You know when you have those days when times loses meaning and you wake up on Saturday thinking it's still Thursday?
Yeah, that was last week for me.
Chapter Fourteen: Tradition
When Superman opened his eyes again, it was to see the chewing gum-dotted ceiling of the taxi cab. He blinked muzzily, wondering for a long few seconds what the hell he was doing in the back of a taxi that was sticky and smelled like grease. It was too small for him to lay out flat -- his head was propped awkwardly on the door handle behind him, his knees were jammed up against the opposite door.
Then he remembered. Lois had sprung to his rescue after the parasite monster's attack had made flying or any other form of self-propulsion out of the question.
Thank god for Lois Lane.
The taxi was holding together even despite the fender-first charge Lois had put it through. They were pretty durable, all things told. There was a slight whine to the engine that Superman didn't think had been there before, but it didn't sound on the verge of collapsing.
Himself, on the other hand...
They were heading... south, if he wasn't mistaken -- out of West River. And if he wasn't mistaking the form of suburbia that passed the window, they were skirting around the edge of Highville.
"Smallville, you still with me back there?" Lois asked from the front, glancing into the rearview mirror. His eyes were open, so that was something.
"Lo's, where're we goin'?" he asked.
His voice should definitely not be slurring that much. He felt like a marvelous pile of shit.
"Your place. It's closer."
"It didn't follow?..."
"No, we got away scot-free on this one." Lois replied, relieved. "What the hell was that thing?!"
"Um... I think it used to be Rudy Jones..." Superman said, rubbing his forehead. Was that a headache up there? That tightness behind his eyes and a dull pressure along the crown of his head? Was that was a headache felt like?
"Who the hell is Rudy Jones?" Lois wondered, frowning.
Superman offered up a mumble and a shrug.
"Wow. Whatever happened, it did a number on you." Lois commented, both awed and maybe a tad terrified. "You're normally more loquacious than that. And more lively. Clark, what the hell?"
It was a broad rhetorical question, which was fine because Superman didn't have an answer. He had been broadsided just the same as everyone else. He might have to take the "always know everything all the time" aspect out of superheroing.
The good news was that he felt a little better than he had ten or fifteen minutes ago. The itchiness had subsided significantly and the crippling weariness was fading, and he didn't feel quite so wobbly anymore. It might last just long enough to make it home.
"Lois, pull over." he said, struggling to uncramp himself from the small space.
"What?"
"Find a side-street an' pull over."
"You gonna try and fly home, hayseed? You look like how my last college bender felt." Lois pointed out.
"I can make it." Superman said, a tad stubbornly. "But you can't roll up to my building in a stolen taxi with me in the back seat. That'll look like... like something."
"Like something..." the dark-haired reporter repeated under her breath, but she turned into a narrow alley that was just two tire ruts and some grass, where the neighbors had built tall fences to block each other's view.
Unable to dislodge himself without proper leverage, Superman reached behind his head and pulled the door catch, and managed to slither out of the back seat onto a mixture of grass and gravel. He didn't give himself the chance to really fall and pushed. The counterforce was stronger than he expected and he ended up thudding into the tall fence behind him, but upright and on his feet. Lois shoved open the driver's side door and was halfway out of the seat to assist him before he raised a hand to forestall her.
"I'm all right."
"Bullshit."
"I can make it home." Superman insisted.
"I'm still calling bullshit." Lois muttered. She reached down in the seat beside her, transferred something from one hand to the other, and thrust his phone at him.
"What?"
"Clark, I don't want to ditch the taxi and get all the way to your place just to find out you got your ass stuck in a tree. Wouldn't that be embarrassing after all those cats you rescued." Lois said, getting out of the car to physically put the phone in his hand. "I don't care if you text me gibberish, just text me when you actually get home so I know you're safe."
There was no hidden meaning to parse out in that sentence; Lois was getting a lot better at speaking plainly rather than making people read between the lines.
"Now if you do get your ass stuck in a tree, text me anyways and I'll come get you." she added.
Superman frowned.
