Way later than intended, but life does its thing.

This has been a bad week for 69 year old British icons.

Chapter Eight: Seeing the Best

"Why does burning cotton always seem to smell like marshmallows?" Lois wondered, pushing open the door to the downtown police precinct. "Did you ever notice? Light a towel on fire and the whole room starts to smell like marshmallows."

"I've noticed it more with paper towels." Clark commented, shaking the crusted snow from his shoes. "Not that I go around lighting paper towels on fire for fun."

"Yeah, something like that gets you in trouble." Lois agreed. She frowned. "Crap, now I want marshmallows. Let's go get hot chocolate after this."

"If it's all the same to you, I think I've had my fill of heat for the day." Clark said, holding up a hand apologetically.

Lois shrugged. "Yeah, don't blame ya, Smallville."

He hadn't been greatly burnt in the fireball -- certainly his skin had suffered no damage, though his hair was going to need a trim to get rid of the crispy edges and his clothes were probably no longer totally fit for public unless he could get rid of the scorch marks -- but wow the heat had been incredible! He could have sworn the flesh was going to melt off his bones!

But it looked like he was immune to that too.

There had to be a limit to how much he was invulnerable against. He couldn't be burnt or impaled. Temperature extremes weren't a problem unless he was unconscious. Drowning was possible, but he could swim and his lung capacity was huge, so that would take some doing. In a similar capacity, he could probably choke to death as well; he was still an oxygen-breathing mammal. But like drowning, that was going to take a lot of patience on the part of the choker's, since he could hold his breath for up to twenty minutes.

Not that Clark was going to around testing exactly what his limits were. He didn't want to do something crazy only to find out at the worst possible second that the crazy thing was going to be what killed him.

He wasn't immortal. Just incredibly durable.

The downtown police precinct was the busiest in the city, as it covered not just Downtown, but the Central Business District, and it answered the lion's share of the calls coming out of the Suicide Slums. Phones rang, policemen chattered and passed around sheafs of paper, people were questioned. The place was always in a perpetual state of motion, or at least Lois always managed to show up whenever it was at its busiest.

"Miss Lane!"

A gruff, kind of gravely voice rang out over the general din and a blue-suited detective came forward to greet them. He was middle-aged, but his hair was an odd shade of brown that almost looked gray and his face was already grizzled with stress lines. His dark eyes were intense on their own, but his eyebrows...

Holy--! No wonder she said don't stare. Dr. Livingston could make a career out of exploring just one those!

Dan Turpin's eyebrows were black and wiry and wild. They looked exactly like they had been subjected to an enormous jolt of electricity and were permanently stuck standing on end. They were sharp and severe and very thick, making his gaze even more intense than it oughta have been. And if just a casual greeting stare made Clark feel uneasy, then he wasn't sure he wanted to know what a proper glare looked like.

"Detective Turpin." Lois shook his hand. "Didn't know you were greeting us at the door."

"You're late." Turpin commented, looking them up and down. There was no way he missed Clark's slightly singed appearance. "How close were you to the explosion downtown?"

"Oh, we were practically right in the middle of it." Clark replied, shrugging.

"Yeah, and if I don't miss my guess, Clark here is going to be internet-famous by the end of the day." Lois patted his chest, grinning. "Anyways, Clark Kent meet Detective Dan Turpin."

"Metropolis Special Crimes Unit." Turpin said, swapping a handshake with the other reporter. "I'm also Terrible Turpin, Turpin the Terrible, or Terrible Turtle, depending on who you talk to. Turpin, terrapin. Snot-nosed rookies thinking they're clever."

"I suppose it was clever the first time around." Clark commented.

"Makes you wonder why they can't think anything new." The detective shook his head in obvious disappointment. What had happened to the age of creative-minded police officers?

"I hope you didn't start the interrogation without us." Lois said.

"Seemed impolite." Turpin shrugged.

"Good. We have some information you might want to hear." Lois tapped Clark, handing the conversation over to him.

"The man you arrested on Monday, the one in charge of the warehouse in Reeve's Harbor," the other reporter started. "His name might be Kyle Faust."

Turpin's wild caterpillar eyebrows crawled a little ways up his forehead. "How do you know that, Mr. Kent?"

"I have a good memory. I usually don't forget a face; not one I went to school with. Kyle made his mark." Clark admitted.

Kyle Faust had been a bully, but not the physical sort. He wasn't the guy who got his hands dirty. He'd had his groupies for that. Kyle had been raised as a leader and leaders weren't supposed to get their hands dirty. He hadn't actually tried to push Clark around; being a second-stringer on the football team had given Clark some protection against upstarts who thought they were hot stuff. Kyle was just universally unpleasant, Smallville High still wasn't a large school, and Clark had crossed paths with him all too often.

"Well," Turpin shifted the file folder under his arm. "I could get in trouble for this if something happens, but how about you got into the interrogation room with him and see how he reacts."

"It seems like a bad idea." Clark opined, a little uneasily. He was pretty much invincible-- bullet-proof he dare say, but Kyle was the guy who spat degrading insults at him from across the classroom and started rumors, and there was no easy way to forget that.

