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seriousficTitle: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,963
Characters/Pairings: Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Chloe Sullivan, Kara Zor-El, Richard White; mention of Clark/Lois, Clark/Chloe, and Richard/Lois
Previous Part: Chapter 8
Next Part: Chapter 10
Summary: Lex catches up with an old friend by the name of Clark Kent, Lois seeks closure on her relationship with Superman, and Chloe is the invisible woman – even with X-ray vision, Clark can’t see her.
At least one thing hadn’t changed while Clark had been gone. The Daily Planet was the same then as it had been since the turn of the last century, a beacon of hope and truth for the world. Sure, computers had replaced typewriters and the chairs were more ergonomic, but at its heart, the DP would never change.
When Clark got off the elevator, the entire staff seemed to be holding its breath.
“What’s up?” he asked Jimmy.
The photographer shushed Clark and jerked his head to Perry’s office. The rest of the newsroom was straining to hear, Lois with a stethoscope against the wall. Clark barely lifted his hearing to detect a voice from the past. A charming, brilliant voice; so very different from the Lex he’d confronted before. It was enough to make him fumble his Smallville Ledger mug. The crash was explosive, making everyone in the room look at him. It also neatly coincided with Lex sweeping out of Perry’s office.
The chief followed him out, the old bloodhound clamped down. When he got angry, Perry could rattle glass, and he was furious. He pointed the unlit cigar in his fist at Lex’s back, driving his words home. “I wouldn’t sell the Planet to you, Luthor, for all the vinyl in Graceland!”
Lex muttered something about the propaganda division of an alien invasion under his breath, audible only to Clark’s superhearing, then turned to Perry. “People in my way tend to have two choices. Stand at my side or be paved over. You’ve chosen the latter. Good luck with that.”
Lex stormed out, long experience letting Clark see the anger coming off him like radiation from decaying uranium. Involuntarily, Clark felt himself turning to follow Lex’s exit. Then his legs going, one foot in front of the other.
The hallway by the elevator was empty. Lex, in his dark suit and green tie, couldn’t have been more of a contrast to the earthy brown of Clark’s suit. Clark’s was rumpled, with the elbows wearing thin, while Lex’s looked like it hadn’t been worn until that morning.
“Don’t do it,” Clark said, somewhere lost between the larger-than-life baritone of Superman and the steely half-nebbishness of his own youth. “You’ve got enough of Metropolis in your hand, leave the Daily Planet alone.”
Lex scowled as he turned. “Clark… Kent? My memory’s actually taxed; it’s been a while. You’ve aged well.”
Clark’s face was set, unamused.
“Lighten up, Clark. I remember when you weren’t all business.” The elevator doors opened. “Ah, finally. Come on, I don’t have time for you to take the stairs, fitness freak.”
“What?”
“You’ve clearly got something to say and I’m scheduled for lunch. So, come on.”
Clark wanted to say he had nothing to say to Lex. He wanted to. Instead, he stepped into the elevator and descended.
On the way down, Lex got on the phone and told someone named Mercy to cancel with someone named Tess.
“Who’s Tess?” Clark asked.
“Nobody. Not even a supermodel, just the regular kind.”
“I never thought you were the womanizing type.”
“No, I’m looking for a deep emotional connection, just over in an hour or so. It’s a huge time-saver.” Lex pressed the ground floor button again. “I apologize, the stairs would’ve been quicker.”
“What happened to patience being a virtue?”
“I don’t like enclosed spaces. Superman once welded me inside a bank vault for seven hours while he dealt with a few bombs.” Lex’s voice shrank like something was eating away at it. “It was dark in there. Weird noises.”
“Oh.” Clark pushed his glasses up. “Well, I’m sure he would’ve freed you sooner if he could.”
“Stop looking for the best in people, Clark, it’s naïve. He did it to punish me. Judge, jury, and executioner. Just like with my father.”
Clark would’ve given anything to press the button and get off on the nearest floor. But that would leave Lex alone.
***
Lex put on a big, friendly smile as he walked through the streets of Metropolis – “Why would anyone want to fly above this?” – but all Clark could see were the armies of dark-suited bodyguards surrounding them and the cameras standing silent guard on every street corner. They had Lexcorp logos on their black casing.
“Why all the cameras?” he asked.
“The League of Shadows. It’s a terrorist organization… they were behind the fear toxin attacks in Gotham all those years ago. They blew up the Emperor Building while Superman was…” Lex paused drolly. “Detained. With him gone, someone had to step up to protect Metropolis. These cameras, the Team Luthor security force, and Lex Tower built right on top of ground zero. I let them know that Metropolis and the world wouldn’t cower before some personality cult out to destroy our way of life.”
“And the cameras help?”
“Superman has his X-ray vision, I have mine.”
“People just… put up with it?”
“You’d be surprised what they put up with. In 1984, Big Brother was a tyrant. In 2008, it’s a game show. How do you feel about Chinese food?”
***
Clark wasn’t expecting to be flown to China, but a pagoda on top of a skyscraper was still a bit much. He recognized the hostesses and serving customs as authentic, down to the jade tea they were served. The two men took off their jackets and sat cross-legged on mats, facing each other.
“It’s funny,” Lex said. “I remember us being so close, then we just sort of… drifted apart.” He sipped. ”Well, not funny so much as… What’ve you been doing lately?”
“Traveling. Tibet, Africa… trying to find myself.”
“Did you?”
“No.” He toyed with memories of Lois, picking at a scab. “I feel more lost than ever.”
They talked for what seemed like hours, about Smallville, about the past, even about Chloe. Lex’s charmingly tiny smile drizzled down into a somnambulistic tightening of the lips, even as Clark let his clenched jaw relax into almost a stupor. A pleased one. The only thing surprising him more than his own pining for the old days was how wistful Lex was, how gleefully he recounted starting his own business, making his first million, gazing up at the stars with Clark. Even then, Clark had been looking for a red star that no longer existed. He never had figured out what Lex was looking for.
“And to think I believed you a simple farmboy. You were far rarer than that.”
Clark raised an eyebrow. “Simple farmboy?”
“You’re a damn good reporter, Clark. And you’re not like the others, with their wars and their small-mindedness. You think. You feel. You’re awake.”
“I’m hardly alone in that,” Clark said, with a forced chuckle.