"Don't look at me like that, Smallville. Right now, I'm the only supporting team member you got."
"We're a team now?" he asked.
Lois poked him in the chest. "We've been a team for a while. Just because I found out you're moonlighting as a superhero doesn't make things any different."
Superman wasn't so sure about that, mostly because Lois hadn't gotten everything off her chest yet. There was no way she was taking everything that had just happened with good grace and no shouting. That would come later, after he had had a few hours to recover. Lois didn't jump on her friends while they were down.
"Thank you for having my back." Superman said gratefully.
"Hey, you're not in the clear yet!" Lois warned, poking his chest again. "We've still got a lot to talk about."
She poked his chest one more time, less for effect and more because she wanted to.
Superman nodded and pushed off gently from the ground. He was twenty feet into the air when it started to feel like a mistake. Like runner trying to keep going when he was clearly at the end of his rope. It was a dreadful amount of effort.
It's second nature... But it's still effort. He thought. The sun helped. He hoped it would be enough.
Superman had approached his building from the air enough times that finding it wasn't difficult. The landmarks stuck out enough. There was a water tower a few blocks down from it. The J-train line ran through the neighborhood a five-minute walk to the east.
It was a small complex of three buildings that might have been office buildings or warehouses from the days just after World War II. They were older buildings, definitely, featuring the industrial ambiance of exposed pipe-work, brick walls, and concrete floors. Several years before he had moved in, the buildings had been renovated to update the fixtures and the heating and plumbing, and they had laid a rustic laminate hardwood over the concrete floors. The best feature were the balcony decks and Superman tried not to crash into his when he landed. His knees buckled all the same and he tumbled onto the hard stone.
He huffed out a relieved breath that he had made it without falling out of the sky in the process and rolled over. Immediately, he was confronted with big blue eyes and a pinkish brown nose that quivered rapidly.
"Hey... Krypto, I'm okay." Superman half-whispered, raising a hand to the dog's shoulder. The white fur was warm; he must have been laying in the sun.
'Liar.' Krypto snorted. There was a hurt scent and something strangely acidic smell that the dog couldn't place. It was a bad smell.
"Okay, I lied." Superman admitted. Krypto was too smart to believe a lie. "But I'll be okay. Just give me a few hours and I'll be on my feet again."
He hoped.
He got back to his feet much more easily this time, if only because Krypto was helping him up, supporting him exactly when his knees wobbled too much. He slid open the patio door and went inside. His apartment was a studio with a partition wall separating the living areas from the bedroom area. It could technically be considered a one-bedroom, but it had been advertized as a studio.
"I've gotta lay down." he told Krypto. "Could you let Lois in when she gets here?"
The dog rumbled an affirmative.
Disengaging the suit at last, Clark stumbled towards his bed. The suit peeled back, leaving him in his boxers. It was some kind of nano-tech; he had blanked out the explanation from the A.I.s - the science was beyond him. All he really knew was that the suit would react to a mental command and when not in use, it stored itself in the House sigil badge. The suit would activate as long as he wore the badge against his bare skin, so he'd had it converted into an unobtrusive pendant.
He stripped that off and managed to get a shirt on before his eyes started crossing. Flying home all the way from the edge of Highville had definitely been a mistake. He should have waited until they were closer.
But whatever. There was his bed and it took zero effort to simply fall on it. Whether he fell asleep or passed out again didn't particularly matter. The world faded out and his last thought was: I forgot to text her...
Even if no one except Lois and a handful people who read her blog really considered LexCorp a monument to a bald man's ever-expanding ego, there was no denying that Luthor loved to use his first name as a prefix (the major subsidaries were called LexComp, LexChemical, LexEl Investments, LexMart, LexComm, FedLex, LexOil, LexAir, and TelLex). It was a branding model that he had picked up from Wayne Enterprises and found that it suited him quite well.
In the four years since he had taken over the company, the conglomerate company had grown in leaps and bounds, becoming more prosperous with each quarter and expanding further and further overseas. Luthor envisioned a long and healthy future for the company. In time, he might even come to rival the expansive empire of Wayne Enterprises.
