Long frickin' a/n: First of all, in the last chapter, I changed the part that says the Justice League cleaned up the kryptonite from New Krypton to just saying that the government cleaned it up. This is mainly because I realized that, realistically, the rest of this story would probably not take place if the Justice League were in existence.

Second of all, against my better judgment, my Superman Muse has forced me into writing another chapter in record time (as you can see) ... so much for me saying I wouldn't be able to update. XD For the sake of my writing (and you guys!), I can only hope she does it again, although for the sake of my schoolwork, I hope she goes into hibernation for a while ... lol.

Thirdly, I have to warn you, we have reached the part of the story where, for better or for worse, it starts to read like a season of Lost, i.e. crazy shiznit happens, and questions get answered with more questions (at least in this chapter ;-p). But I promise you that it does tie into the bomb and the beginning of the story eventually, and that it will all make sense in the end! And if it makes you feel any better, Lois will be just as confused as you are.

And now, on with the actual fic ... !

Part II

Chapter Six: The One That Hits You

When Lois was younger, her father used to take Lucy and her to the shooting range every so often—his idea of quality family time, she supposed. She would always remember her first time there—only eight, every crack of a gun making her jump like a marionette at some puppeteer's beck and call, even though she had tried so desperately to stand as still as a soldier should. And her father, laughing at her (if that gruff scraping from the bottom of his throat could be called a laugh), and telling her there was no point in flinching at the sound of a gun shot.

"You never hear the one that hits you," he had said.

Now, years later, as Lois jerked at the bang that clapped in the distance, these words came back to her, making her feel foolish at first, and then relieved. She took a deep breath. Whatever that was, it hadn't sounded good, but there was no reason for her to panic.

"You never do hear the one that hits you, Lois," she repeated under her breath.

Without leaving her seat, she tried to get her bearings. The boom had come from her right, which was in the direction of downtown. Leaning forward, she peered down the hallway towards the architecture firm, hoping that she could get a look through its glass doors and windows at whatever had happened.

It's probably just thunder, she thought, even though the day was unbearably sunny. Or a backfiring car, maybe?

She wasn't buying the excuses her mind was throwing out, though, and if the people in the architecture office had made any of their own rationalizations, they weren't believing them, either. A crowd was pressed against the windows now, people leaning this way and that to try to see around the skyscrapers that blocked their view, and standing on tip-toe to gaze over each other's shoulders. Something wasn't right here. It was a feeling in the air, thinner than solid fact, but thicker than intuition. Lois could have reached out and grabbed it, if only …

If only what? she wondered. She realized that she had actually raised her hand, her fingers curved as though she was trying to grasp an object that was hovering before her. There was nothing there, nothing that she could see, but she felt something—tugging at her and repulsing her at the same time, drawing her like a magnet to metal, but pushing her away with the gentle pressure of a stream of water.

If only … she closed her hand, fingers curling shut, and it was like she had taken hold of a tornado. The world around her swirled like so much water going down a drain, and she found herself lifted up, tossed like a rag and dragged backwards through what seemed to be an endless corridor of thorny brambles until she felt torn and separated, as though her body and all the pieces of her soul were nothing but a stack of Russian nesting dolls, split open and scattered on the floor.

Superman, she thought, but she no longer seemed to have lips or tongue or mouth to cry out his name, or to even whisper it.

And he never could read her mind.

-----

It was the heat that roused her. It wasn't the comfortable warmth of a fire on a winter's night, or the golden incandescence that radiated from Superman's arms, but that sticky swelter that gets under your skin like a colony of fire ants, making you restless—irritable—exhausted, yet unable to sleep.

She kicked at the blanket that clung to her sweat dampened body, throwing it off, although the elimination of that thin piece of cloth did little to lessen the feeling that she was in a sauna. Still, to have nothing but air against her bare skin was something of an improvement. And so she lay there, too tired to even lift her eyelids, and nearly a minute passed before her groggy mind caught up with the meaning of what had just happened:

She had woken up, covered by a blanket, lying on something that, now that she took the time to consider it, felt suspiciously like a bed. There was a pillow under her head. There was that dip to her left, where the mattress dimpled under the weight of Richard's sleeping form.

Sleep. Bed. Sleep.

Relief struck like a bolt of lightning, illuminating the events of the last couple of hours for what they really were: a dream. It had all been a dream. The argument with Richard, the conversation with Clark, the explosion, that horrible feeling that she was being run through a cosmic shredder. It had been nothing but a vivid nightmare, probably brought on by this god awful weather and the emotional turmoil that had been brewing within her for the last few months.

