Hey, everybody! Holy cow, it's been a long time since I was able to update. Geez. Well, I'm back at school for spring semester, joy of joys, and hopefully I'll have internet back on my laptop soon. Looking forward to that—I just have to bring it to the tech guys sometime this week so they can force the anti-virus spyware stuff to update and therefore get the school's stupid internet access program to accept my codes. Having tons of fun with that.
Anyway, enjoy the chapters—they were fifty pages long altogether before I got the spacing worked out… I guess you could say I had a lot of downtime over break—it was quite nice :) More good news: I've got the rest of the story basically planned out now, so once my internet gets working properly and this new semester settles into a routine updates should be more regular.
- - -
A brief summary because it's been so darn long: Richard is recovering from a gunshot wound, Lois just spent a day and night in the hospital after Superman pulled her out of an underground bunker for smoke inhalation. There's a hit out on Lois and Clark—Perry decided it wasn't safe for them to be in Metropolis. With some help, the pair of them, Richard, and Jason 'disappeared' from Met. General and took several trains and a taxi to Gotham to spend the night at Wayne Manor before heading to Smallville to hide out. As it is, they just arrived at the mansion.
Richard, Lois, and Jason trailed behind Alfred as he showed them through the mansion. Alfred had brought the bags directly to the two bedroom guest suite the three of them would be spending the night in, then met them in the foyer to begin the tour. Bruce had met them there, introducing himself, graciously turning away their thanks and the outpouring of compliments on his richly but tastefully decorated foyer. Clark and Bruce had gone in the opposite direction when Alfred had begun the tour, ending up in the study off Bruce's bedroom (as opposed to his more public study located on the ground floor).
"Thank you, again, Bruce, for putting us up for the night," Clark said when the door was closed behind them.
"Anything I can do to help," Bruce smirked; "I owe you enough to keep me paying you back 'til my dying day."
"Bruce," Clark rolled his eyes. He had gotten his rich friend out of more than a few sticky situations, in both personas. "That's a bit of an exaggeration…"
"No, think about it: you did all the work on the foundation improvements, you saved my skin that time with the Joker, and that second time with the Joker, then there was that time when every paper in the world was after an interview and you figured out all the wording…"
"I still think it's an exaggeration."
"Doesn't matter what you think," Bruce informed him, and Clark chuckled before lapsing into a contemplative silence. "What's on your mind?"
Clark sat in one of the plush leather chairs in front of the desk, spending another moment in silence before speaking. He'd told Bruce everything he knew when he'd visited to get permission to bring the others to spend the night, while Lois was still in the drug-induced recuperative sleep and Perry had come to the decision that they shouldn't be in Metropolis anymore. Lois's waking information had changed things, though.
"Lois overheard the men who kidnapped her talking about Jason."
"What about him?" Bruce prompted immediately, taking the other seat on the far side of the desk and facing his friend.
"They were supposed to have kidnapped Jason, not Lois. The Boss—we're pretty sure that's Luthor, no solid evidence, though—had ordered them to kidnap him so that they could get on with the experiments. Apparently the entire purpose of kidnapping any kids at all was for some sort of an experiment."
"Then why did they kill that girl?"
"I don't know. She was more trouble than she was worth? I can't say I really understand the way these… people think," he sighed, leaning back in the chair and running a distressed hand through his hair. It stuck up at even weirder angles than it normally did, Superman's rebellious curl falling forward onto his forehead in more prominence. Bruce watched without speaking for another moment.
"If it's Lex Luthor, you know exactly how he thinks."
"We can't make that assumption."
"You can use it to your advantage," Bruce said calmly. Clark sat in his chair, glasses in one hand, the other balled into a fist supporting his chin. Bruce stood and poured them each generous helpings of brandy in expensive cups, adding ice to his own. He held Clark's out in front of the Kryptonian's face for a moment before Clark took it. Bruce was surprised when the man didn't finish it off in a single gulp, instead having a thoughtful sip, staring darkly at the desk.
"It's my fault, Bruce—I left Lois and Jason here alone, Lois didn't trust me enough when I came back to take me with her to the Vanderworth estate and onto the yacht, which ended up being how Luthor found out about Jason. Now all these kids have been taken away from their families because that sick man wants to use them in an experiment against my son…"
"Yes, it is all your fault," Bruce agreed. Clark turned startled eyes up to his friend, getting a gravely smirk and steady eyes. "Now what are you going to do about it?"
- - -
Lois lay on the perfectly soft mattress, drowning in the down comforter and well-fluffed pillows. Jason was sound asleep against her side, acting as a miniature heater. That was one similarity to his father she didn't mind—the huge strange house was freezing, the air conditioner working overtime to counteract the summer's warmth that only faded slightly with the night. She sighed, thoughts of Jason's father brought to mind her romantic life at large, her complicated romantic life.