That was ultimately his goal: to topple the king of the heap from its throne. That was going to be a long process. Wayne Enterprises had existed in one form or another since 1610, when family founder Elias Wayne (the surname then spelled Waines) had started a brisk shipping business between the nascent Gotham and the Dutch colonies to the north.
At three hundred and ninety-seven years old, Wayne Enterprises had had a long time to build itself a solid, unshakable foundation.
Still, Luthor was as patient as he was ambitious.
The LexCorp tower was ninety-six floors and stood nearly a mile tall. The top three floors were the executive levels. It contained the boardrooms, a private cafeteria and kitchen, the executive offices, a solarium, a swanky living room set-up, a wet-bar, and a six thousand gallon saltwater fish tank complete with a reef and more colorful tropical fish than one could shake a stick at. It was roughly the size of a twelve by twelve room. It bordered one wall of Luthor's office and the other wall of the conference room next door. Skylight windows above it allowed sunlight in at all hours of the day. He shelled out frankly egregious amounts of money to keep the tank clean and the fish fed and healthy.
It was a luxurious indulgence from anyone else's point of view, but Luthor had had it installed because he found it calming.
He watched the fish school back and forth as the early afternoon set in, the water sending the sunlight rippling along the far wall of his office. He sat there on the couch with none of the lights on, just enjoying the ambiance the tank provided. His thoughts always melted away, taking any stress with it. It cleared his head. And when his head was clear, solutions came to him all the easier.
There was a knock at the door.
Only Mercy or Hope had the privilege of intruding on his quiet time.
"Come in." he called out softly.
Mercy stepped in, stealthy and light-footed, as was the norm for her.
"Sir, I apologize for the disruption." she said in a low voice. "But I have collected the relevant security footage from the West River Park pavilion. I thought you might like to view it immediately."
"Ah, thank you Mercy." Luthor said, looking away from the tank to accept the memory stick she proffered to him. "Is there anything else?"
"The exo-suit is not salvageable. There is too much damage to the internal struts to make repairing it worthwhile. The team believes it would be easier to scrap it for its parts and build a new one." Mercy said.
"I see." Luthor pondered for a moment. "Yes, I'll authorize that as soon as they can get me the paperwork. What of Sergeant Corben?"
"Sergeant Corben is currently in surgery. General Lane would like to speak to you when you have a moment to spare." Mercy informed him. "The viability of Sergeant Corben's condition will become clear once the doctors are certain how he will respond to the treatment. Personally, I do not think the outcome will be a positive one."
Luthor nodded. She was generally right in her predictions. If there was one thing Mercy knew better than anything else, it was how the human body reacted to extensive damage. If she predicted a low chance of survival, then Corben would only pull through on spit and a prayer.
"Thank you Mercy. Please inform General Lane that I have been shanghai'd into a series of exhaustive meetings as a result of today's events and thus I will not be able to meet with him until later this evening." Luthor instructed. His afternoon was empty, but he was not going to jump at the general's command. "And please place a lunch order for me. I'm feeling something of a hankering for Thai."
"Yessir, Mr. Luthor." Mercy tapped her closed fist off her chest and bowed her head. It was a curious little gesture unique to both her and Hope, and he wondered sometimes where they had picked it up.
He waited until Mercy had closed the door and then picked up the tablet computer beside him, tapping the screen to awaken it out of stand-by. He slotted the memory stick into the USB port and waited for it to load its contents. The relevant footage began just before the purple monster entered the pavillion. The outdoor camera showed that it actually opened the exterior doors, albeit somewhat clumsily (those huge fingers weren't meant for delicate work). Once in foyer, it loosely shook itself and then charged at the next set of doors with the battering ram force of an old football player.
Luthor watched the monster charge up the length of the auditorium, knocking Miss Lane's journalism partner out of the way in the process. Corben in the Lexosuit rushed to engage. Luthor had already seen that fight and he still winced the second time around. The suit was definitely a little sluggish in a real combat situation. He'd tell the techs that they needed to see about increasing the reaction time.