“You’d be surprised. I know why you feel lost, Clark. I know why everyone feels lost. There is no great depression to overcome, there is no great war to win, there is no great undertaking to accomplish. All our battles have been fought and won, if not by our forefathers, than by Superman. We have nothing worth dying for. And a man with nothing worth dying for has nothing worth living for.”
Lex was wrong. Clark had someone worth living for. He just couldn’t live with her. “And what would you die for?” Clark asked coolly.
“Earth’s safety and security,” Lex said; the most obvious thing in the world.
A disparaging noise made its way out of Clark’s throat. “You should be Superman’s ally instead of his… detractor.” Clark’s voice would’ve broken on ‘nemesis.’
“And you should be in my employ, not that of a tired old fool like White.” Lex had always been good at deflection, but Clark didn’t miss that he equated friendship with employment. Submission. “Newspapers are dead anyway. I’ll give you a blog on Lex News and twice whatever pocket change the Planet is paying you.”
“I can’t work for you, Lex.”
Leg’s gregariousness had always been a little off-putting, a little faked. The real Lex’s silence was infinitely more chilling. He broke it with a polite smile. “Why not?”
“There’s a darkness in you, Lex. You indulge it far too much.”
Lex stood abruptly. “There’s a war coming, Clark. I can’t protect you if you’re on the wrong side.”
Clark shook his head, grabbing Lex’s hand. “There doesn’t have to be a war. If you would just… just talk with Superman, a honest conversation taken at face value, I’m sure…”
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So what do you think superpowers do? It’s the way of the world, Clark. The strong prey on the weak. And Superman is so very strong…”
“What about your power, Lex? What do you think it’s done to you?”
That wintery Luthor silence took hold of Lex once more. He calmly brushed Clark’s hand away.
“There is a storm coming, Mr. Kent. You should stay indoors.”
***
There was a sharply delineated pain to having two faces, or two masks, which amounted to the same thing in Clark’s world. In his life, taking off his mask gave way to another mask. It made him feel like a hypocrite every time he chided Bruce for living alone in that fortress of his, not letting anyone in except for that enabling butler. At least Bruce had a butler. He just had his father’s ghost, sending him down Hamlet’s footprints.
The pain was this: Kal-El met everyone twice. He could hold no illusions about his place in their hearts, because he saw how they reacted to him one way and another. He knew there were people who would like him if he were more assertive, even if he really felt like he was humble and modest. And now, paradoxically, he knew someone who spat in one face while the other received… what?
Friendship? Brotherhood? Or just enough rope to hang himself. That was Lex’s stock-in-trade, after all.
The agony persisted as Superman did his rounds, while Clark Kent sat alone at home, watching TV or reading a book or whatever it was his co-workers thought he did. Everyone loved Superman, but Superman wasn’t him. It was some abstract ideal, someone for humanity to project, imprint themselves on. He was a symbol, but symbols didn’t have fingerprints, breaths, skin cells or follicles. And he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that people loved him better without those trappings of his personality.
There was, of course, one woman who knew him as both Clark and Superman. His mother had known him before the discovery of his powers had fragmented him, and Lois had rejected Clark for Superman when the choice had actually presented itself, but Chloe preferred his subtle sense of humor to his bombastic speeches on public safety. And of course, he’d alienated her too. Alienated. Funny little verb.
Kal-El let his senses stretch out one more time, casting a net over the Earth. There were no disasters large enough to demand his attention. Contrary to popular belief, there were long stretches of time when he could just… relax. Unless he wanted to foil every mugger in the world, and that way laid Zod. Clark well-remembered the accounts of how Zod had let his minions loose on criminals the world over. The body count had rivaled some epidemics.
“Good night, Earth,” he said, not that anyone could hear him in the vacuum of space. He gave the old girl one last fly-by, soaking up the unfiltered sun before he headed home..
***
It was just after dark when Clark showed up at Chloe’s doorstep. Her landlady buzzed up to tell her she had a ‘gentleman caller’. It’d been a while since Chloe could say that. She let Clark in and as soon as he was through the door it was like a weight came off his shoulders. He smiled widely and set down a plate of cookies.
“Had a run-in with an old friend. It sort of put me in mind of the past…” There was a little snowglobe Smallville contained in that word, ‘past’, and the way he looked at her. “I couldn’t stand leaving things like that with you.”
Chloe hugged him. “Aw, I can never stay mad at you.” She stepped back, a bit chagrinned. “I’ll get some milk.”
“I can—“
“No, I don’t want you to see my kitchen.”
“X-ray vision, Chlo.”
“You’re too nice to use it. If you weren’t, I’d be wearing much nicer—lead, lead underwear.” She quickly made her escape into the little kitchen of her apartment to pour them two big glasses of milk, casting a longing look to the six-pack in her refrigerator. “You mind eighty-sixing the glasses? They’re a little insulting.”
“Huh? Oh.” When she came back into the living room, Clark’s glasses were hanging from his collar. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
She made a breezy gesture. “No big. So, come on, out with it…”
“Out with what?”
“There must be some problem you need help solving. What is it?”
“I just wanted to see you.”
Chloe sighed as she sat back in her chair. “Clark, if I believed that…”
“It’s Lois…” Clark stood up, walking the apartment as if trying to keep out of Chloe’s eyeline. “I’m sorry, I wanted to… find time to be friends again before we got to her.”
“Clark, it’s okay. She’ll always be the number one woman in your life. You love her.”
“But I hurt her.”
You hurt a lot of people, Clark. “She’ll forgive you.”
“She wrote an article about how the world doesn’t need me. She got a Pulitzer for it.”
Chloe walked up to him. There was a sordid feel to it as she took hold of his broad shoulders, something about the way he remained carefully motionless that hurt worse than any other reaction, but the way he exhaled slowly…
“I really would like to go out sometime, once I have everything sorted out. Just get some buffalo wings, watch a movie, something.”
“That’d be nice,” Chloe agreed.
“But this thing with Lois… it’s like she’s left me behind. Like the whole world’s left me behind.”
“I’m still here.” Aren’t I enough?
“God bless you for that.” He patted the hand she had resting on his left shoulder.
“Maybe if you apologized to Lois… in person, I mean.”
“You think it would make a difference?”
“She loved you, Clark. Of course it would.”
“Then I should probably go.” He turned. “Enjoy the cookies.”
“I will. Oh, don’t forget.” She plucked his glasses from his collar and put them on his face. “Wouldn’t do to have people see Superman coming and going from my apartment. What would the neighbors think?”