"It's worth a shot." Lois shrugged. She nudged her temporary partner. "You might even get him talking."

"I won't make you, but we still need to make a positive I.D. and right now, we've got nothing to go off of." the detective admitted. After a week of silence from the little shtik drek, even Lieutenant Sawyer was open to suggestions. "Yours is the first potentially useful information we've heard all week. We're not even getting matches in the system." he added, just to make sure the greenhorn reporter understood that they were pretty much out of options.

"Kyle was raised in a doomsday cult. I think they were against things like driver's licenses and electricity." Clark explained. He hadn't known too much about the Burning Earth Society until they had him tied to an altar, but overhearing Kyle's commentary on his home-life had been too easy for a guy with super-hearing.

Lois clapped her hands. "Well, this is a cheerful and enlightening conversation." she said dryly. "Let's go see the forebrain, shall we?" she suggested.

Turpin nodded assent. "This way."

The interrogation rooms were located in the basement of the building and the ceilings were awfully low, in order to better facilitate the feeling of being cut-off from the world. Humankind had not evolved to live underground. Not comfortably, at least. Being told they were underground gave anyone a small psychological twitch of fear. They didn't have to be claustrophobic, but they could be made to feel that they were.

Clark found himself ducking a little when they stepped off the basement stairs into the low hallway. He still had plenty of clearance above his head, but the fact was he would touch his palm flat to the ceiling. He was the tallest of the trio, a full six-foot-three. Lois was five-foot seven in her bare feet and Turpin was only two inches taller than that.

The detective took them to a dark anteroom where one wall was partly glass. Sitting with his hands cuffed to the table was the meth operation's forebrain. Early twenties with his hair shaved down to a buzz-cut. His jawline sloped inwards so hard it was like his chin came to a singular point so sharp it could probably slice the fabric of reality into ribbons. His nose experienced the same severe slope that made it appear it was caving in. Just seeing it instantly brought back that same old thoughts: How on earth did Kyle Faust ever breathe through his nose? Why on earth did it look like that? Had he gotten it broken before? Did his parents not believe in hospital care?

"Look familiar?" Turpin prompted.

Clark nodded. "Yeah, he does." It was amazing what seeing a person in real life did for the memory. "You said I could talk to him?"

"Don't ask him any questions." Turpin advised. "If he confesses anything to you, legally, we can't use that in court as you're not an ordained officer of the law."

"So I just make sure he's who I think he is."

"That's right."

Detective Turpin moved over to the door located beside the window and opened it. Clark entered the interrogation room. It was incredibly white all over and the florescent lights hummed in a way that surely got annoying after an extended period. On this side, the window was a one-way mirror.

Kyle didn't look up at his entry, apparently used to people coming in and out of the room, and he could no longer feign interest. He hunched at the table, his fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table-top. There was an empty bottle of water and a napkin with a scattering of crumbs on it.

Clark pulled out the other chair and sat down.

"Hello, Kyle." he said pleasantly.

Kyle Faust jolted upright, the handcuffs rattling. He had kept very silent the last week; no one knew his name. He had made sure of that.

"How do you know my name?" he demanded, looking the newcomer up and down.

His back was to the mirror, so Clark tipped his glasses down. He had not worn them during high school. Faust was more familiar with the bright blue than the subdued navy blue. It was all the prompting Faust needed to gasp and recoil in fear.

"Holy shit, Clark Kent?" he whispered.

"I moved to Metropolis recently." Clark said, tapping his glasses back up his nose.

"Thought you looked familiar." Faust's eyes narrowed. "I see you survived the lake."

"You should know that I can swim." Clark pointed out. He laced his fingers together. "I'd ask how you've been since high school, but I think I know the answer to that. I was disappointed to recognize you. Smuggling drugs and using innocent people as mules? What would your parents think? What would your mother think?"

"Don't bring my mother into this!" Faust snapped, snarling. He was a dyed-in-wool Mama's Boy, the kind who would happily sit in the pink living room and watch soap operas with tea and cake. Because he liked the soap operas and that was bonding time.

"I'm serious. Did you ever think about the impact your actions would have on your family?" Clark wondered. "Your mother survived the meteor shower, you know. Her left leg is paralyzed from mid-thigh down, but she only served three years. Once she got out, she opened a little bakery back in Smallville; turned it all around for herself. Her cakes are wonderful. And you know, she's been waiting for you to come home. The story is going to break whether you want it to or not. I think your mother is going to end up hearing about it. What is she supposed to do when she finds out her baby boy did nothing but move up in the criminal underworld? Or is it 'down'?"

It was hard to say why Faust was turning pink in the face. He could have been angry that Clark was even talking about his mother or that pink tint was a precursor to a few tears. Either way, the words were having an effect.

"You always contributed to the bake sale, Kyle. Every year, you made macaroons and red velvet cupcakes so delicious I couldn't believe at first where they had come from. I never could admit that I liked them, and mostly because you were usually a horrible person to me. But you could do something amazing. You had some real talent, like your mother. Why are you letting it go to waste?"