She'd never been much for thinking of her love life, or anybody else's for that matter, in great depth. She'd never really had one until college, anyway. All the girls she'd gone to high school with had been obsessed with boys and couples—who was doing what with who, who wasn't doing what, what the other person thought of that, who was single, why they were single, how long they'd been single… She'd been the quiet one, shying away from those conversations, doing her homework, refusing to do her friends' homework unless they paid her a hearty sum. She'd never admit that last bit to Clark, though, as it would spoil her jibes at him for being a geek.
She'd had one boyfriend in high school, and he'd dumped her because she wouldn't put out—apparently her self-confidence and ability to speak to boys had everybody thinking she was sexually superior, probably having lost her virginity to one of the military men under her father's command. She didn't comment on those rumors, graduating a virgin.
College had been another game entirely. Relationships were more serious, more real in her opinion. Her roommate, Abby Swartz—the girl she'd roomed with for all four years, obsessed with kung-fu movies and even more cynical than Lois, and was still in contact with though she lived in Washington state with her accountant husband and four kids—made it her life goal to set Lois up with a suitable guy to get the virginity thing over with. Lois had, reluctantly, allowed it and fallen in love with a sophomore math major named Warren Dexter. He'd broken her heart; she'd sworn off the male sex and taken over the school newspaper. That worked really well until she'd hired a guy named Colin Williams as an ads manager and he'd taken her out on three dates before she'd even realized what was happening. She'd dated Colin through college, even fantasizing about spending the rest of her life with him. Abby had thought she'd lost her mind and was happy for her.
Then Colin had told her he was gay.
She'd cried for a long time, consumed more cookie dough ice cream than she'd ever admit to, and moved to a tiny apartment in downtown Metropolis and took Perry White up on the job offer he'd left standing since her last summer interning at the Daily Planet. It had been the one between her junior and senior years at college when he'd just risen to the position of editor-in-chief.
At her entry-level job at the Planet and all the way through to the day she'd gone to Niagara Falls with Clark, she'd only casually dated a few guys she came across at work. There was nothing serious, no sex—that tended to put a few guys who took her out off.
Suffice to say, she'd never been in quite so complicated a situation so far as her love life was concerned.
First, there was Richard. The man who had been her rebound from Superman even though she hadn't known she'd been on the rebound. What she'd meant to be a one night stand had turned into a five year relationship, a three year prolonged engagement. They'd raised a son together. She'd thought she was happy. He'd stuck to her even though, she knew, her behavior bordered on intolerable from time to time; she was hell to deal with when she was chasing down a lead, especially when she was learning to be a mother at the same time.
Then there was Superman. He'd left her. She hadn't even known they'd been together, which was another thing that was his fault. She had never crushed over somebody so hard as she had over him. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined ever having more than a professional relationship with him, and that was all she could stand to have after. She would always trust him—how could she not?—but he had betrayed her, and she couldn't trust him with her heart.
Then, there was Clark. He'd been her best friend for years. He had said goodbye before leaving, even sent post cards (even though they had been vague and cheesy). He had stepped back into the space he, and Superman, had left and filled the space amazingly well. He got along with Jason better than anybody but Richard. And she liked him. A lot. He was Clark. He was safe, he was trustworthy, he was comfortable, he was uncomplicated, he was, not harmless, but secure. And she really liked him.
But she was engaged to Richard. Richard was stable. He presented a traditional lifestyle, he was part of her and Jason's routines. But he wasn't Clark.
When did I start comparing Richard to Clark? When did I stop comparing him to Superman?
She had kissed Clark, though. That even her restless mind wasn't ready to think about yet.
Lois snorted, slipping away from Jason and tucking the mass of blankets around him. He hardly stirred. Despite his nap on the train ride, the stress of the past few days and the excitement of the tour of the mansion had exhausted him enough to put him straight to sleep. He wouldn't wake 'til morning short of natural disaster.
She dug through her suitcase until she found her robe and put it on before padding out into the house, glad for the fluffy slipper-socks she'd put on before bed, knowing she'd get complaints from Jason about her cold toes if she didn't. He'd insisted on sleeping with her because it was a new place and he was still shaken up about her recent kidnapping.