***
Kara watched as Clark walked out of Chloe’s apartment, traveled a few blocks, then ducked down an alley and emerged as Superman. Interesting, how he went to the Earth female for counsel. Very interesting.
***
Don’t look at them, Lois told herself. There’s a reason Perry wouldn’t publish them. Just chalk it up to nostalgia and call it a mulligan and for God’s sake don’t compare apples to oranges and men to supermen. Pointless, stupid, biased. How was she supposed to tell the world what she felt about the space-flight disaster when she didn’t know what she felt? She felt a little bit of everything. And outside of Superman, she felt nothing. Numbness. Shock. The only cure was to remind herself how she had felt.
The files were in a locked drawer in her desk. She didn’t keep the key anywhere melodramatic like on a chain around her neck. In fact, she had lost it. She had to pick the lock with a paperclip to open it. The rollers would’ve needed oiling, if she ever planned to open the drawer again. Then again, she had said that when she first locked it.
Inside were the hard copies of articles never published and long since scoured from her hard drive. Lois didn’t need to read the text; it was burned into her brain. All she needed to do was read the article titles to bring it all rushing back.
”WHERE IS HE?”
“WHY'D YOU LEAVE US?”
“COME BACK.”
And the one she’d never even shown to Perry, just dashed out on Richard’s typewriter and thrown into the drawer that back then didn’t have a lock and cried the rest of the night: ”GOODBYE SUPERMAN.”
Lois set them out across the desk in chronological order, a journalistic record of grief and loss the only way she knew how to express it. A strong breeze stirred them, rattled her pencils, put out the cigarette she shouldn’t have been smoking. Lois took a deep breath and reminded herself it couldn’t be him, and then reminded herself it could be. She turned.
Superman was on her veranda.
She closed her robe over her nightgown. In the old days, she wouldn’t have. Not to seduce him, but just because she was so comfortable in his presence. Now, it was hard to forget how alien he was. What human could leave someone he loved and not say a word?
He walked toward her and, with a helpless expression, tapped on the glass. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, she bounded up to let him in. Gave him a giant smile, in fact. She hated herself for it, but it felt too good to regret.
Lois had a million questions and a billion things to say, but the only thing she could think to say was “How’d you find me?”
He pretended not to notice her tears as she hid her face and wiped them away; she loved him for it. “I’ll always know where you are.” He frowned, probably realizing how stalkerish that had come out.
Lois slapped him as hard as she could, and though by the pain in her hand she might as well have flicked a toothpick at him, the hurt look in his eyes told her she’d done damage. “You left!” she said viciously, shaking off the pained throbbing in her hand. “You didn’t even say goodbye…”
All that power and he couldn’t even meet her eyes. “I had to go.”
“Krypton?” She nodded at his shock. “It wasn’t even that hard to figure out. Astronomers find a signal and you start packing your bags. It was easier to believe that than some nut with Kryptonite…” She sniffled. “If Lex hadn’t been in prison, I…” She sniffled again, calming herself. “I understand. And I can forgive that. But I’ll never forgive you for the five years I spent looking up at the sky, not knowing if you were dead or alive. Star reporter like me and the one thing I couldn’t figure out was what mattered most…” She was openly crying now, digging through the drawers of her desk for a pack of tissues. Then she saw the articles, still laid out in the open, and shoveled them into the drawer. She shut it firmly.
Superman sat down on her couch, his head in his hands. Lois had never seen him so weighted down. “I have no right to ask for your forgiveness. I feel I owe you—all of you—an explanation.”
“On the record?”
He looked up, nodded dolefully.
“I’ll get my tape recorder.”
***
The plate of cookies Clark had bought were just starting to prove a serious temptation to Chloe when something slammed against the window. She turned, both grateful for the distraction and sorry for the poor bird that had just gotten a nosejob, to see that there was a girl standing on her fire escape. She was blonde, coltish, the kind of body made for cheerleading and swimsuit modeling. Those cookies weren’t looking so good now, not with the comparative junk in Chloe’s trunk. And she was knocking on Chloe’s window with her palm, not her knuckles.
Chloe held up a finger, ‘wait a minute’, and grabbed her taser from her handbag. She stuck it in her pocket before she went to open the window. ”Who are you? How’d you get up here?”
The girl was dressed like the air was maybe fifty degrees warmer than it was, with jean-cut-offs that had suspenders running over her red tubetop. And up close, Chloe could see that her eyes had a very familiar color. “My name is Kara Zor-El. I’m Kal’s… cousin. I got up here by jumping. Can I come in?... please?”
Chloe backed up in disbelief. Kara took that as invitation. She floated gracefully through the window, at least until her foot caught on the windowsill. She recovered and rewarded herself with a tightly controlled smile as she landed. “Chloe Sullivan? You’re a friend of Clark, correct?”
“I know a lot of Clarks,” Chloe said. She’d been burned one too many times by people trying to root out Clark’s secret.
“The Clark who can do this.” Kara’s eyes went red and a sharp flash of light shot out of them. It punched through Clark’s wall before it terminated. With an embarrassed squeal, Kara covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Rao! Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that! Don’t tell Clark…”
“I won’t, I…” Even as she put out the fire with a blanket, Chloe boggled at Kara. “You’re a Kryptonian?”
“Yes. Kal found me on his voyage.”
“And he just… kept you under his hat?”
Kara frowned. “He didn’t… oh, you’re using an euphemism.” She laughed suddenly. “Imagine, me under his hat!”
Chloe shared a laugh with her. Something about Kara’s enthusiasm was contagious.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“Do you have any chocolate milk?”
“I could make some.”
Kara beamed.
***
Chloe cooked their hot cocoa on the stove, like her mother had done before the asylum. Already her mind was flittering through interview questions, more research for the article she’d never write, never win a Pulitzer for. ’I Spent The Night With Superman’? P-shaw. Try ‘I Grew Up With Superman’.
“I’d like to know about Clark,” Kara said. She was making her way through the kitchen, examining everything with open curiosity. Currently, she was inspecting the sharpness of a butcher knife.
“Kara, be careful with—“
Startled, Kara drove it into her finger, crunching the blade. “Oops! I’ll buy you another one, promise!”
“It’s okay. Honestly, I’m just happy you… exist. Maybe now Clark can finally feel like he belongs.”
Kara frowned, as if she’d just scented something foul. “You mean he didn’t before. Is that why he left?”
