Hold Your Tongue

Chapter 5: Give and Go

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AN- Let me take this oppurtunty to give some long overdue thanks to all of my reviewers. Your feedback has really made this story far more enjoyable to write.

Also, to all of those who offered beta help after my last chapter, your generous offers have not been forgotten. I went so long without having the time to write another chapter, that by the time I had it done I was childishly impatient to see it posted, and went against my better judgement in not sending it out for proofing. If anyone detects any typos, I implore you to throw them in my face, that I might learn a lesson about proper fanfic-writing.

In light of all my recent wrongdoings, I have made this chapter longer than usual, as it contains many things I think we all wanted to see. Enjoy!

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Superman had a kid, and Jimmy had a headache.

For what it was worth, he was rather proud of himself that he hadn't screamed, passed out, or done something equally embarrassing when that little bit of news had been imparted to him. It hadn't been easy to keep his cool, especially when he had been left standing in front of a capitally perplexed Jason, who seemed to be able to do no more than frown fixedly at his birthday present.

"Careful pal, or your face might freeze like that." Jimmy had done his best to be as reassuring as possible, all the while unwrapping the collection of books himself, and handing them to the boy with all care. Jason seemed to get a hold of himself after that, and had gone back to his dad's - Richard's – office, and that had been that.

It all felt like it only happened yesterday (probably because it had), and Jimmy was still mulling things over. Jason was Superman's son. Well, that was absolutely fabulous. It seemed fine and simple when you just said it like that, but what on earth did it mean?

First off was the matter of who else exactly was privy to this information, as Jimmy sincerely doubted that he was the only one from whom the knowledge had been kept.

Did Clark know? It seemed like a ridiculous question, one much more at home in a South American soap opera than the realm of real life, but Jimmy couldn't really get over that particular speed bump. Superman had certainly disappeared a while before Lois had at least made it clear that she was pregnant, it was possible that he had gone without being aware of the fact, without it even having entered his mind. It wasn't a very happy thought, but there you were.

Than again, what if he had known? Hell, what if that had been his reason for taking off in the first place? It left Jimmy deeply disconcerted to think of the Savior of Metropolis as a runaway dad, but as much as both of Clark Kent's track records singled it out as an absolute impossibility, Jimmy couldn't completely disregard the idea, no matter how much he wanted to.

See, this had been why he had wanted to toss away this whole concept in the first place. Everyone, all these people involved, they were his friends, people that he had always respected, looked up to, who listened to him, considered him to be something important, of significance. Clark, Lois, Richard, he cared about them, felt like he had some sort of personal stake in their happiness. It wasn't because he himself had "no life", and was forced to live vicariously through them, he was (and he was dead sure of it), far more mature than that. He just cared. That was all.

And now he felt distinctly as if some wrench had been thrown into their stalwart dependability, a wrench that came complete with big blue eyes and a head of shaggy black hair that did really look like Clark's, now that Jimmy thought more about it. Upon closer reflection, Jimmy found himself wondering whether that had always been one of the reasons he had subconsciously liked Jason so much, that in so many little ways he really reminded Jimmy of his absent friend. It seemed like a reasonable idea, particularly now.

But back to business. Jimmy was still embroiled in the midst of a hundred unanswered questions. Did Richard know? Did Lois know? It seemed like another really weird thing to be asking, but with all the events of the past few months, it was another option that he couldn't entirely rule out. She didn't know about Clark, he was almost one hundred percent certain of that, and she had practically admitted to him that she was more than a little fuzzy on all the massive events that had preceded Superman's departure, the days in which those three aliens had been running amok in the White House and whatnot. No one was particularly clear on the details, but there could have been something there, if he had been in the mood to do a little more digging. He wasn't.

But what if she did know? Had she lied to Richard all this time? Could this be what had broken them up? That certainly made sense, more sense than anything else he had managed to come up with, though, in his own opinion, two people really didn't stay engaged for five years if they had any real intention of actually getting married. Richard and Lois might have just come to understand that, and chosen to move on. That, at least, sounded like something they would do.