Lois exhaled audibly. Why is it so damn hot? she wondered idly, although she didn't really care. Maybe the power had gone out, maybe the air conditioner had broken. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was in one piece, and that she had a second chance to talk to Richard about Jason and Superman, to explain the situation to him before he jumped too far ahead with his own conclusions.

That thought cleared the last cobwebs of sleep from her mind, bringing her into a state of razor-sharp wakefulness. Her heart beat was accelerating now, and her stomach was beginning to tense with anticipation. She gripped the sheet beneath her with both hands, fingernails digging into folds of cloth. She knew that it wasn't wise to wake a man up in the middle of the night to discuss such a weighty subject, but she didn't know if she could wait until morning.

As she had told Clark in her dream, she was ready to get this over with. When all of it was said and done, Richard really was the right choice. He was the only one who could give Jason the stable life that a child needed. He was the only one who had consistently been there for her, who really knew her. And she really knew him—something that she definitely could not say about Superman. And how could she throw away a five-year relationship for a man who was still, in many ways, something of a stranger? Before she became a mother, she might have actually taken the risk. But there could be no risk taking now. Not with Jason's future at stake.

Lois's hands itched to reach out for Richard, to shake him awake. So she tried to quell her urge by simply opening her eyes and looking at him.

And that was when she realized two things.

First of all, she was not in her bedroom. To her right, there was no night stand, no lamp, no digital clock with the alarm that was like fingernails on a blackboard. Just a wall. The rest of the room contained none of the furniture that she and Richard had bought together four years ago. The window wasn't in its usual place. And she wasn't even lying on a bed. Just a mattress that was on the floor and pushed into the corner of the room.

And second of all … second of all, that wasn't Richard lying next to her. Even in the darkness, the face she was staring down at was unmistakable. The heavy eyebrows, the strong jaw, the black lashes splayed across cheeks composed of such perfect planes that they must have been the product of some mathematical equation. And that hair, curling against a smooth forehead.

"Holy shit!" Lois shrieked, not sure that there was any other way to put it. She tried scrambling to her feet as a sleeping Superman stirred beside her, only to fall back down the minute she tried putting weight on her left foot. Her ankle—she had forgotten that she had sprained it. Except—hadn't that happened in her dream?

"Lois, what's wrong?" Superman was asking her now. He had propped himself up on one elbow, and was rubbing the sleep from his eyes in a way that was so completely at odds with the rich concern in his voice—that was so very un-Superman-ish—that Lois actually paused in her freaking out to consider what a … what a human gesture it was.

But then she remembered that she was mildly (and mysteriously) injured, in an unfamiliar room, and in bed with a man whom she most definitely should not be in bed with … and, oh dear lord, she was naked, too …

At this third unwelcome realization, she grabbed the blanket she had previously discarded, pulling it away from Superman and around herself as best she could. This didn't improve matters, though, because even though it covered her up, it only served to reveal that he was naked, too. She gaped for a second or ten, and then forced herself to focus on his eyes and not … the rest of him …

"Um, Lois? Are you all right?" he pressed, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Am I all right?" she demanded, finding her voice again. "Am I fucking all right? What the hell is going on? What did you do to me?"

"Uh … I … well …" he blinked at her owlishly, apparently as disoriented by her outburst as she was by her current surroundings. His eyebrows furrowed, then his expression cleared, a look spreading across his face that was both innocent and sly, both tentatively knowing and apologetic. It was a look that didn't fit with her idea of Superman at all, but that somehow fit his face nonetheless. She would have considered it to be endearing under any other circumstances.

"Lois, if I was hogging the covers again, all you have to—" he began, chuckling lightly, reaching out to touch her face.

"Don't you even think of putting one finger on me," Lois growled, cutting him off the way a guillotine slices off a head, her voice teetering on the brink of fury. She shoved his hand away, vaguely noticing the ring around his finger as she did so.

"Lois, I …" he trailed off, confused hurt pooling in his eyes. "What did I do? I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what's upset you."

"You don't understand?" Lois gaped at him. "You don't understand? Well, that makes two of us, then."

Using the wall behind her for support, Lois somehow managed to get to her feet and to hop off the mattress and onto the floor, trying to ignore the pain lancing through her ankle every time her left foot so much as grazed the ground, and trying to keep the sheet wrapped tight around her body.

"Lois, will you please tell me what's going on?" Superman entreated. She didn't look at him, but the creak of floorboards let her know that he was getting up, that he was walking towards her. She listened to him approaching until she could feel him standing just inches away from her. Strangely enough, though, she couldn't feel the heat that usually emanated from him.