“Partly.” Chloe became greatly interested in serving the hot cocoa. “You’d probably be better off asking Clark.”
“I have. He won’t let me in. He’s so alone and…” Kara bit her lip, agony harshening her face. “I don’t know how to help him.”
Chloe pressed a mug of hot cocoa into Kara’s hand. Seeing the teenager in front of her, weighted down by a world not her own, took Chloe back all the way to Smallville.
She sat down at the kitchen table, gesturing for Kara to sit across from her. The table was still littered with the remains of both breakfast and lunch and that evening’s Gotham Gazette, but there was enough room for Kara to put her elbows down and rest her head in her hands. Her fingers were curled into fists; she looked at Chloe with slightly trembling excitement/intensity.
“Clark… never truly felt like he belonged. It was worse after Zod, but even before then… he couldn’t be both Clark and Superman, so he had to push people away in both identities. Never letting people get too close, never letting them know the real Clark. Or Kal, if you prefer.”
“I do,” Kara said, raising the mug to her lips.
“Don’t drink that, it’s still…”
“Hmm?”
“Never mind. Three Kryptonians, led by a nutball named General Zod, took over the Earth. He had a good old-fashioned reign of terror.”
”And Superman stopped him,” Kara said from a very faraway place.
“Yes. That’s not the whole story. You’ve heard of Lois?”
“Clark spoke… very highly of her,” Kara said carefully.
Chloe lowered her eyes, exhaled in a rush. “He gave up his powers to be with her.”
“Great Krypton!” Kara exclaimed, spewing chocolate milk.
Chloe wiped the other woman’s chin with that morning’s crossword puzzle. She was finished with it anyway. “Tell me about it. I can only imagine how happy he was, but he had to give that up to fight Zod. After that, every time he saw Lois, it must’ve been a reminder of what he lost.”
“Old wounds reopened… why not simply leave Metropolis? Not see her?”
“You’ve never met Lois, have you?” Chloe asked dryly.
Kara shook her head.
“Clark tries to live up to both his Kryptonian and human heritage. But Lois only loves Superman. Clark is invisible to her. Can you imagine standing beside someone, day after day, but when they look at you…” Chloe’s voice caught in her throat. Her eyes narrowed as she looked into the unnatural shade of blue in Kara’s irises, wistfully, longingly. “But when they see you…”
Kara took Chloe’s hand gently. “You love him, don’t you?”
Chloe expelled the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding with a blend of relief and renewed pain. “He’s very easy to fall in love with.”
“Does he know?”
“He can’t,” Chloe said vehemently. “Clark needs a friend, not a lover. And it would never work out between us.”
“Old wounds?”
Chloe nodded, a slow and solemn thing. “He blames himself for what happened to me.”
Kara was obviously curious about that, but she was more concerned with her next question: “Do you?”
Chloe looked up sharply from her downcast silence. “He always runs, Kara. No one can ever know, but he’s alive because he ran from Krypton. And he took that lesson to heart. When the chips are down, he runs. His father’s death, Lois… me… I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but just being able to say it…”
Kara nodded. “Thank you for your time.”
“You’re leaving? We’ve barely even…”
Kara was gone in a blur of air and, later, a booming sound. She left an empty mug.
***
“Extra, extra, read all about it!” Jimmy’s voice rung through the Daily Planet newsroom the next morning, as clear and loud as any rooster. “Lois Lane roasts Superman! Man of Steel is Man of Heel!”
Lois, who’d been standing next to him during his extra-loud proclamation, cleaned her ear out. “Jimmy, if there were any justice in the world, you would’ve been born when bow-ties were in fashion.”
Jimmy shrugged piteously, as if he had considered the problem and come to the same conclusion.
Lois kept moving, figuring a moving target would make it harder for her fellow reporters to single her out for criticism or—worse yet—praise.
Unfortunately, Jimmy had her scent. “A little hard on Big S, don’t you think? I think I can see Superman’s ears burning from here.”
“Eh?” Clark said, looking up sharply from his typewriter.
“Nothing, Mr. Kent.”
Richard left Perry White’s office, doing a little soft-shoes routine. “Lois Lane has done it again!” He danced over to her with an extra-wide grin and gave her a passionate kiss. The instant before their lips met, Lois thought she saw Clark giving the evil eye to Richard’s back, but then her eyes were closed and all she could think of was Richard.
“I just wish your uncle had let me go with my original title.”
Richard raised an eyebrow. “’Why the world still doesn’t need Superman’? I agree with him. After the space-flight, it would look ungrateful.”
“I’m not ungrateful.” Lois put a hand to her chest. “Who says I’m ungrateful? I just want to know if I’m supposed to be grateful for the five years he wasn’t here.”
“Would you rather he never came back?” Jimmy asked.
Lois and Richard gave him identical cold stares.
Lois spoke softly. “Everyone’s wondering how we can ever trust Superman after how he abandoned us. I just put it into print. I hadn’t, someone else would have.”
“But then it would’ve been someone else saying it.”
Clark. Lois stalked over to his desk and sat down on it. “What do you think, Kent? Was I too hard on the poor widdle Kryptonian?”
Clark stared so hard at his keyboard that he could’ve bored holes in it. His machine-gun typing had slowed to hunt and peck. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”
“Come on. The event of the 21st century and you don’t have an opinion? What kind of newsman are you?”
“I just report the facts. My personal feelings don’t enter into it.” His typing had regained its momentum.
“And mine do?”
Richard and Jimmy vacated the area. Everyone else stared very intently at their work.
“Why would they? Superman’s just a story to you.” Clark pounded the keys. “That’s why you’re winning a Pulitzer.”
Lois forced Clark to meet her eyes with a hand bluntly lifting his chin. ”You didn’t answer my question, smart guy. Am I being too hard on him?”
Clark’s eyes narrowed behind his thick glasses, then moved downward. “What he did was unforgivable. You don’t owe him anything. I… I’m sure he realizes that.”
Brought up short, Lois patted him on the cheek. “Thanks. At least someone gets me.”
Clark went back to his typing. It was only after she’d long since left and no one was paying attention to him again that he took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “More than you’ll ever know.”
***
As Kara returned to Kansas, she turned over Chloe’s words in her mind. From the Sullivan woman’s account, Kal-El had indeed been contaminated by Earth. How much so remained to be seen. But Kara had a feeling that the deciding factor would be why Kal had stood against the great Zod.