Things didn't get interesting until Superman showed up. Luthor watched the fight play out once in its entirety. Superman never quite got the upper hand. The monster appeared somewhat resistant to his punches and yes, it did indeed swallow the eye-beams. From there, Superman seemed too distracted by this turn of events to meet the purple monster on even footing. Luthor allowed himself a sympathetic wince when the Man of Steel was whipped into the floor.
He's still new to this. His form is raw and only somewhat polished. This is a man who's not entirely sure that he knows what he's doing.
Luthor watched his past-self back away from the monster. The camera angle wasn't right to catch the sight of those unhinging jaws, but it still stuck in his memory. Things got a lot more interesting when Superman inserted himself in between the monster and the businessman.
This next part was the part Luthor hadn't seen, since he had taken the opportunity to run for it. The monster bit down on Superman's arm and just like that, the alien visibly appeared to get weaker.
"Fascinating." Luthor murmured.
He watched the exchange play out as Superman and the monster talked. If Superman had been trying to talk the thing down, he'd been unsuccessful. The purple creature hurled him across the auditorium.
The reaction from Superman was intriquing. The moment he landed, his face blanched white and his back arched like he had landed on something sharp. The expression on his face wasn't one of pain, but certainly intense discomfort. Then he sagged, seeming to wither.
Luthor paused the video.
"And what happened there?" he asked himself. "What made you react like that?"
He replayed that segment of video twice more until he saw that the area where Superman landed was right where the exo-suit had been minutes earlier. The purple monster had gone to town on the suit and there were bits of metal scattered around where it had fallen. But if Superman was as bullet-proof as every eyewitness account claimed, there was no way that any scrap of pointy metal could have caused him discomfort.
It was something else.
Luthor pursed his lips thoughtfully.
Then he took the video back and advanced it frame by frame until he had a clear view of the scraps. He selected the frame and enhanced the image until the every metal bit was in clear detail. But there was one bit that wasn't metal. In the full-color display, it was a fragment of green.
A tiny piece of the green stone they had been using to power the suit.
"Well... well... well..." Luthor said slowly. A smile grew across his face. "You do have a weakness."
When he had first learned the power potential of that green rock, he had known it would change everything. But this was so much more than he had expected. And such a welcome thing it was! That little green rock had the potential to stop Superman in his tracks.
If Luthor was right, they finally had a viable weapon against him. This unstoppable giant among humanity wasn't so unstoppable. With that little rock, Luthor could assure the safety of the people of Metropolis and of the world.
Superman was defeatable.
Weak.
Vulnerable.
"This changes everything."
Waking up was a slow process that Clark didn't exactly want to engage in. It meant waking up at all -- coming back to full coherency and all the aches that accompanied it. But several bodily functions were clamoring for attention and it would get very uncomfortable to ignore them for much longer.
Stiffly, Clark raised his head off the pillow. He was laying on his back, allowing him to look down the length of his bed. He was on top of his blanket, but the lightweight one normally draped over the back of his couch had been spread across his legs. For a second, he wasn't sure how it had gotten there. Then he heard a clatter of dishes from the kitchen area and remembered: Lois.
He had forgotten to text her.
No wonder she was still here.
"Lois?" he called out tentatively, managing to sit up a little.
"Smallville? You awake in there?" Lois called back from the other room.
"Are you making food?" he asked. He could hear the sizzle of cooking oil and smelled spices and poultry.
"Kick. Ass. Stir-fry." Lois said, punctuating each word. "And I like it spicy. Not that it means anything to you. Your tongue is just as indestructible."
Clark shrugged. True, he didn't really have a strong reaction to spices. Dooley's extra-triple-spicy Headliner Chicken Wings were nothing to him. The major newspaper companies of Metropolis held an annual chili-eating contest for charity and Clark had beaten the four-time champion, eating his way through increasingly atrocious concoctions. It wasn't until he'd gotten to the chili that included the Red Savina pepper that his eyes had started to prickle.