And now for the icing on the cake, the Big Kahuna of all his questions, when was Clark going to grow a pair and finally speak up? It had been important enough before; he knew that, but now? If nothing else had served as proper motivation, wasn't kindly informing Lois that the father of her son was not just some spandex-coated freak, but her coworker, her partner, her friend, who sat across a newsroom from her every single day, whom she spoke with, every single day, wasn't that good enough? Wasn't that urgent enough? Lois sort of deserved to know who contributed the other half of her kid's genes. It was just a thought.

As much as he had respected Clark's privacy before, his right to keeping his own secret, Jimmy found himself to be extremely annoyed. Annoyed, and disappointed.

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Weeks passed, and nothing changed.

Around the middle of March, there was a reported incident involving some petty criminals and a bit of kryptonite (any quantity of which could now be easily obtained in the wake of Luthor's most recent foray into the real estate industry.) Superman had been most predictable in his arrival on the scene, and though he had somehow managed to land the crooks in jail, it had been a close call. How close, nobody could tell.

Clark didn't arrive at work the next day, but no one took much notice. He was always gone, always missing. Why should they care, on a day just like any other?

Superman's absence, on the contrary, was much remarked upon. He had spoken to the police, of course, on the day of the robbery, and had made it clear when they asked earnest questions about his condition that they had no reason to worry. The media too seemed to latch onto that reassurance, an unusual move, as Jimmy would have expected them to do just the opposite and start throwing stories around that spoke of life-threatening injuries and odds of survival. But they didn't. The news, the radio stations, the television networks, they were run by human beings, after all. And nobody had forgotten what it had been like to know that he was unconscious and immobile in a hospital bed. Not enough time had passed for that to happen.

For once, Chief ordered them all not to play the story up too much. They ran a piece on the robbery, emphasizing, somewhat half-heartedly, that no lasting damage had been done, that the city was doubling its efforts to clear out the remaining kryptonite and that there was a law in motion that would make possession of the mineral as much of an offense as possession of an unregistered firearm, that this would never happen again. It had seemed as much the delivery of a plea as a packaging of information. "He's alright," it said, but upon closer inspection it sounded much more like, "Please God, let him be alright." Only the smallest mention was made of the fact that he had not been sighted since.

As strange as it was, not many people really worked late at the Planet that night. By nine-thirty, only Perry and the production crew were left actually immersed in the task of putting the morning issue to bed. Lois, Jimmy, and a few others had stuck around mainly to get a jump on tomorrow's work.

Lois was walking towards Jimmy's desk, her nose buried in a manila folder. Richard had left a few hours ago, taking a very sleepy Jason with him, leaving her essentially alone, to work on the multitude of assignments that Jimmy knew she didn't have the time for but which had kept her undeniably busy all day. In typical Lois Lane fashion, she had been left with no time whatsoever for irrelevant talking, thinking. And through all this Jimmy couldn't remember her asking about Clark once since getting to work that morning, though she must have. She would have noticed he was gone. Of course she would have.

She asked for some photos of something or other, some story, some lead. The hands on her folder were shaking; she was shaking. She had probably just had a little too much coffee, that was all. Jimmy had been putting on a new pot every thirty minutes to prevent his coworkers from tearing at each other's throats. Any caffeine addiction was better than bloodthirstiness.

Jimmy was shuffling through some files of his own, looking for the photos that she was asking for. He heard her mumbling something behind him, sounding far too tired to be on her feet, not to mention in those heels. And that's when she started crying.

Jimmy had the presence of mind not to just ignore it and hope it went away, even though he wished it would. He hated to see her cry like this, hated to think what would drive her to this point, Mad-Dog Lane, more Unsinkable than Molly Brown. He didn't like to think of it, but he knew.

She was still mumbling through her tears, something about "him," more about "Jason". He knows enough to wrap her in a friendly embrace, that it's all he can do to comfort her, that he's not the one that she needs to talk to right now.

But she was talking to him. Her words were only partly incoherent, much less so than she probably knew. It's her fault. That seemed to be something of a repeated theme in their one-sided conversation. She practically gave away the information, practically told every criminal lowlife in Metropolis how to get rid of him, keep him off their backs. Someday, she said, they're going to kill him. He's going to die and it is going to be her fault, because she couldn't keep her big mouth shut about the only weakness of Metropolis's resident alien. And who knew where he was now? Who knew if he wasn't dead already? The police may have said he was fine, but that didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything at all.