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,963
Characters/Pairings: Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Chloe Sullivan, Kara Zor-El, Richard White; mention of Clark/Lois, Clark/Chloe, and Richard/Lois
Previous Part: Chapter 8
Next Part: Chapter 10
Summary: Lex catches up with an old friend by the name of Clark Kent, Lois seeks closure on her relationship with Superman, and Chloe is the invisible woman – even with X-ray vision, Clark can’t see her.
At least one thing hadn’t changed while Clark had been gone. The Daily Planet was the same then as it had been since the turn of the last century, a beacon of hope and truth for the world. Sure, computers had replaced typewriters and the chairs were more ergonomic, but at its heart, the DP would never change.
When Clark got off the elevator, the entire staff seemed to be holding its breath.
“What’s up?” he asked Jimmy.
The photographer shushed Clark and jerked his head to Perry’s office. The rest of the newsroom was straining to hear, Lois with a stethoscope against the wall. Clark barely lifted his hearing to detect a voice from the past. A charming, brilliant voice; so very different from the Lex he’d confronted before. It was enough to make him fumble his Smallville Ledger mug. The crash was explosive, making everyone in the room look at him. It also neatly coincided with Lex sweeping out of Perry’s office.
The chief followed him out, the old bloodhound clamped down. When he got angry, Perry could rattle glass, and he was furious. He pointed the unlit cigar in his fist at Lex’s back, driving his words home. “I wouldn’t sell the Planet to you, Luthor, for all the vinyl in Graceland!”
Lex muttered something about the propaganda division of an alien invasion under his breath, audible only to Clark’s superhearing, then turned to Perry. “People in my way tend to have two choices. Stand at my side or be paved over. You’ve chosen the latter. Good luck with that.”
Lex stormed out, long experience letting Clark see the anger coming off him like radiation from decaying uranium. Involuntarily, Clark felt himself turning to follow Lex’s exit. Then his legs going, one foot in front of the other.
The hallway by the elevator was empty. Lex, in his dark suit and green tie, couldn’t have been more of a contrast to the earthy brown of Clark’s suit. Clark’s was rumpled, with the elbows wearing thin, while Lex’s looked like it hadn’t been worn until that morning.
“Don’t do it,” Clark said, somewhere lost between the larger-than-life baritone of Superman and the steely half-nebbishness of his own youth. “You’ve got enough of Metropolis in your hand, leave the Daily Planet alone.”
Lex scowled as he turned. “Clark… Kent? My memory’s actually taxed; it’s been a while. You’ve aged well.”
Clark’s face was set, unamused.
“Lighten up, Clark. I remember when you weren’t all business.” The elevator doors opened. “Ah, finally. Come on, I don’t have time for you to take the stairs, fitness freak.”
“What?”
“You’ve clearly got something to say and I’m scheduled for lunch. So, come on.”
Clark wanted to say he had nothing to say to Lex. He wanted to. Instead, he stepped into the elevator and descended.
On the way down, Lex got on the phone and told someone named Mercy to cancel with someone named Tess.
“Who’s Tess?” Clark asked.
“Nobody. Not even a supermodel, just the regular kind.”
“I never thought you were the womanizing type.”
“No, I’m looking for a deep emotional connection, just over in an hour or so. It’s a huge time-saver.” Lex pressed the ground floor button again. “I apologize, the stairs would’ve been quicker.”
“What happened to patience being a virtue?”
“I don’t like enclosed spaces. Superman once welded me inside a bank vault for seven hours while he dealt with a few bombs.” Lex’s voice shrank like something was eating away at it. “It was dark in there. Weird noises.”
“Oh.” Clark pushed his glasses up. “Well, I’m sure he would’ve freed you sooner if he could.”
“Stop looking for the best in people, Clark, it’s naïve. He did it to punish me. Judge, jury, and executioner. Just like with my father.”
Clark would’ve given anything to press the button and get off on the nearest floor. But that would leave Lex alone.
***
Lex put on a big, friendly smile as he walked through the streets of Metropolis – “Why would anyone want to fly above this?” – but all Clark could see were the armies of dark-suited bodyguards surrounding them and the cameras standing silent guard on every street corner. They had Lexcorp logos on their black casing.
“Why all the cameras?” he asked.
“The League of Shadows. It’s a terrorist organization… they were behind the fear toxin attacks in Gotham all those years ago. They blew up the Emperor Building while Superman was…” Lex paused drolly. “Detained. With him gone, someone had to step up to protect Metropolis. These cameras, the Team Luthor security force, and Lex Tower built right on top of ground zero. I let them know that Metropolis and the world wouldn’t cower before some personality cult out to destroy our way of life.”
“And the cameras help?”
“Superman has his X-ray vision, I have mine.”
“People just… put up with it?”
“You’d be surprised what they put up with. In 1984, Big Brother was a tyrant. In 2008, it’s a game show. How do you feel about Chinese food?”
***
Clark wasn’t expecting to be flown to China, but a pagoda on top of a skyscraper was still a bit much. He recognized the hostesses and serving customs as authentic, down to the jade tea they were served. The two men took off their jackets and sat cross-legged on mats, facing each other.
“It’s funny,” Lex said. “I remember us being so close, then we just sort of… drifted apart.” He sipped. ”Well, not funny so much as… What’ve you been doing lately?”
“Traveling. Tibet, Africa… trying to find myself.”
“Did you?”
“No.” He toyed with memories of Lois, picking at a scab. “I feel more lost than ever.”
They talked for what seemed like hours, about Smallville, about the past, even about Chloe. Lex’s charmingly tiny smile drizzled down into a somnambulistic tightening of the lips, even as Clark let his clenched jaw relax into almost a stupor. A pleased one. The only thing surprising him more than his own pining for the old days was how wistful Lex was, how gleefully he recounted starting his own business, making his first million, gazing up at the stars with Clark. Even then, Clark had been looking for a red star that no longer existed. He never had figured out what Lex was looking for.
“And to think I believed you a simple farmboy. You were far rarer than that.”
Clark raised an eyebrow. “Simple farmboy?”
“You’re a damn good reporter, Clark. And you’re not like the others, with their wars and their small-mindedness. You think. You feel. You’re awake.”
“I’m hardly alone in that,” Clark said, with a forced chuckle.
