. Just last week, I read an article in ‘Scientific Medicine’ about his current work.”
“Hold on,” Lois interrupted. “What were you doing reading ‘Scientific Medicine’? Can’t be for fun.”
“I find some of the articles interesting,” he replied. “I’m a guy, Lois. I like sports, in case you’ve forgotten, and the magazine normally has some good articles on the latest advancement in sports medicine. As you know, it’s a huge and growing industry.”
“Don’t remind me. Have you forgotten the whole ‘my father created cyborg killing machines’ incident?”
“No, I haven’t.” Clark knew any more of a response would get him nowhere. “Getting back to the article, apparently, he’s the doctor that most of the promising athletes at MetU use. He’s theoretically found a way to decrease the healing time for most tears and sprains by thirty percent and breaks by forty. But, Lois, these athletes are tested for illegal drugs and with the amount of patients he has; Dr. Goldberg would be easy to trace.”
She shrugged. “Well, maybe he’s come up with something new that isn’t showing up on the tests.”
“I guess we wait then. We’ve got over an hour. Cards?” Clark pulled a deck of cards out of his front jacket pocket.
“No. Not tonight.” Lois was quiet for a second, and then turned to face him. “Clark, I’ve been thinking. You know a few weeks ago, when I asked you to tell me your biggest secret and you gave me some lame story about your mom having an affair with an art teacher. You then later admitted that that wasn’t it.”
“Yes,” Clark replied almost hesitantly. Here she goes. He could see where this was heading. He knew this was going to come back around and was surprised that it had actually taken her this long to bring it up. Though this answered his question on why she was so hyperactive tonight. His secret must have been driving her crazy, and that made him smile a little on the inside. She was always driving him crazy with her ‘leap before she looked’ attitude, and it felt good to know that he had some power to do the same to her.
“Well,” Lois probed.
“Well, what?”
“Are you ever going to tell me?” she pleaded.
This was probably the reason she had dragged him out here so early, he thought. “Lois, it’s not an easy thing to talk about. I’m not sure you’re ready to hear it.”
In the last few weeks, Clark had often thought about what he would tell her if she brought this up again. He decided that it was probably time to start opening up to her and to let her in on a few facts, but not completely reveal his secret. He had grown to trust her more the last few months, but he still wasn’t ready to tell her all. She was still so infatuated with his other half, and that made him very uncomfortable. He worried that telling her his secret would somehow let her down. Would she lose her hero when she found out he was just Clark? But his secret was stalling their relationship. He was holding back in their friendship, and she knew he was keeping something from her.
“Why wouldn’t I want to hear it? Don’t you trust me?” she inquired, giving him a stern look. “I thought we’ve really started to get to know each other. I’ve started opening up to you, but I feel like there’s still something big you’re not telling me about yourself. I know everyone says ‘what you see is what you get’ with you, but I think they’re wrong.”
“You’re right, Lois, and I didn’t say that you wouldn’t want to hear it, just that you might not be ready to. I just don’t want you to end up sobbing all over me or something,” Clark teased, trying to lighten the mood. It had happened once or twice since he’d met her when she had broken down in front of him. As much as he liked seeing the softer side of her that few were privy to, tonight they were here to work. He was hoping to keep this conversation as light as possible.
“As if anything you could reveal would make me sob,” she scoffed. “In your dreams, Kent.”
Clark let the comment pass to steer the conversation back on track. “I’ve thought about this a lot lately. I’m actually surprised you didn’t bring this up sooner.” He gave her a quick smile.
“Well, this is the first time we’ve been alone for any amount of time recently and, to tell you the truth, it is why I picked you up a bit early. It just didn’t seem like the thing to bring up while you were stressed about your stuff being stolen.” The air got quiet for a minute before Lois spoke again. “But now we’re here, and it seems like a good time to talk. That is until this doctor shows up, assuming he does.”
“Lois, you have to understand this is very difficult for me,” he admitted softly. “I’ve never told anyone this before. It’s something my parents and I have kept quiet about my whole life.”
Clark took a deep breath, exhaling as he turned to look at Lois. He could see that she was anxiously waiting for him to speak, so he returned his gaze to his hands, gathering his thoughts one more time. Apparently, though, they had become very fascinating, and he hesitated before taking another breath. Exhaling slowly, he knew he couldn’t stall any longer.
Not looking up from his hands, he began, “Lois, I’m adopted. The Kents aren’t my real parents, but they are the only parents that I have ever known.”
Lois was a little shocked. She had assumed this was going to be something about how he, the infallible Clark Kent, had broken the law as a youth, or went skinny-dipping with his friends and his clothes were stolen and he had to walk back to town naked, which would have been the talk of the town. Adopted? She had seen him interact with his parents and the thought had never crossed her mind that he wasn’t theirs. “Clark, I never would have guessed, but why is that such a big secret? Lots of kids are adopted.”
“Well, the Kents didn’t go through an adoption agency or anything like that. They applied for adoption, once they were told they couldn’t have kids of their own, but were denied. Then they found me. I was basically left on their doorstep. They couldn’t have children, so they didn’t tell the authorities; they just kept me and raised me as theirs. They made up some story about me being the child of some teenaged relative who couldn’t raise me. Everyone bought the story. The doctor even created a birth certificate for me, and I legally became theirs. It wasn’t until recently I found out why my parents, my birth parents, left me there.”
