Part Two: All that You Need to Love
From the moment Lois stepped onto the yacht with her son, she'd known she was asking for trouble. And she regretted it the moment he realized his own power and killed one of their captors in her defense.
Locked up in the pantry, Lois tried her best to steady her breathing, but all she could think about was how badly she'd screwed up. It was just like on the plane, strapped to the space shuttle, when everything went wrong; even though he hadn't been around for more than five years, she expected Superman to save her, just like he had from all of her other fiascos. For some reason, she'd managed to stay out of any other major pickles until that one, and the moment he returned, she found herself taking more risks, expecting to be rescued. But now she'd unwisely gotten her little boy involved and she hated herself for it.
She felt so sorry for the little thing, sitting on the floor across from her, once she'd tried all she could to get them out of that room, doing his best to entertain himself with putting olives on his fingers or using spoons like drumsticks on the floor. How could she do this to him? It wasn't his fault that he was brought into the world and had to have the unusual abilities attributed to his birth father. She'd known it was a possibility since the day she discovered she was pregnant.
Her month-long tryst with the superhero was something of the past now, just memories she tried to forget during the months after he disappeared. Except Jason became a permanent reminder and something she'd never regret.
He was only gone a couple of days when she knew that something was up. She searched the news for stories, scanned the skies day and night, and even called out his name on occasion. She'd even been tempted to get herself into trouble to see if that might bring him back around, but before she had a chance to plan something that she would survive through if he didn't show up, there were a string of accidents and robberies and disasters that he surely would've been there to stop or help out with. Lois knew he was really gone.
Writing up a story about his disappearance the way she knew Perry would expect, Lois went through the motions of her daily routine, searching every face on the street as if expecting him to reappear and blend in with the crowd. She wondered what she would do for article ideas since Superman had been her main topic for so long…and then Perry gave her a new assignment.
This is my nephew, Richard. I'd like you to show him around. Help him get settled here in Metropolis, Perry had said.
Lois hadn't felt up to playing tour guide, but apparently, Perry had thought it would be just the trick to help her forget Superman. So she grudgingly took Richard out to look for a place to live, and in the meantime, she got to know him. They spent the next three weeks together, every day, looking at house listings and having meals together, and she even allowed him to take her up in his plane.
But then her whole world changed when she got the news from her doctor during a regular check-up that she was expecting. And she knew exactly how and when it had happened, and just who, extraordinarily, was the father.
Richard had taken her out to dinner that night as previously planned, but Lois had been quite reserved for much of it. It wasn't until he'd walked her to her door that he asked what was wrong. She tried to let him down easy, having already decided that her life was now going to be wrapped around her child, and she probably wouldn't have room in it for someone else. But that's when he surprised her with a proposal.
You hardly know me, she'd complained, but after he went inside with her to continue his argument, he explained that she'd captured his heart. That's when she dropped the bombshell and told him she was pregnant, expecting that to scare him off.
That did set him back but he didn't leave, and he promised that if she would have him, he'd gladly raise the child as his own. Lois couldn't believe that such a man existed.
Over the next few months, as they settled together in a house, Lois' fretfulness over Superman's departure grew to anger. She knew things about him firsthand that others had only read about. And she was certain that he must've known she was pregnant, thanks to his x-ray vision, and that was why he'd left. He was just like every other typical guy out there, afraid to death of commitment. When just a hint of commitment had surfaced in the creation of a new life, he'd run away.
Soon, her anger at him was just her easy way of coping with the loss of the man she'd loved.
Richard, on the other hand, had been her rock. He'd never once asked who the father of her child was, although she knew he must've had suspicions; he just accepted Jason as his own, even while he was in the womb. Lois never denied him as Jason's daddy, and their friends and family and the world accepted it as truth.
It seemed only right that Richard was the first one that came to their rescue.