“You’d be surprised. I know why you feel lost, Clark. I know why everyone feels lost. There is no great depression to overcome, there is no great war to win, there is no great undertaking to accomplish. All our battles have been fought and won, if not by our forefathers, than by Superman. We have nothing worth dying for. And a man with nothing worth dying for has nothing worth living for.”
Lex was wrong. Clark had someone worth living for. He just couldn’t live with her. “And what would you die for?” Clark asked coolly.
“Earth’s safety and security,” Lex said; the most obvious thing in the world.
A disparaging noise made its way out of Clark’s throat. “You should be Superman’s ally instead of his… detractor.” Clark’s voice would’ve broken on ‘nemesis.’
“And you should be in my employ, not that of a tired old fool like White.” Lex had always been good at deflection, but Clark didn’t miss that he equated friendship with employment. Submission. “Newspapers are dead anyway. I’ll give you a blog on Lex News and twice whatever pocket change the Planet is paying you.”
“I can’t work for you, Lex.”
Leg’s gregariousness had always been a little off-putting, a little faked. The real Lex’s silence was infinitely more chilling. He broke it with a polite smile. “Why not?”
“There’s a darkness in you, Lex. You indulge it far too much.”
Lex stood abruptly. “There’s a war coming, Clark. I can’t protect you if you’re on the wrong side.”
Clark shook his head, grabbing Lex’s hand. “There doesn’t have to be a war. If you would just… just talk with Superman, a honest conversation taken at face value, I’m sure…”
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So what do you think superpowers do? It’s the way of the world, Clark. The strong prey on the weak. And Superman is so very strong…”
“What about your power, Lex? What do you think it’s done to you?”
That wintery Luthor silence took hold of Lex once more. He calmly brushed Clark’s hand away.
“There is a storm coming, Mr. Kent. You should stay indoors.”
***
There was a sharply delineated pain to having two faces, or two masks, which amounted to the same thing in Clark’s world. In his life, taking off his mask gave way to another mask. It made him feel like a hypocrite every time he chided Bruce for living alone in that fortress of his, not letting anyone in except for that enabling butler. At least Bruce had a butler. He just had his father’s ghost, sending him down Hamlet’s footprints.
The pain was this: Kal-El met everyone twice. He could hold no illusions about his place in their hearts, because he saw how they reacted to him one way and another. He knew there were people who would like him if he were more assertive, even if he really felt like he was humble and modest. And now, paradoxically, he knew someone who spat in one face while the other received… what?
Friendship? Brotherhood? Or just enough rope to hang himself. That was Lex’s stock-in-trade, after all.
The agony persisted as Superman did his rounds, while Clark Kent sat alone at home, watching TV or reading a book or whatever it was his co-workers thought he did. Everyone loved Superman, but Superman wasn’t him. It was some abstract ideal, someone for humanity to project, imprint themselves on. He was a symbol, but symbols didn’t have fingerprints, breaths, skin cells or follicles. And he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that people loved him better without those trappings of his personality.
There was, of course, one woman who knew him as both Clark and Superman. His mother had known him before the discovery of his powers had fragmented him, and Lois had rejected Clark for Superman when the choice had actually presented itself, but Chloe preferred his subtle sense of humor to his bombastic speeches on public safety. And of course, he’d alienated her too. Alienated. Funny little verb.
Kal-El let his senses stretch out one more time, casting a net over the Earth. There were no disasters large enough to demand his attention. Contrary to popular belief, there were long stretches of time when he could just… relax. Unless he wanted to foil every mugger in the world, and that way laid Zod. Clark well-remembered the accounts of how Zod had let his minions loose on criminals the world over. The body count had rivaled some epidemics.
“Good night, Earth,” he said, not that anyone could hear him in the vacuum of space. He gave the old girl one last fly-by, soaking up the unfiltered sun before he headed home..
***
It was just after dark when Clark showed up at Chloe’s doorstep. Her landlady buzzed up to tell her she had a ‘gentleman caller’. It’d been a while since Chloe could say that. She let Clark in and as soon as he was through the door it was like a weight came off his shoulders. He smiled widely and set down a plate of cookies.
“Had a run-in with an old friend. It sort of put me in mind of the past…” There was a little snowglobe Smallville contained in that word, ‘past’, and the way he looked at her. “I couldn’t stand leaving things like that with you.”
Chloe hugged him. “Aw, I can never stay mad at you.” She stepped back, a bit chagrinned. “I’ll get some milk.”
“I can—“
“No, I don’t want you to see my kitchen.”
“X-ray vision, Chlo.”
“You’re too nice to use it. If you weren’t, I’d be wearing much nicer—lead, lead underwear.” She quickly made her escape into the little kitchen of her apartment to pour them two big glasses of milk, casting a longing look to the six-pack in her refrigerator. “You mind eighty-sixing the glasses? They’re a little insulting.”
“Huh? Oh.” When she came back into the living room, Clark’s glasses were hanging from his collar. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
She made a breezy gesture. “No big. So, come on, out with it…”
“Out with what?”
“There must be some problem you need help solving. What is it?”
“I just wanted to see you.”
Chloe sighed as she sat back in her chair. “Clark, if I believed that…”
“It’s Lois…” Clark stood up, walking the apartment as if trying to keep out of Chloe’s eyeline. “I’m sorry, I wanted to… find time to be friends again before we got to her.”
“Clark, it’s okay. She’ll always be the number one woman in your life. You love her.”
“But I hurt her.”
You hurt a lot of people, Clark. “She’ll forgive you.”
“She wrote an article about how the world doesn’t need me. She got a Pulitzer for it.”
Chloe walked up to him. There was a sordid feel to it as she took hold of his broad shoulders, something about the way he remained carefully motionless that hurt worse than any other reaction, but the way he exhaled slowly…
“I really would like to go out sometime, once I have everything sorted out. Just get some buffalo wings, watch a movie, something.”
“That’d be nice,” Chloe agreed.
“But this thing with Lois… it’s like she’s left me behind. Like the whole world’s left me behind.”
“I’m still here.” Aren’t I enough?
“God bless you for that.” He patted the hand she had resting on his left shoulder.
“Maybe if you apologized to Lois… in person, I mean.”
“You think it would make a difference?”
“She loved you, Clark. Of course it would.”
“Then I should probably go.” He turned. “Enjoy the cookies.”
“I will. Oh, don’t forget.” She plucked his glasses from his collar and put them on his face. “Wouldn’t do to have people see Superman coming and going from my apartment. What would the neighbors think?”
