It turned out that Jason was the one to force Lois to communicate with Clark beyond perfunctory work conversations and 'you need to pick up/watch Jason at such-and-such a time.' On September first, a Monday, Jason began first grade, and he insisted they both be present to see him off. He would be taking the bus for the very first time, having been driven to the preschool-level.
Lois had gone into full-on mother mode, the look she sent Clark upon his arrival daring him to mention it. She'd had a camera out and was photo-documenting the morning. Jason had a brand new outfit—first graders were required to wear the school uniform—and everything: gray slacks and shiny black shoes with a button-up, pale blue shirt and an adorable little navy jacket over a dark gray sweater-vest.
Clark couldn't imagine wearing a similar getup when he had attended the first grade. Of course, his school experience and childhood in general had been very different to Jason's. Jason's life was already very different from Lois's as well, Clark reflected, watching her snap photos and fuss over his hair and collar, making sure he had his sack lunch and milk money.
Jason beamed despite the rain as they all walked down the street to his bus stop together, Lois holding an umbrella over herself and Jason, Clark walking next to them under his own. Other children in the neighborhood were gathering at their bus stops, too, with colorful umbrellas held over them. There was a handful other kids in the neighborhood that went to Metropolis Private with Jason, all of them arriving with their parents and mingling with each other. The public school bus stop was just a few driveways down on the other side of the street, swarming with kids and parents as well. The parents at both stops were tenser than they had been in years previously, looking around more frequently, fussing over their children more—the existence of the Napper Neighborhood, despite the recent reprieve in kidnappings, had them all on edge.
Clark had to admit that he was more wary than he'd expected to be, too. He searched the faces in the crowd, matching them up with houses, spouses, and children. Nobody was out of place, he relaxed. To one side of him, Lois relaxed a little bit as well.
"Bye, Mom! Bye, Dad!" Jason said, hugging them both tightly when the bus pulled up to the stop.
"Bye, Jason; be good, have fun!" Lois said, holding him tightly just long enough for Jason to begin squirming, watching glumly as he turned and hugged Clark, too.
"Bye, Jason," Clark repeated, giving the boy a pat on his back as he hopped off the curb and got on the bus, oblivious to the wet. "See you later."
Jason waved from the window, grinning broadly at the pair of them. Then the bus disappeared around the corner. The other parents were making their way back to their houses, hurrying to get out of the rain and into their hybrid cars to buzz off to work or to return to their morning paper and coffee. Beside him, Lois seemed to be forcing herself not to cry. Clark found himself x-raying through the houses and watching the bus continue its route. Jason was sitting in his seat next to a boy from down the block, talking about how awesome Batman was.
"I do this every year," Lois said, seeming angry with herself, when Clark finally reigned his senses in and looked at her. Without thinking, he reached out and squeezed her should gently before following her back to the house she used to share with Richard in silence.
They entered the house, flapping out umbrellas in the foyer, hanging jackets up to dry. It was still early; they had time before their days had to begin.
After an awkward moment, Lois retreated to the kitchen to make tea. Clark, not sure what else to do with himself, followed.
Lois kept her eyes on her task, glaring at the kettle as she waited for the water to heat up. Clark, not sure what he was supposed to do with himself but unwilling to leave, looked at the kettle as well. After a minute, he took off his glasses, as they were smeared with rain anyway, and set them on the center island so that he could use his heat vision and speed up the process.
Lois didn't seem to notice that the kettle whistled faster than it usually did. If she did, she ignored it. She poured out two mugs and set them to steeping, then she finally looked at Clark; she seemed entranced by the fact that he wasn't wearing his glasses. She couldn't look away.
"You lied to me," she finally said, bracing herself with both hands on the island between them and glaring her best glare. The one that made him feel small and insignificant and as though he had a scrap of something embarrassing from his last meal clinging to his face.
"I did," he confirmed, standing with his arms at his sides across the island. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with any of his body parts—hands at his sides, in his pockets, folded across his chest? stand square on both feet, lean to one side or the other, lean on the table? tilt his head to the side, keep it straight forward, look down at his feet? The awkward farmboy part of his office persona had never been that large of a stretch from reality.