Clark paused, and Lois could see the sadness in his face. “Oh, Clark,” she said, softly patting his knee. “What was it?”
“It turns out they knew something bad was going to happen to them and sent me to the Kents for my safety.”
“Why the Kents? Did they know them or something?”
“No, I think it was just a random guess. Lois, you have to understand that I went my whole life not knowing why I was abandoned. There were times that I felt so alone, not knowing who I was or where I came from. My folks are good people, and I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to raise me, but it still hasn’t been easy.” Clark hesitated, needing to gather his thoughts once more to get this next part right. If he got anything wrong, it would be too easy for her to put the rest of the secret together. She already knew about the globe, he reminded himself.
“A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a home movie they made, documenting what had happened. I’ve actually had it for a while. It was something I found sitting in a pile of junk that, I guess, had been forgotten. My birth parents apparently died in an explosion soon after sending me away. They knew they were in trouble and risked everything to protect their baby. I feel so guilty having spent my whole life feeling abandoned by them, but I wasn’t. Had they not done what they did, I would have died along with them. It’s just been hard to come to terms with.” Clark stopped to reflect on everything he had just said. He had never told anyone that story before and, even though it wasn’t the entire story, he felt relieved to have finally let someone in on it.
“So there, Lois, is my big secret.” Clark looked over at her and saw a tear running down her cheek. “Lois, I told you no sobbing,” he teased, handing her a tissue he had found in the side door pocket.
Lois dabbed her eyes to clear the couple of tears that had leaked out.
“Oh, Clark, that’s so sad.” She reached out and brushed her hand along his jaw line, staring at her hand as she did. “Was the movie one the things that Jack stole?”
“Yes.”
“Why a home movie? It’s not like it would be that valuable to anyone else.”
Actually, Jack did make good money off of it, thought Clark. “I don’t know. Why did he steal my sports trophies? Who would want that stuff?”
“But you got it back?”
“Yes, I now have it back, and it’s stored safely far away from my apartment.”
“So you now know who your parents were, at least to some extent. Did they mention any other siblings or some fortune they left you?” Lois cracked a smile trying to lighten the mood.
“I guess I can now put a face to them and, as far as I know, I don’t have any siblings or some large fortune. They seemed more preoccupied with my safety than their possessions.”
“So,” Lois drew out the word as if cautiously testing the water. “Were they spies or something? I know we are talking Cold War time.”
“No. They appeared to be scientists or something. They didn’t go into detail on what they did, but it looked like my parents worked together. Really, Lois, that’s all I know.” He wanted to stop the questions. He wasn’t sure how much more he could say without letting the cat out of the bag.
“Do you know their names?”
“Yes.” Uh oh, he panicked. Lara is not too atypical, but Jor-El, what was he to do with that? Thinking quickly, he blurted out, “Joel and Lara. I’m not sure about a last name.” That was the truth. He didn’t know how Kryptonians handled last names, but he speculated that was what the ‘El’ was for, since it was also part of his name.
“Humm… They seem like fairly generic normal names. What name did they give you?”
“Kal.”
“Just Kal?” She sounded skeptical.
“Yep. Like I said, I don’t know their last name.”
“I like Clark better.”
That brought a smile to his face. “So do I. It feels so strange to say ‘Kal’ and have it be my name.”
“Just so you know,” Lois said. “I’m not about to start calling you 'Kal'. Kal Kent just doesn’t seem roll off the tongue easily.”
Clark laughed. He had never put those two names together. He wasn’t about to correct her with Kal-El, which did have a better ring to it.
“What do the Kents think about all this?” Lois asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, do they worry, now that you know about your birth parents, that you’ll think less of them because they’re not your real parents?”
“Lois, you know me, and you’ve seen how I am around them. They are my real parents. I have no recollection of Joel and Lara at all. I was maybe five months old when the Kents took me in. They’re all I could have asked for.”
Lois reflected on everything that Clark had shared. She knew him well enough by now to know that it was a big deal to him. Clark was the type of guy who would normally just smile and pretend that nothing was bothering him. She now knew that he had been doing that frequently over the last few weeks. “Clark, thank you for sharing this with me. It does mean a lot to me that I’m the first person to whom you’ve told this. I never thought you’d actually have a secret like this; it makes me think there’s more to you that I don’t know.” Lois got that look that she was hungry for more. “So, tell me, Kent, do you have any other big secrets?”
Clark smiled. “Maybe, but that is for another day, Lois.”
“Fine, but one last thing, you are going to show me this home movie of your birth parents.” That was a statement not a question.
“Well, it’s in Smallville. Maybe the next time you’re there I’ll think about it.”
“Maybe?” she challenged.
“Yep, just maybe.” Clark’s hearing kicked in and drew his attention away from his partner and back to the building across the street. “Hey, look! Isn’t that the guy we’ve been waiting for?”
Lois picked up the binoculars again as Clark switched on the video camera.
“You’re right, Clark. That looks like the doctor. Let’s wait to see if some kids start showing up and then get up close. We can leave the camera running in the meantime.”
“You’re the boss,” Clark replied wryly.
“Ha ha. And don’t think I’m not going to hold you to showing me your movie next time I’m in Smallville,” she said with a determined expression.
“I only said ‘maybe’,” he reminded her.
“Humph.”
***End of Part 1***