***
Kara watched as Clark walked out of Chloe’s apartment, traveled a few blocks, then ducked down an alley and emerged as Superman. Interesting, how he went to the Earth female for counsel. Very interesting.
***
Don’t look at them, Lois told herself. There’s a reason Perry wouldn’t publish them. Just chalk it up to nostalgia and call it a mulligan and for God’s sake don’t compare apples to oranges and men to supermen. Pointless, stupid, biased. How was she supposed to tell the world what she felt about the space-flight disaster when she didn’t know what she felt? She felt a little bit of everything. And outside of Superman, she felt nothing. Numbness. Shock. The only cure was to remind herself how she had felt.
The files were in a locked drawer in her desk. She didn’t keep the key anywhere melodramatic like on a chain around her neck. In fact, she had lost it. She had to pick the lock with a paperclip to open it. The rollers would’ve needed oiling, if she ever planned to open the drawer again. Then again, she had said that when she first locked it.
Inside were the hard copies of articles never published and long since scoured from her hard drive. Lois didn’t need to read the text; it was burned into her brain. All she needed to do was read the article titles to bring it all rushing back.
”WHERE IS HE?”
“WHY'D YOU LEAVE US?”
“COME BACK.”
And the one she’d never even shown to Perry, just dashed out on Richard’s typewriter and thrown into the drawer that back then didn’t have a lock and cried the rest of the night: ”GOODBYE SUPERMAN.”
Lois set them out across the desk in chronological order, a journalistic record of grief and loss the only way she knew how to express it. A strong breeze stirred them, rattled her pencils, put out the cigarette she shouldn’t have been smoking. Lois took a deep breath and reminded herself it couldn’t be him, and then reminded herself it could be. She turned.
Superman was on her veranda.
She closed her robe over her nightgown. In the old days, she wouldn’t have. Not to seduce him, but just because she was so comfortable in his presence. Now, it was hard to forget how alien he was. What human could leave someone he loved and not say a word?
He walked toward her and, with a helpless expression, tapped on the glass. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, she bounded up to let him in. Gave him a giant smile, in fact. She hated herself for it, but it felt too good to regret.
Lois had a million questions and a billion things to say, but the only thing she could think to say was “How’d you find me?”
He pretended not to notice her tears as she hid her face and wiped them away; she loved him for it. “I’ll always know where you are.” He frowned, probably realizing how stalkerish that had come out.
Lois slapped him as hard as she could, and though by the pain in her hand she might as well have flicked a toothpick at him, the hurt look in his eyes told her she’d done damage. “You left!” she said viciously, shaking off the pained throbbing in her hand. “You didn’t even say goodbye…”
All that power and he couldn’t even meet her eyes. “I had to go.”
“Krypton?” She nodded at his shock. “It wasn’t even that hard to figure out. Astronomers find a signal and you start packing your bags. It was easier to believe that than some nut with Kryptonite…” She sniffled. “If Lex hadn’t been in prison, I…” She sniffled again, calming herself. “I understand. And I can forgive that. But I’ll never forgive you for the five years I spent looking up at the sky, not knowing if you were dead or alive. Star reporter like me and the one thing I couldn’t figure out was what mattered most…” She was openly crying now, digging through the drawers of her desk for a pack of tissues. Then she saw the articles, still laid out in the open, and shoveled them into the drawer. She shut it firmly.
Superman sat down on her couch, his head in his hands. Lois had never seen him so weighted down. “I have no right to ask for your forgiveness. I feel I owe you—all of you—an explanation.”
“On the record?”
He looked up, nodded dolefully.
“I’ll get my tape recorder.”
***
The plate of cookies Clark had bought were just starting to prove a serious temptation to Chloe when something slammed against the window. She turned, both grateful for the distraction and sorry for the poor bird that had just gotten a nosejob, to see that there was a girl standing on her fire escape. She was blonde, coltish, the kind of body made for cheerleading and swimsuit modeling. Those cookies weren’t looking so good now, not with the comparative junk in Chloe’s trunk. And she was knocking on Chloe’s window with her palm, not her knuckles.
Chloe held up a finger, ‘wait a minute’, and grabbed her taser from her handbag. She stuck it in her pocket before she went to open the window. ”Who are you? How’d you get up here?”
The girl was dressed like the air was maybe fifty degrees warmer than it was, with jean-cut-offs that had suspenders running over her red tubetop. And up close, Chloe could see that her eyes had a very familiar color. “My name is Kara Zor-El. I’m Kal’s… cousin. I got up here by jumping. Can I come in?... please?”
Chloe backed up in disbelief. Kara took that as invitation. She floated gracefully through the window, at least until her foot caught on the windowsill. She recovered and rewarded herself with a tightly controlled smile as she landed. “Chloe Sullivan? You’re a friend of Clark, correct?”
“I know a lot of Clarks,” Chloe said. She’d been burned one too many times by people trying to root out Clark’s secret.
“The Clark who can do this.” Kara’s eyes went red and a sharp flash of light shot out of them. It punched through Clark’s wall before it terminated. With an embarrassed squeal, Kara covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Rao! Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that! Don’t tell Clark…”
“I won’t, I…” Even as she put out the fire with a blanket, Chloe boggled at Kara. “You’re a Kryptonian?”
“Yes. Kal found me on his voyage.”
“And he just… kept you under his hat?”
Kara frowned. “He didn’t… oh, you’re using an euphemism.” She laughed suddenly. “Imagine, me under his hat!”
Chloe shared a laugh with her. Something about Kara’s enthusiasm was contagious.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“Do you have any chocolate milk?”
“I could make some.”
Kara beamed.
***
Chloe cooked their hot cocoa on the stove, like her mother had done before the asylum. Already her mind was flittering through interview questions, more research for the article she’d never write, never win a Pulitzer for. ’I Spent The Night With Superman’? P-shaw. Try ‘I Grew Up With Superman’.
“I’d like to know about Clark,” Kara said. She was making her way through the kitchen, examining everything with open curiosity. Currently, she was inspecting the sharpness of a butcher knife.
“Kara, be careful with—“
Startled, Kara drove it into her finger, crunching the blade. “Oops! I’ll buy you another one, promise!”
“It’s okay. Honestly, I’m just happy you… exist. Maybe now Clark can finally feel like he belongs.”
Kara frowned, as if she’d just scented something foul. “You mean he didn’t before. Is that why he left?”