"You're Jason's father."
"I am."
"You're from Kansas."
"Yes."
Lois glared at him for another moment before she began pacing, biting her thumb nail, obviously trying to reconcile everything she knew about Clark with everything she knew about Superman. It looked like it hurt.
"I think I'm in love with you," she said, stopping the pacing to look at him from across the island again, and he could tell that she meant it, but she said it like she was telling him she had gangrene eating her foot off.
"I love you, Lois. I love you so much I don't have the words," he stopped, seeing as his voice was about to crack with the emotion of the statement, meanwhile his inner journalist wanted to kill him for the cliché.
"But I don't know you!"
"You know me better than anybody."
"What about Bruce Wayne?"
"He's been my friend for a long time," Clark allowed, shifting a bit, leaning casually against the island, deciding to be comfortable with the conversation because there was no way out of it. "He has a certain insight; however, you know more about me, my stories, my personality, both personalities…"
She sat down in the chair across from him; he could see the gears turning behind her eyes. He wondered how long she had been thinking on these things, how many circles she'd put herself through before finally breaking down and talking to him.
"I don't know who I'm in love with," she sighed, her face in her hands.
The statement sufficiently killed the mood Clark had forced. "I understand," he admitted hating that he did, hating that his thoughts directed him to some petty Lois with blue and red stars in her eyes, dazzled by the flying man in spandex and a cape.
"Do you?"
"Would you like to keep putting the puzzle together or would you like another piece?" he asked only somewhat sadly, unable to keep from smirking.
"Screw your puzzle, your puzzle sucks."
He chuckled, but sobered quickly, speaking when she met his eyes again; "You were in love with an illusion."
There was a moment of silence as he watched comprehension dawn behind her eyes, tears forming anew.
"Is that what you thought?"
"I had to leave, I couldn't go back to the old status-quo, and all the other options put you in too much pain."
"You left me alone and pregnant because you thought it would help my emotional well-being?"
"I didn't know you were pregnant!"
"You would'veif you'd stayed?"
"I was an idiot. I was, I am, in love!"
They were quiet for a long time. Clark couldn't think of anything to say, so he watched Lois' eyes as they went glassy, focusing down on her hands resting again on the island countertop without seeing them.
"Earth to Lois," he finally said, reaching over and touching her hands to snap her out of it. They didn't have much time—never did, it was always work (he had to be in for the morning meeting, she was due in court for the last of her testimony in Joe's trial) or somebody needing Superman's help or some other interruption— and once they'd begun there were certain things that needed to be said. It gave him a small bit of hope, though, when she didn't snatch her hands away from his touch.
"Shouldn't it be 'Krypton to Lois,' coming from you?"
"What?"
"You're from Krypton, not Earth. Shouldn't it be 'Krypton to Lois'?"
"I suppose…?"
"How could you lie to me like that?" she asked, switching gears too quickly for him to follow. She'd gone from thoughtful to snarky to angry in the space of a minute and he wasn't sure how to react.
"It's more complicated than that and you know it."
"Exactly!"
"What?"
"Ex-actly."
"Lois, I'm having trouble following prettymuch every part of this conversation."
Lois took a calming breath before starting to pace again. Again, Clark watched her, not sure what to do with himself. He settled for staying still as he was, eyes following her progress from one side of the room to the other.
"I know how complicated all this is. You said yourself that I know you better than anybody," he wasn't contradicting her, but her shoulders were set, on the defensive. "But I feel like I don't know you at all!
"I knew the hero from before you left, even if I try to avoid you know, and I knew the klutz from the office from before, and I know you now. Hell, I fell in love with you all over again. Do you know, do you have any idea, how frustrating that is?
"And then to realize, remember, that you're the same person?!
"Before, I had my suspicions. I had my plots; I remember that. And you were entertained by it; we flirted ALL THE TIME! It worked!