For lack of anything better to do while her mind tumbled over itself and kept her awake, Lois began wandering. She was drawn through the house by a strange clanging noise. She remembered the basics from the tour with Alfred—there was a bathroom as part of their suite, but the other 'public' bathroom was down the hall to the left; Bruce's bedroom was in an entirely different wing of the house that she wasn't sure she could find if she tried; Clark was staying a few doors down from the other bathroom, she didn't have the guts to poke her head in and see if he was asleep; Alfred slept in a room on the ground floor she hadn't been shown; the rest of the rooms on the ground floor were common areas, the kitchen, the dining room, the ballroom, Bruce's study, a few rooms that reminded her of a museum…
The clanging was coming from downstairs, so she found some stairs and went down them. Following the noise led her to a part of the house she wasn't familiar with, feeling like an investigative journalist for the first time since her kidnapping. There were voices along with the clanging, two deep men's voices, a third that wasn't quite as deep and had a British accent.
So Clark wouldn't have been in his room if I'd peeked.
The door looked like any other in the house, big and wooden with a bit of decorative carving to label it apart from the bedrooms, and it wasn't locked. Lois let herself in.
The room beyond was huge. The main floor was the size and situation of half a high school gymnasium, the other third of the room was taken up by stadium-style benches also reminiscent of a high school gym, though the benches were wider than those she'd seen in any high school and more comfortable-looking. There was a single door on the far wall, open to reveal a dark closet space within. Alfred sat in the bleachers a few rows up, talking though Lois couldn't make out the specific words over the clanging of the blades in Bruce and Clark's hands.
The gym floor was padded, boundaries for sports Lois didn't know in paint on the pads. Clark and Bruce were paying them no attention, though it didn't look like they were using traditional blades. Fencing rapiers lay, hilts out, on the level of bleachers closest to the mats next to Clark's glasses. The swords Bruce and Clark were using looked like Samurai swords to Lois's eyes, curved slightly with two-handed grips. The men wore dark grayish body suits and boots, Clark's gloves were red, Bruce's were black. To protect their eyes, both wore ridiculous-looking sports goggles.
It wasn't their appearances that surprised Lois, though, it was their talent with the blades they were handling. They never stood still. Always moving. Always feinting in one direction or the other, always moving to catch the other feinting. The sabers whistled through the air as the men twitched them this way and that, clanging together and making sparks in some cases. Lois's first instinct was to warn them that they were going to poke each others' eyes out, then she remembered the God-awful goggles. Her chuckle attracted Alfred's attention and Clark's head seemed to twitch, but he was distracted immediately by a blade that swished past his head; he twisted with agility Lois had long suspected he possessed and equally as long doubted her suspicion.
"Agh! Almost gotcha," Bruce growled, dancing away from Clark's returning swipe. Clark chuckled deep in his throat, backing off a bit to circle around. Bruce crouched, pivoting around to keep Clark in sight.
Lois wrapped her robe a little tighter and made her way over to sit next to Alfred. The butler had a sudoku book and pen, a large first aid kit sitting next to him, he was glancing up at the younger men fighting each time he filled in a square.
"Brave man," Lois observed as she sat down on the bleacher next to him. Alfred looked up, eyes twinkling though his face was curious.
"Why do you say that?"
"Filling out one of those things in pen."
Alfred raised an eyebrow, looking down at his sudoku book, the puzzle he was working on only had a few blank spaces left; he had only scratched out one number, changing a nine to a seven in the upper left box.
"It is more of a challenge in ink," Alfred said with a smile, glancing up with a harsh look when Bruce cried out at the center of the floor.
"Fuck man," Bruce said, twisting away and looking at his forearm, where a thin line of red had swelled up.
"I win," Clark said, chuckling again before sticking his saber between his arm and his side to have free hands to have a look at the cut.
"You always win, and you always get me in the same freakin' place," Bruce said, halfway between a whine and a chuckle. He examined his arm, eyebrows creased.
"Yeah, well—suck it in," Clark ordered. Alfred was at their elbow with the first aid kit, ignoring their banter and handing Clark the antibacterial and a gauze pad. Bruce had pulled off the jacket, leaving only a sweaty tank top and his exposed bloody forearm.
"At least I don't need stitches this time," Bruce said, shrugging the arm that wasn't being treated by his friend. Clark finished taping the gauze in place and gave the bandage a not-so-gentle pat. Bruce pulled away, inspecting the arms momentarily. "Hey, you're pretty good at getting the bandaid in the right spot, but you suck at stitches."
"It didn't scar," Clark pointed out. Bruce rolled his eyes.
"Hurt like hell."
"But it didn't scar. What kind of a billionaire playboy would you be if you had a saber scar on your forearm?"
"A mysterious one," Bruce countered, having a last look at his forearm before taking a last piece of tape from Alfred and sticking it to the gauze.
"I'm sure you're a mysterious billionaire without saber scars, sir," Alfred observed, snapping the first aide kit closed and turning back toward where Lois was watching on the second bleacher.
"Nice goggles."