"Think you could stomach it?" Lois wondered. "I mean, are you hungry? I wasn't sure if you would be, but it's dinner time anyways. So food if you want it."
"I'll think about it." Clark groaned. He wasn't sure how the smell was making him feel, but common sense insisted that he eat something.
He heaved himself out of bed and made his way to the bathroom on the other side of the room. His steps were slow and shuffling but he made it before his bladder took matters into its own hands.
Once he was done with the necessaries, he paused in front of the mirror to look himself over. His face had some color in it again and he didn't look or feel like death warmed over. The bite mark on his arm had healed over as he'd slept. He turned and lifted his shirt to look at his back and hissed. The skin was reddened and splotchy with small blisters. It looked like he had contracted a poison ivy rash. There was a tightness to the skin that reached all the way up to the bottom ridge of his shoulder blades and the redness disappeared beneath the waistband of his boxers.
Where the heck did that come from?
It didn't itch and it didn't look bad, but he would keep an eye on it. He dropped his shirt and slipped on a pair of loose pajama pants so he wasn't walking around in his underwear.
He shuffled out to living area. Krypto rose up from the floor to greet him and a throw pillow bounced off his chest.
"I know. We have a lot to talk about." he said.
"Damn straight!" Lois snapped. "First, let me clear an item or two off your conscience. I went to see Colletta--"
"Is she--"
"She's fine. Awake for half an hour before I got there and flirting with her nurse by the time I did." Lois smirked a little at the memory. The nurse had been attractive. "If she keeps improving as quickly as she is, the doctors can let her go tomorrow."
"That's good." Clark relaxed a little. Colletta had been attacked by the parasite monster too, but if she was improving rapidly twelve hours later, then there was every chance that he would bounce back as well.
"Is that a rice cooker?" he asked, noticing the new addition to his countertops.
"Huh? Oh yeah, it's mine. I brought it from home when I saw you didn't have one and let's be honest, stir-fry and naan isn't just the same without rice--" Lois abruptly made a scandalized face. "No no! I'm not talking domesticity with you! You're Superman."
She had the presence of mind to lower her voice for the last sentence so she wasn't shouting it through the walls. His neighbors didn't need to know that tidbit of juicy information.
"I was Clark Kent first." he said. He felt like he had to say it, to assert his identity. He had been a mild-mannered reporter before he had ever swung a cape over his shoulders.
"That's not just the problem here." Lois put in. She had a look of petrified embarrassment. "Everything I said to you! Everything I said about you to your face! I was flirting with you by proxy! And you let me say it!"
She had said something pretty... interesting things about Superman to Clark's face. How many times had she commented on Superman's abs and pectorals? To Clark's face. Mentioned Superman's ass? To Clark's face. Made slightly lewd comments about Superman?
Right to Clark's face.
All that time she had been mooning over Superman, Clark must have been busting to hold it in, either too polite or too alarmed to tell her. She had never had the balls to flirt directly to Superman's face, but wouldn't you know, she had done it all anyways.
Because Clark Fucking Kent was Superman.
'I'd like to pin him up on a corkboard and study him all night'
The wisp of memory passed by not so fleetingly. The very first time she had seen Superman and that had been the first thought to go through her head. Her face might as well have caught fire for as hot and red as it turned and she slapped her hands over her eyes to block Clark's slightly concerned expression.
He didn't need to know about it. He didn't need to know and he'd never had to know. She was going to take that one right to her grave if she had any say in the matter.
"Lois?" Clark's voice was soft and sympathetic. "I already decided that I wouldn't hold you to your word."
"My word?" Lois repeated, confused, peering between her fingers.
"You said--" Clark cleared his throat. "Last year, you said that if by some chance I turned out to be an alien, you'd stand naked in Planet Square and hand out cupcakes shaped like butts. I'm not going to hold you to that."
That's right, I did say that.
"Clark. Stop talking one for second and let me finish processing this."
She grabbed another throw pillow from the couch and crammed it over her face, then screamed into it and flailed a little. Clark politely ignored this and gave Krypto some attention instead.