"This time, these past months, you were two different people. I could be fuming angry at Superman, and kissing Clark, or thinking about kissing you, or…" she cut herself off by angrily swiping away a few tears. Clark wanted to move around the island and hug her, but he knew better. He settled for a nervous sort of shift of his feet.
"And then to remember," she took a shuddering breath and stopped pacing to look at him. "To remember the flirting and romance—to remember what it felt like to be loved by all of you…"
"All of me never stopped loving you, Lois."
"But you left!" she cried. "You took those happy memories and left me empty and confused. And both parts of you left—my best friend was suddenly gone, too. Both halves of my support system went missing when I discovered I was pregnant and needed you. Then there was only poor Jimmy, and it was too much for him; and the boss' nephew who I'd had a one night stand with before I knew who he was!"
"I'm sorry; I'm so sorry."
"I know you are!" she flung herself back at the counter, leaning heavily against it. They were quiet.
"I'll leave, if you want me to," he finally, reluctantly, offered.
"Clark!" she looked like she was about to get up and hit him over the head. "That's the problem!"
"What?"
"I don't want you to leave!"
"You don't?"
"No!"
"But I hardly deserve to even be near you, after what I put you through…"
"Quit being so selfish!"
"What?"
"You're only thinking of yourself! How you don't deserve to be here, how you have all these heavy secrets to keep for yourself."
"But, Lois, being around me made you miserable."
"I remember."
"So?"
"I was more miserable without you."
"What?"
"Leaving is NOT the solution. Especially not with Jason around. He needs you as much as I do."
"You need me around?" he was honestly confused beyond belief. Lois Lane admit she needed somebody? Needed him?
"Yes. I do." It looked like the most difficult admission she'd ever made.
"Oh."
She laughed but sobered quickly.
"Clark," she fixed him with a very serious look that made him nervous. "I need to be able to get mad at you without worrying that you'll erase my memory and leave the planet."
"I'm never going to leave the planet again, no matter how mad you are at me."
"And my memory?"
"I won't mess with your memory again. Unless you tell me to."
"Why would I… Clark," she rolled her eyes, exasperated with him. "I'm never going to want you to erase yourself from my life."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"I don't get it," he admitted. She said nothing. "How can you still love me? Still stand to even be in the same room as me/"
"I'm so mad at you I can hardly stand to be in the same room as you," she said, glaring harshly. It didn't help clarify anything for Clark; he almost offered to leave the room. "But I love you too much to want you gone forever."
He blinked at her.
"I'm mad that you left, that you took my memories without permission, that you lied to me when you came back, that you would've kept on lying to me—don't deny it," she was glaring, but she was calm. He was in uncharted territory and he wasn't sure that was a good thing. "I'm mad that you wouldn't even give me a choice, a chance!"
He blinked again.
"And I'm mad because I'm still in love with you despite all that," she said it so quietly and looked so very put out that, again, he wanted to move around the counter and give her a hug, and again he didn't.
For a moment, she looked like she was going to say something else, then she stood, walked toward the door, turned back, turned back to the door again, then to him again, and finally left the house by the sliding glass door through the living room. Clark blinked and refocused, watching her pace the patio in the back yard, seeming as oblivious to the rain as Jason had been in his excitement to get onto the bus to first grade.
Clark debated for only a moment before following her. She was soaked to the bone when he came up behind her, her pre-work wear and curls matted to her shape.
"Oh," she said when she turned to pace back in the direction she'd come, bringing herself about to face him.
"I love you," he told her. She turned around and paced away, but paced back in his direction after a moment. "Sweetheart." She paced away. When she turned back, the look on her face clearly displaying the heart-wrenching argument she was having with herself. "I don't deserve a second chance… but I'm going to ask you for one anyways."
She paced away from him, turned back and came to a stop a meter away from where he stood.
"Please."
She brought her thumb up to her mouth and yanked it away to point an angry finger at him. "If you hurt me again, I will turn you over to Luthor myself."
His eyes never left hers as he took the pointing hand in both of his own and pulled her close, holding her palm against his chest and cupping her face when she was within reach. "If I ever hurt you again, I will seek him out myself."