Every word that he could discern through her gradually increasing sobs made sense to Jimmy, every connection was an easy one for him to make. He knew that she was really referring only to the events of the past few days, but he had a distinct feeling that this sort of tension had been building in her ever since the first few verses of "I Will Survive" had become the story of her life. Maybe it was good that she was letting it out now.

A few more minutes, and she had finally started to calm herself down. Coolly, steadily, as if she didn't register anything having happened, she rose and began to collect the photos that Jimmy had retrieved for her, and began slipping them into her folder. Recognizing a prime opportunity, Jimmy decided to speak up.

"Er, you know Lois, maybe you should head home. I'll get this stuff in for you."

It would have been a hopeless request on any other day; Lois almost never responded to being shooed out of the office. Today, however, she really did look to be past her limit, and, miraculously, she agreed.

Without speaking a word, as if she couldn't trust herself to open her mouth without breaking into sobs again, Lois returned to her desk, collected her things, and headed for the elevator. Jimmy kept a wary eye on her as she waited for admittance. He saw the indicator light blink, heard the soft "ding" of the bell, before the doors opened to reveal…Clark, a little paler than usual, but none the worse for the wear.

It seemed absolutely insane to Jimmy that he should choose to come in so late, if at all, but Clark had always been surprisingly good about not missing days at the office, all things considered. That odd loyalty to newspaper work was another thing he had never really been able to puzzle out of his friend.

Clark seemed to stumble out of the elevator, and noticed Lois's broken state almost immediately. Jimmy watched him struggle for a moment, open his mouth to say something, raise his hand, and he could have sworn that Clark was going to tell her, right then. He was going to take off those ridiculous glasses and tell her, in his calmest, most earnest voice, the sort of voice that would have made any doctor's bedside manner absolutely legendary, "I'm okay, Lois. I'm right here." Jimmy watched him, waited for it.

"Hi Lois!"

She only just looked up, only gave him the most insignificant of teary nods, and then she was gone. The doors were closed, and he had missed his chance.

Clark stood frozen for a little while, staring mournfully at the spot where she had been seconds ago, before turning around, pushing up his glasses, and making his way towards his desk as if it were eight in the morning.

The sight angered Jimmy, electrified him. The fact that he could see, could know that Lois was worrying herself to death over him, killing herself out of guilt, and still sit there, staring at a computer screen displaying the bare bones of a story that she had probably gotten for him, that she could have written with just as much ability, just as much accuracy. Lois was probably still sitting in that elevator, sobbing her heart out, and Clark was here, of all places.

It was enough to force him to stand, to force his legs, whether he wanted them to or not, towards Clark's desk, to stand behind him and say something.

"You have any idea what got Lois so upset just now?" Jimmy was surprised at how off-hand his words sounded, how casual, when in all honesty he was as mad as hell.

Clark jumped, startled not for the first time. For once, Jimmy found himself not to be amused. It had been all well and good before, but now Jimmy wondered how he dared to be spooked so easily, how careless he was, that with all that fancy super-hearing at his disposal, he couldn't even know when someone was standing right behind him.

"Oh, no. No, I don't know why she's so upset." It was amazing, looking back, how utterly unconvincing of a liar he was. Perhaps all of that, "he never lies" should have been rephrased to say, "he couldn't lie to save his life."

"She's gotten herself all worked up about Superman. You know he hasn't shown his face since yesterday. People are starting to get worried."

"S-Superman? But, didn't he make some sort of statement-"

"Actions speak louder than words, don't they? Anyway, Lois feels like it's her fault, you know? She published all of that, years ago, about his vulnerability to kryptonite, and now it's starting to get him into trouble. It's funny, I would have thought Superman would be smarter than that, telling reporters about his only weakness. Not exactly his greatest move."

"Well, maybe he spoke up about it because he wanted people to know that he wasn't perfect, to make himself more trustworthy-" Jimmy cut him off again, surprising even himself with his next words.

"Yeah, well, it isn't just about him anymore is it? Now there's Jason to consider."