“Partly.” Chloe became greatly interested in serving the hot cocoa. “You’d probably be better off asking Clark.”
“I have. He won’t let me in. He’s so alone and…” Kara bit her lip, agony harshening her face. “I don’t know how to help him.”
Chloe pressed a mug of hot cocoa into Kara’s hand. Seeing the teenager in front of her, weighted down by a world not her own, took Chloe back all the way to Smallville.
She sat down at the kitchen table, gesturing for Kara to sit across from her. The table was still littered with the remains of both breakfast and lunch and that evening’s Gotham Gazette, but there was enough room for Kara to put her elbows down and rest her head in her hands. Her fingers were curled into fists; she looked at Chloe with slightly trembling excitement/intensity.
“Clark… never truly felt like he belonged. It was worse after Zod, but even before then… he couldn’t be both Clark and Superman, so he had to push people away in both identities. Never letting people get too close, never letting them know the real Clark. Or Kal, if you prefer.”
“I do,” Kara said, raising the mug to her lips.
“Don’t drink that, it’s still…”
“Hmm?”
“Never mind. Three Kryptonians, led by a nutball named General Zod, took over the Earth. He had a good old-fashioned reign of terror.”
”And Superman stopped him,” Kara said from a very faraway place.
“Yes. That’s not the whole story. You’ve heard of Lois?”
“Clark spoke… very highly of her,” Kara said carefully.
Chloe lowered her eyes, exhaled in a rush. “He gave up his powers to be with her.”
“Great Krypton!” Kara exclaimed, spewing chocolate milk.
Chloe wiped the other woman’s chin with that morning’s crossword puzzle. She was finished with it anyway. “Tell me about it. I can only imagine how happy he was, but he had to give that up to fight Zod. After that, every time he saw Lois, it must’ve been a reminder of what he lost.”
“Old wounds reopened… why not simply leave Metropolis? Not see her?”
“You’ve never met Lois, have you?” Chloe asked dryly.
Kara shook her head.
“Clark tries to live up to both his Kryptonian and human heritage. But Lois only loves Superman. Clark is invisible to her. Can you imagine standing beside someone, day after day, but when they look at you…” Chloe’s voice caught in her throat. Her eyes narrowed as she looked into the unnatural shade of blue in Kara’s irises, wistfully, longingly. “But when they see you…”
Kara took Chloe’s hand gently. “You love him, don’t you?”
Chloe expelled the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding with a blend of relief and renewed pain. “He’s very easy to fall in love with.”
“Does he know?”
“He can’t,” Chloe said vehemently. “Clark needs a friend, not a lover. And it would never work out between us.”
“Old wounds?”
Chloe nodded, a slow and solemn thing. “He blames himself for what happened to me.”
Kara was obviously curious about that, but she was more concerned with her next question: “Do you?”
Chloe looked up sharply from her downcast silence. “He always runs, Kara. No one can ever know, but he’s alive because he ran from Krypton. And he took that lesson to heart. When the chips are down, he runs. His father’s death, Lois… me… I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but just being able to say it…”
Kara nodded. “Thank you for your time.”
“You’re leaving? We’ve barely even…”
Kara was gone in a blur of air and, later, a booming sound. She left an empty mug.
***
“Extra, extra, read all about it!” Jimmy’s voice rung through the Daily Planet newsroom the next morning, as clear and loud as any rooster. “Lois Lane roasts Superman! Man of Steel is Man of Heel!”
Lois, who’d been standing next to him during his extra-loud proclamation, cleaned her ear out. “Jimmy, if there were any justice in the world, you would’ve been born when bow-ties were in fashion.”
Jimmy shrugged piteously, as if he had considered the problem and come to the same conclusion.
Lois kept moving, figuring a moving target would make it harder for her fellow reporters to single her out for criticism or—worse yet—praise.
Unfortunately, Jimmy had her scent. “A little hard on Big S, don’t you think? I think I can see Superman’s ears burning from here.”
“Eh?” Clark said, looking up sharply from his typewriter.
“Nothing, Mr. Kent.”
Richard left Perry White’s office, doing a little soft-shoes routine. “Lois Lane has done it again!” He danced over to her with an extra-wide grin and gave her a passionate kiss. The instant before their lips met, Lois thought she saw Clark giving the evil eye to Richard’s back, but then her eyes were closed and all she could think of was Richard.
“I just wish your uncle had let me go with my original title.”
Richard raised an eyebrow. “’Why the world still doesn’t need Superman’? I agree with him. After the space-flight, it would look ungrateful.”
“I’m not ungrateful.” Lois put a hand to her chest. “Who says I’m ungrateful? I just want to know if I’m supposed to be grateful for the five years he wasn’t here.”
“Would you rather he never came back?” Jimmy asked.
Lois and Richard gave him identical cold stares.
Lois spoke softly. “Everyone’s wondering how we can ever trust Superman after how he abandoned us. I just put it into print. I hadn’t, someone else would have.”
“But then it would’ve been someone else saying it.”
Clark. Lois stalked over to his desk and sat down on it. “What do you think, Kent? Was I too hard on the poor widdle Kryptonian?”
Clark stared so hard at his keyboard that he could’ve bored holes in it. His machine-gun typing had slowed to hunt and peck. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”
“Come on. The event of the 21st century and you don’t have an opinion? What kind of newsman are you?”
“I just report the facts. My personal feelings don’t enter into it.” His typing had regained its momentum.
“And mine do?”
Richard and Jimmy vacated the area. Everyone else stared very intently at their work.
“Why would they? Superman’s just a story to you.” Clark pounded the keys. “That’s why you’re winning a Pulitzer.”
Lois forced Clark to meet her eyes with a hand bluntly lifting his chin. ”You didn’t answer my question, smart guy. Am I being too hard on him?”
Clark’s eyes narrowed behind his thick glasses, then moved downward. “What he did was unforgivable. You don’t owe him anything. I… I’m sure he realizes that.”
Brought up short, Lois patted him on the cheek. “Thanks. At least someone gets me.”
Clark went back to his typing. It was only after she’d long since left and no one was paying attention to him again that he took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “More than you’ll ever know.”
***
As Kara returned to Kansas, she turned over Chloe’s words in her mind. From the Sullivan woman’s account, Kal-El had indeed been contaminated by Earth. How much so remained to be seen. But Kara had a feeling that the deciding factor would be why Kal had stood against the great Zod.