Lois gave a little, entirely uncharacteristic, sob and wrapped her other hand around his neck, pulling his face down to meet hers.
- - -
Lois spent the morning sitting in the waiting room outside the courtroom, waiting to finish her time on the stand at Joe's trial. Her eye-witness testimony had been given weeks ago, at the same time Clark, Perry, and Richard had all been subpoenaed, but she'd been called back to give further details on the history between Joe and herself, him being her source and whatnot. It was a tedious formality that had to be observed.
Court always made her edgy. As a journalist, she would rather be reporting on a trial than participating in one. And, inevitably, she always found herself remembering the Henderson murders, the trial that had dragged on and on, how it had worn on all participants, especially Bill Henderson… For once, though, she wasn't thinking about distress from years ago. She was thinking about her morning with Clark. The scent of the rain still clung to her hair, which she hadn't been able to dry properly in her hurry to get to court in time.
The thought of Clark, looking just as unkempt as she felt, hair plastered to the side of his face, clothes soaked through…
Forcing her thoughts away, Lois tried to think on the promising schedule of open houses she had lined up for the evening. She'd stopped making Jason visit apartment after apartment with her and left him with Clark instead—she hadn't even thought of Clark's other job until she'd heard Superman was making a rescue on the radio when he was supposed to be watching his son; Jason had explained that Clark had left him with Rick, halfway across the nation, and that had been another reality-check.
The thought of a reality-check sent her back to that morning, watching Jason get on the bus and drive away from him. She still felt foolish for choking up once he was out of sight. She hadn't missed the change in focus in Clark's eyes, though—he'd been following the bus with his x-ray vision, she was sure. She still couldn't believe Jason was in first grade already…
She couldn't believe how easy it had been to kiss Clark, to forgive him. And it was impossible to let him kiss her without having forgiven him—if he could break into her mind and rearrange her memories with a single kiss… it came down to trust, really. And, all things considered, she did trust him, after all.
Occupied with her thoughts, she almost missed when she was called into the courtroom and spent the rest of the afternoon feeling slightly flustered for it. Annoyed, she treated herself to a panini at a restaurant slightly more upscale than she usually allowed herself for lunch, then headed into the bullpen to put in a solid afternoon's work before meeting Jason's bus.
As it was, the extra time she'd spent sitting down for lunch kept her out of the bullpen when the news came in: another body had been found and police suspected it was related to the Napper Neighborhood case. She barely made it out of the elevator, looking over the tops of the cubicles for Clark, before Jimmy was dragging her back inside, checking his lens cap and telling her Clark was already on-site.
Lawrence Carlson's remains had been found that morning, probably just as Lois and Clark were putting Jason on the bus, in a sewer near Bill Ganelon's apartment. They had been happened across when a city crew had been sent out to check out the pipes after residents had complained—they'd expected a blockage of animal corpses or sticks or some combination, not the decomposing remains of a foster father who should've been reported missing months previously. The only problem was that the police discovered that all of his foster children had gone missing as well, and the person Mr. Carlson had been closest to, according to his neighbors, was Bill Ganelon.
"I wonder where CK got to," Jimmy said when they arrived on-scene, beginning to snap photos of the police and city employees gathered around the manhole.
"He's probably around somewhere," Lois said vaguely, eyes on Superman standing next to Chief Henderson with a disturbed look on his face. The look made her worry. Clark, as Superman, was always careful to look stoic, unwavering, solid, confident—he didn't let the horrors that he saw, and he'd seen a lot in his time, affect him.
Yet his face was drawn, his shoulders tense. The surge of butterflies through her middle at first sight of him faded to worried queasiness, watching him stand there looking almost sick with worry, if one knew how to read it.
-
Lois retuned to the bullpen without much to go on. The police had been less than helpful in providing quotes or much information at all, glaring when she suggested she'd just go over their heads and talk to Superman. She knew better than to go to Tracy's Diner to dig deeper.
"Lois!" Perry barked from his office door.
"Yeah, Chief?"
"My office—now."
Belligerently, she printed off what she had and made her way into his office. "Chief?"