Clark went pale. Jimmy found himself rather tongue-tied; he really, really had not intended to say that, especially in public as they were. To his credit, he had managed to keep his voice down, and there weren't many people left in the bullpen. Chief had called a meeting, and the majority of the remaining staff were penned up inside the glass walls of the conference room. No one had heard him, he was sure about that.

As much as he knew he probably should have kept his mouth shut, Jimmy found the experience strangely liberating. There was more he wanted to say, more that Clark needed to hear. He might as well go for the gold, if he had already done this much damage. Clark, however, was already starting to recover from the slight shock he had received at Jimmy's pronouncement.

"How do you-" Jimmy took a deep breath, and readily interrupted Clark for the third time in forty-five seconds.

"If you ask me, he should start being a little more considerate about his son's well-being." Clark bristled at that last statement, and Jimmy knew that he had gone way too far, but he had to finish. He had to keep going.

"After all, it's one thing to be able to keep a secret like that when you grow up in Nowheresville, Kansas, but here? In the middle of all this? It's insane! The two of them are going to have a hell of a time figuring things out on their own. And you know what the worst part of it is?" Jimmy said those last words directly to Clark, who seemed to be genuinely stunned, not in the peaceable, absurdly infamous way that was all his own, but as if he felt like the ground was being ripped out from under his feet and gravity wasn't going to give up as easily as usual. It hadn't been a rhetorical question.

"It…will be just the two of them?" It sounded like Clark's voice, but Jimmy knew that this was Superman brought down, defeated by a little loser in a bow tie. Jimmy was sorely tempted to stop now, cut his losses, but he pressed on.

"No kidding. Because as long as he can't gather up the guts to tell her what his name is, he has no right to be a part of their lives." If Clark had been pale when he had come in, it was nothing to how he looked now. To any onlooker, it would have appeared as though Jimmy's last sentence had slapped him across the face. Sensing the end of his rant, Jimmy lowered his voice further, calmed himself down.

"You need to tell her, Clark. You need to speak up. Is all this secrecy still doing anything to protect them? I mean, they spent all that time on Luthor's boat, for all we know he's had it figured out for months!"

Clark froze. If there were any physiological signs, outwardly visible, that indicated that someone's heart had just stopped beating, it would have been the expression on Clark's face at that moment.

"Luthor… he said it, he told me…"

Jimmy blinked, or must have, because Clark seemed to disappear at that very moment, leaving Jimmy with a pretty good idea of where he had gone, or at least, what he was looking for.

In the wake of the whole debacle with "New Krypton", most people had assumed that Luthor, as the man responsible, had been killed by his own creation when Superman had lifted the huge landmass into space. However, Jimmy, Lois, Clark, and all others concerned had learned enough about Lex Luthor to know not to assume anything until a body showed up. Jimmy himself was practically convinced that the madman was still out there, crouched in some hidey-hole in the middle of nowhere. Yes, Luthor was alive, and probably still ruminating over a very pivotal piece of information.

If Clark was currently searching for him, as Jimmy suspected he was, he would come up short. Luthor was knowledgeable enough to avoid detection, even by Superman. Nothing would be achieved today. They would need to wait for Luthor to present himself, which was hardly a comforting thought.

Twenty minutes passed, with Jimmy waiting in his chair, before Clark returned. He came in from the elevator, looking absolutely defeated, and promptly sat down in someone's chair (a crime he never would have committed under normal circumstances.) As Jimmy watched, the world's symbol of strength buried his face in his hands, his shoulders stooped. Jimmy felt like he was intruding on something, something deeply private and unreserved, something that nobody should have been allowed to witness, the central grief of a man who kept running into dead-ends at super-speed.

"I have to tell her." The whisper was nearly inaudible, spoken not to Jimmy, but somewhere into indefinable space. After a few more moments in blank silence, Clark finally rose from his chair, returned to the posture, demeanor, composure of the Superman that Jimmy had always tried so desperately to get a decent picture of. There was an undeniable solemnity in the way that Clark turned to face him before heading back to the elevator, the expression on his face more solid and effective than a mask at hiding whatever it was that went on behind it, whatever was felt.

"Thank you, Jimmy." And then he was gone.