How many times had he been straight up fucking with her? Clark Kent was Superman was Clark Kent and there must have been times that he'd gotten a good laugh or two out of it.
Lois gave herself a moment of quality face-time with the pillow. The world of Clark Kent made a lot more sense now, as did the world of Superman. Having the knowledge of both now, she could see how all the pieces fit together. He had come to her for the interviews because he'd already known her. The judgement he'd trusted so much had been his own. And he'd trusted her, full stop, because he had already seen the best and worst sides of her.
His fast reactions times, his questionable absences when Superman was around, his ability to get to the story before Lois had left her desk. His reluctance to talk about his life prior to Metropolis, his extensive knowledge of her personal schedule, and his "miraculous" timing when it came to scooping her out of danger.
But processing it was one thing and assimilating it was another thing altogether.
Clark Kent the nearsighted farm boy dork who had fake glasses, super-strength, the ability to fly, and a heroic alter-ego that the general populace was coming to adore. Superman was the most visible figure of the past year, trending all over the internet as everyone chattered about the good and the bad. Clark Kent was from a place called Smallville and she still couldn't find it on a map.
It just didn't click.
But maybe that was the point. If there was no way Lois Lane ever could have fully connected Superman to Clark Kent without the evidence getting shoved in her face, then there was just no way anyone else could make that connection either. That was the whole point of a secret identity. As long as Superman remained intact, Clark Kent remained safely anonymous.
Didn't stop it from being weird in the slightest, though.
Lois tossed the pillow back onto the couch. "All right, I don't know about you, but I'm hungry. Some of us were bent over a laptop all afternoon while the rest of us snoozed the daylight away." she said, aiming a pointed look at him.
I could hardly help that. Clark thought, giving a mental eye-roll.
Fresh out of the oven, the naan bread was warm and crispy, the rice fluffy, and the chicken stir-fry pleasantly spicy. Somewhere in the process of retrieving the bowls, Clark felt his stomach issue a plaintive gurgle and decided that he could manage a little bit of dinner. They served themselves and sat down at the table.
"It's good." Clark said of the stir-fry. Plenty spicy; definitely paprika and ginger in there.
"Yeah, I don't do much cooking. It's one of the few things I can make without screwing up." Lois said. "I'll be honest, I mostly order in and then eat the leftovers for dinner the next day-- You're doing it again!" she shouted, slapping her hands on the table-top.
"Doing what?"
"Domestics!" Lois hissed. "You're distracting me from the issue with your domestic farm boy charm!"
"I'm not--"
"And I keep falling for it because you make it so easy!"
Clark frowned. "Lois..."
"'Cause I'm sitting here thinking you have such a nice charming little apartment with your ridiculous amounts of Tupperware and coffee mugs and I bet that quilt over there was inherited from a grandparent--"
"More or less."
"And it's domestic. And I like it!" Lois finished with such emphasis that she was clearly trying to drive home a point, but it was whooshing past Clark's head. Either his brain just wasn't working fast enough or Lois was talking in circles again.
"Home should be comfortable." Clark commented. In the last nine months, he had made his apartment very comfortable.
Lois leaned back into the chair with half a snort and crossed her arms, her demeanor confrontational. "So this is how it's gonna be now? Every time you hear some sirens, you go rip your shirt off and save the day?"
"I don't rip my shirt off." Clark mumbled.
"What did you say?"
"I said I don't rip my shirt off. I'd go through at least two shirts a week like that and they'd add up over time."
Lois made a thoughtful face and then opened her mouth to speak.
"And I don't chase every siren." Clark added, before she could get a word out. "I meet the requirements in some old classification system that technically protects me from legal retaliation, but I'm still just a civilian, so I think if someone wanted to sue me-- Superman, that is -- they could probably at least get it to the first level of court. I don't what the judge would do with the case, though. But that old system for superheroes doesn't mean much anymore."
Lois visibly sobered.