"What's the word with that body clogging the sewer you covered this morning?"
"Seems pretty random, but the police were being pretty quiet about it, so there could be more down the pipe yet to come," she said, glancing over the scrap of notes she'd managed to put together since she'd returned to the bullpen.
"Hm," Perry said, eyes roaming her bullet-points, frowning. "Superman was there?"
"Of course," Lois said, rolling her eyes and glancing out at the bullpen—Clark had yet to return from wherever it was that he'd gone to after he'd spoken with Chief Henderson at the crime scene.
"And what did he have to say about the body?"
"I don't know; he spoke with Henderson and then took off," Lois said, dreading what she knew Perry would say next.
"Lois," Perry said, fixing her with a look. "C'mon. Get up on the roof and get a quote from the Boy Scout. You said it yourself; the police are playing it too close to the chest for there not to be more to the story. What's with you lately? Dig deeper, go after it!" he waved her off, "Now get out of my office and get that story done. It's going in the morning issue."
"Sure, Chief," she grumbled, closing the door behind her before he could admonish her about calling him 'chief.'
When Clark returned, he had Jason with him, having picked him up directly from school. Their son was all smiles, his book bag full of his very own first grade books, a notebook, and his first homework assignment. He sat on Clark's lap and regaled them about his first day among the sea of uniformed children he'd admired all through preschool. He talked without end of how much fun it was to ride the bus, how much better recess was in the first grade, even if it was a slightly shorter break than he'd had in preschool, how awesome his new teacher was, and how much he was looking forward to riding the bus home the next day—he said the last bit about the bus with a sharp look at Clark.
After awhile, Jason, still beaming, seeming to have sensed the relief in tension between his parents, wandered off to visit Perry for awhile. Lois and Clark turned to look at each other, both with goofy smiles fixed to their faces, hardly unusual for Clark, but not so ordinary for Lois, which seemed to amuse Clark more than anything. His face sobered quickly, though.
"Did the police find something else down there?" she asked, dreading his answer. He found another child, I just know it…
"No, just Lawrence Carlson," Clark sighed, sinking heavily into his chair, he seemed to fold into himself a bit, though it wasn't the usual sort of hiding he did in the office so much as his soul seemed sore. "Henderson was very specific about not printing anything yet, but the police are almost certain Carlson's foster kids are among those that were kidnapped. There's no saying if he was in league with Ganelon and the Boss or if he stood up to them when they came for the kids, but…" Clark shrugged. Lois found herself wanting to hug him—he looked so tired, so sad. "Those poor kids, Lois."
"Is that what you were talking to Henderson about at the crime scene?"
"No, Henderson has to look at the broader options, first."
"So, there could be another explanation."
Clark gave her a look, reminding her she was usually the cynical one of the pair of them, but she just shrugged.
"There was kryptonite in the sewer, Lois," he said. "Real kryptonite. As much as I'd love to say that somebody just flushed it and it happened to end up among the remains, not even I can pull off that much naïve optimism."
"Oh."
"I think they're the control group," Clark admitted a few minutes later, after she'd passed over her notes and he'd blocked out their piece just a touch too fast.
"What?"
"The control group. For the experiments you heard them talking about."
Lois felt herself go pale, leaning back in her chair and wondering if he could tell her hands were shaking.
-
Lois took Jason home around eight, leaving Clark to finish off the story. Jason was sleepy yet somehow excited for his second day of school. Taking turns too fast, Lois wondered if he hadn't been switched at birth—she could never remember looking forward to school, not even kindergarten when it had been full of fun learning activities and long stints on the playground for recess.
Of course, it was impossible he'd been switched at birth, seeing as he was definitely Clark's son, and she'd definitely slept with Clark, and, more often than not, he was definitely her son, too.
Maybe he gets the 'enjoys school' thing from Clark…
"Dammit." She'd been trying not to think of him.
Behind her, Jason giggled and pressed his forehead to the window, looking up at the tops of the skyscrapers as they drove between them, the view obscured by the rain that pelted his window.
AN: Expect the next chapter sometime next weekend :)