"Clark's are prescription," Bruce said with a grin, pulling off his goggles and managing to make his sweaty hair poke out at odd angles. Lois shook her head at him.
"Of course they are. He can't see a bloody thing without two inches of glass between him and the world."
Bruce let out a hearty guffaw at that, turning to give Clark a look. Clark rolled his eyes as he turned away, pulling off the goggles while he was facing away from Lois and putting on his regular glasses. He was all sweaty too, nice and tired; there was kryptonite in the thread of his fencing jacket, just enough to make him vulnerable and knock out his 'super' strength and speed. His hearing and vision weren't what they normally were when he wore the jacket either, though they weren't completely gone. He was prone to nosebleeds if he wore the jacket too long, and his joints usually ached after awhile.
He pulled the jacket off, tossing it on the bench next to the fencing swords and grabbed a water bottle. It was nice to be thirsty for once. Lois stared at his bare arms—he was wearing a tank top just the same as Bruce—and wondered if all farm boys had such well defined arms. Bruce saw the look and caught Clark's eye; Clark couldn't help but flush slightly, clearing his throat.
"So, what're you doing up, Lois?"
"Overactive mind, already been trapped in a bed for twenty-four hours, son's a living space heater and can't fall asleep," Lois shrugged, she was examining Alfred's discarded sudoku book with the penned in numbers. "You have too many nines."
"I have not," Alfred said, taking the book from her indignantly and looking over his numbers. "See, that's an eight," he pointed to one of the number she'd thought was his extra nine.
"Oh."
There was a silence while Alfred filled in the last few blank spaces of his puzzle and put the book in his inner coat pocket. "I'll go warm up the coffee, then, shall I, Master Wayne?"
"Thanks, Alfred," Bruce said, reclining on the lowest bleacher, lazily examining the grip of one of the fencing swords, the blade pointing down. He picked at a bit of nothing for a moment before putting it next to its partner and looking at the two standing awkwardly in the room with him.
Bruce wasn't used to seeing Clark so awkward; he wasn't sure if it was because Lois was there and he was acting the part of bumbling office-Kent, or if it was because Lois was there and he really was that inept around her. He cocked an eyebrow at Clark when Lois wasn't looking, getting the barest hint of a shrug in return.
"So, why're you two having coffee, of all things, warmed up for you at this late hour?" Lois asked, sighing dramatically and sitting down a ways away from Bruce, focusing her attention on Clark.
"Er…"
"Master Wayne, there's a call for you on the office line, sir," Alfred said, appearing in the doorway out of nowhere.
"Thank you, Alfred; I'll take it upstairs," Bruce said, getting to his feet and striding out the door with a glance at Clark. Clark had that distant look on his face that he got when he was listening to things far away, though the nearness of the kryptonite in his jacket significantly hindered his listening abilities.
"Would you two still like the coffee, Master Kent?"
"Yeah, I think so," Clark said, glancing at Lois. Every muscle in her body tensed at the glance. Alfred glanced between them before disappearing from the doorway after Bruce.
Clark turned away from Lois, unable to miss her racing pulse as it was one of the only things he could hear. Moving slowly, deliberately taking his time, Clark gathered the swords and his jacket, and brought them into the room at the far end of the gym. The lights blinked on when he entered, motion sensors. Lois could see more swords, antique-looking armor, a case of strange looking spiked daggers she could've sworn she'd seen in one of Abby's kung-fu movies.
Her interest was piqued. What would a playboy billionaire want with such old-fashioned weapons? What would he be doing playing dead in a temple in Tibet? What was Clark, of all people, doing there?
Clark was dreading his return to the main gym. They had a lot to get through; the question was how much they would actually talk about and how much they would be adding to the elephant growing between them.
Sucking it up, Clark walked out the door—his heightened senses and the usual fully charged feeling returning to him as soon as the kryptonite in the jacket was a room away—and locked the storage room behind him. Lois was still sitting on the lower bleacher, her posture distracted, thoughtful, and a little tired.
"Should I tell Alfred to put the coffee on the back burner 'til morning? I should probably shower before anything else, and we can always talk later if you'd rather just go to bed…?"
"No," Lois said decisively, her eyes taking on a determined light. "We should talk about—before,—before we get to Smallville."
"Y-yeah," Clark said, clearing his throat.
"I'll wait in the kitchen, then?"
"What?"
"While you shower. I'll wait in the kitchen."
"Oh. Okay, good idea."
They walked out, Clark turning to go toward the back stairs to get up to his room and his fresh clothes and the shower, but Lois stopped when they were outside the door.
"Er," she said, making Clark stop at the corner to look back at her, a questioning look on his face. "How do I get to the kitchen from here?"
Clark chuckled and gave her directions before taking the stairs two at a time and heading for his room.