"So I try to keep it within a certain boundary. I'm a Good Samaritan, at best. I help when it comes to accidents and fires, but I don't interfere with police investigations. I don't make citizen's arrests. I don't do more than call in anonymous tips. What you saw at the press conference this week is the most I'm willing to do. It's not a great system and I know it's limiting me, but there are lines I shouldn't overstep. I don't have that authority."
Lois picked at her stir-fry. "I see..."
She understood, she really did. There were pockets of people online who complained that Superman was dangerous and that he needed to stop what he was doing, and they were completely blind to the fact that Superman was actually doing very little. Nothing that would put him in very serious trouble with the law. He was being careful not to step on any toes and though no one should have faulted him for that, people still were.
Some people argued that he wasn't doing enough. Some people claimed that he was doing too much.
There used to be paperwork that a superhero could file with the DEO -- ones that stated they agreed to abide by the Code of Conduct and that should they break the law beyond what the DEO's guidelines permitted, they would submit to the legal process of the courts and undergo a trial by jury. There had just been so many superheroes in the years before the Scare that bureaucracy had been the only way to keep track of them all.
It had also been a legal safety net, that paperwork. In the event the average person did take a superhero to court over one thing or another, the DEO's sister organization, the Department of Metahuman Affairs, would comb the incident reports to see if and where the hero had overstepped the lines and how badly. The paperwork assured that superheroes would receive fair and equal representation in a court of law. And the DMHA reminded the general populace that you couldn't just sue a hero all willy-nilly because they had landed in your flowerbeds and that all reports of collateral damage were to be filed with EAGLE. The DMHA had protected the heroes from the people who were just looking to start a fight.
But when both of the departments had shut down, all the paperwork had gone with them. EAGLE still existed, but in a reduced form. Their only concern was Bell Reve Prison and not insurance claims. They would be of no help.
When it came down to it, Superman had no legal protection. No forms to file, no department to file them with, and no relevant legal consultation if someone took him to court.
If it felt like he wasn't doing enough, it was because he was trying not to get sued.
"How long before you were planning to tell me any of this?" Lois wondered.
"I, er... I really didn't have a time-table." Clark admitted. "I didn't go in thinking 'Gee, I should tell Lois Lane, queen of the scoop, that I'm an alien'. Honestly? I thought you'd see through it right away."
"Hmm, I blame that one on my broken wrist." Lois agreed. And the fact that, at the time, she had known Clark less than two months. From her perspective, he had been little more than a dork with a bad tie and ugly glasses. He would not have been the first person to come to mind.
"Okay, so tough question. Why? Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she asked, then quickly put up a hand to forestall an answer. "And don't say 'it's not you, it's my enemies' because you don't have enemies."
"I'm pretty sure I do."
"No Clark, you really don't."
"Then I've made people very unhappy." Clark said.
"Loud internet trolls with no bite. They don't count." Lois said.
"Lois, you get into enough trouble as it is--"
"And somehow, you're always there to get me out of it. So in turn, I will bail you out."
"Lois--"
"None of that, Smallville. I already told you. I'm the only supporting team member you've got and you're stuck with me for better or worse." Lois declared. "And you're Superman." She laughed suddenly. "I'm sorry, that's gonna need a few days before it stops being so weird."
"Why is it weird?" Clark wondered.
"Because if you hadn't gotten sloppy, I never would have suspected you." she pointed out. "You're on the right track with the whole mild-mannered middle American mundanity and playing up the facade of being such a loser that no one would think twice that it's you, but you need better separation between dork farm boy and super heroicus, or Luthor's next."
She waved her fork at him.
"Now eat up. We'll talk compartmentalization after dinner."
Just like that, Lois had made herself president and founder of Team Superman. It was official, in her eyes. Maybe she could talk him into getting T-shirts made.
Clark smiled anyways. He couldn't have gone forever keeping something that big from Lois. She was much too observant and she had been suspecting it for a few weeks already. He wouldn't have lasted another few weeks anyways, so perhaps it was better that it had come out now.
Besides, no superhero even from back in the day had truly worked alone. They had partnered up with other superheroes and most of them had had supporting teams, so this was just keeping with tradition.
-0-