"For someone with super hearing, you don't listen very well," she snapped. "In case you didn't notice, that's what I've been asking you to do. Now where are my clothes?"

When he didn't speak, she looked back over her shoulder and found him staring at her as though she had said something offensive. He looked vaguely appalled, which only served to make Lois see red. How dare he be appalled when she was the one who had been … well, what had happened to her anyway?

She felt her chest constricting with anger, her breath caught by that involuntary contraction of emotion, like a bird trapped by a closing fist. And, if truth be told, she wasn't just mad—she was frightened, too (although she wasn't about to let him see that). She had thought that she had escaped that churning storm from her dream which had threatened to decimate her, but now she felt like she was right back in it. How could the man who was supposed to protect her—

"It would take a lot more than super hearing to know what you're going on about," Superman finally said, his tone light except for the slightest hint of … regret? Or was that bitterness? "But considering I don't even have that any more, I suppose it's hopeless that I'll ever catch on."

He was moving away from her now and into the middle of the room. Lois frowned. I don't even have that any more. What was that supposed to mean?

She watched him as he bent over, picking up what she realized were articles of clothing, strewn across the floor with the careless abandon that was an unmistakable hallmark of violent, insatiable passion. Looking at that trail made of shirts and socks and underwear, she could almost see the two of them, stumbling across the floor a few hours earlier, hands and lips running rampant over each others' bodies. But how ...? And why?

Like a sputtering candle, her anger died away just as quickly as it had flared, until she was only left feeling drained. She shivered, chilled in spite of the temperature in the room, and pulled herself together. If she really thought about it, she knew, in her gut, that Superman would never do anything to hurt her. He wouldn't kidnap her, or drug her, or force anything upon her. The idea of it wasn't just improbable—it was absurd. And one look in his eyes during their conversation the other night had been enough to let her know that he would never use his powers to tamper with her mind again. So then she must have come here of her own volition.

But where was here, even? She was just beginning to take a closer look around the room, squinting at it in the darkness, when Superman finally came back over to her, a bundle of garments in his hands.

"Although I don't see what good they're going to do you now, here are your clothes, Mrs. Kent," Superman told her, his voice teasing. "And if you don't mind, I'll be taking this back."

It was this kind of moment that made Lois damn glad that all of the bones in her skull were securely attached to each other. Because if they weren't, her jaw would have dropped off of her face and gone through the floor. As it was, her mouth simply hung open as though she was one of those giant snakes that swallows its prey whole. Somehow, her hands managed to take hold of the pile of clothes that Superman was handing her. At the same time, he grabbed the sheet that was wrapped around her, pulled it off of her in one, swift motion (she was still in so much shock that it didn't even occur to her to stop him), and headed back over to the mattress.

"Now, are you going to tell me why you're angry, or is this one of those arguments where I should theoretically be able to figure it out on my own because I love you so much?" he asked, his voice somewhere between exasperation and amusement, with a thread of genuine worry weaving it all together.

About fifty different thoughts and noises tried to make their way out of Lois's mouth at once, with the result that she ended up with a jam that resembled a Metropolis intersection at rush hour in her throat, rendering her speechless. It wasn't enough that she didn't know where she was, and that all signs were pointing to the fact that she had slept with the Man of Steel again, without remembering it, again, when she was engaged to Richard no less. But now he was calling her Mrs. Kent? Mrs. Kent? Kent? What the …?

This has to be one of those dream within a dream things, Lois thought to herself, even though she knew that it wasn't true. Nothing had ever felt so solid as this moment that found her standing here, naked, clutching her clothes to her chest, her ankle still throbbing, the wall rough against her shoulder blades, the humid air clinging to her like moss draped over the branches of a tree. No, she wasn't dreaming. This was as real as it got. So then why did it seem like every rule in the universe had been flipped on its head?

Turning to look at Superman, she found that he had flopped back down on the mattress and was now sprawled out beneath his newly recovered blanket, one arm under his head, his eyes watching her with an intensity that made her blush from her toes all the way up to her scalp. She tried to comfort herself with the fact that it was dark, but then remembered that he could see equally well in darkness and light. Dammit, she cursed to herself. Maybe it would be a good idea to start putting on these clothes.

"Because this chapter needed one more note" a/n:

I think that the sentiment about never hearing the bullet that hits you is from the movie All Quiet on the Western Front. I think. It's from some WWI movie, I know that!