On the other side of the glass, Lois and Turpin stared in equal parts shock and awe. Both of them were masters at reading body language and they could see that Faust was slowly crumbling over the admittedly brutal onslaught of Clark's words. The reporter hadn't even raised his voice. He wasn't swearing or insulting Faust or otherwise getting nasty. He was just giving a simple summation of the facts, laid out in a neat row with more than just a touch of guilt for flavor.

"Is he... laying the guilt-trip on purpose?" the detective wondered.

"No, I think he's serious. I think he's really disappointed." Lois realized.

"How is he doing that with a straight face?" Turpin asked. His eyebrows drew together in a single hairy line.

"Maybe it's his super-power." The reporter shrugged. She had no idea how Clark was saying all that stuff like he meant it. Probably because he really did mean it and that... Well, that was just plain bizarre. Clark barely knew the guy and didn't seem terribly fond of him, yet here he was hard-core guilt-tripping Faust about his mother.

It was kind of amazing too.

Back in the interrogation room, Faust burst out laughing. It was several seconds before he stopped; going on just long enough to become grating.

"That's what I hated about you, Kent. You always tried to see the best in everyone even when it wasn't there." he said. "But you were always the worst of us. Mom might have been convinced you were the Fiery One, but I knew you had to die."

A cold shiver crawled down Clark's spine and for the smallest of seconds, he was back on the altar with his hands tied above his head, Faust's hooded face over him with a curved knife in his hands and that look...

"I know what you are. I know what you'll become." the once-cultist said, grinning. "The true Elder showed me. He showed me everything about the future. There's so much destruction in your future and it's all going to happen at your hand. In just a few years too. I knew you had to die before you became any of that. I was so pleased when Mom said I could complete the sacrifice, as a part of my final initiation. It's truly a shame I wasn't able to kill you when I was given the chance. But the Elder... He forgives. You don't."

"My capacity for forgiveness is far greater than yours." Clark stated quietly. He had forgiven Whitney Fordman and their rivalry had been long-standing.

"I know what I saw." Faust said, holding his head up high. "I saw the future and what you're going to do to it."

"I don't know what you saw." Clark said. Or if he even believed any of it. But he was a man who couldn't even be stabbed and he hadn't seen himself bleed in nearly twenty years. Was it too much to doubt that another person who had seen the future? "But you either saw it wrong, or it was just the wrong thing."

"Oh no, the visions were true. I know what I saw to be the correct future." Faust leaned forward, a mad glint in his eyes. "I know who you really are, Clark Kent. Or... What's that other name you have? Isn't it something like 'Ka--"

"I'm done here." Clark stood up abruptly and pushed the chair back in. There was nothing more to be said here. And he didn't want to be in a room alone with someone who would happily kill him because of mad visions of a future that might not even be real.

He knocked on the door and Turpin let him out.

The shiver in his spine had intensified in its frigidness and he found his fists slowly clenching, his fingernails making a valiant effort to dig into the skin of his palms. Faust was serious, absolutely serious about the whole killing sacrifice thing. If they weren't in a police station and one of them hadn't been arrested, there was every chance that Faust would come after him with a knife to finish what he had started six years ago.

A sudden surge of panic washed over him and he fought another shiver. Kyle Faust knew.

One way or another, Faust had come to know that Clark Kent wasn't exactly from Planet Earth. Most of the Burning Earth Society had sort of guessed it based on some old diary that was over fifty years old, but the writer had been sort of vague and there had been several ways to interpret it. By the time all the dust had settled, Clark had concluded that the Burning Earth had picked him because all the coincidences had added up to make the right picture.

But Faust just knew and Clark couldn't explain how. He knew that like it was intuition.

"Smallville?" A hand touched his arm. "Clark."

He looked down and found Lois staring up at him in concern.

"You alright?" she asked.

"Yeah, he just--" Clark shook himself, chasing the shiver away. "Shook me up a little. The Burning Earth Society-- That's what they called themselves... They weren't very sane, for the most part."

"I don't think any doomsday cult is full of very sane people." Lois said dryly. She squeezed his arm comfortingly. "Relax, he's in jail now and I'm ninety percent sure there's going to be a conviction."

She looked over at the detective for confirmation.

"We can nail him on an attempted murder charge, conspiracy to commit it, or an accessory, aiding abetting." Turpin assured them. "It'll be easier to pin him for having the pair of you tossed in Lake Superior than something that happened-- When?"

"In 1999."

"Right, seven years ago. Confession or not. But he's still looking at twenty years of prison time, at least. And that's just for the murder charge, never mind the meth operation."

Clark nodded. "Thank you, Detective."

Turpin nodded back. "Stick around for the show." he added. Then he let himself into the interrogation room to begin the questioning properly, now that they had a name and an idea of what the perp's history was like.

"He was a charmer, that one." Lois said, crossing her arms as she peered back through the one-way mirror. "Tiny Town really knows how to grow some real winners. What was he a part of, a doomsday cult? What is it about small towns that bring out the crazy in people?"

Clark frowned. There was something wrong with that statement, but he wasn't sure what. Lois jerked, as she realized that she had said something wrong.

"But I'm sure your parents are just darling." she added, patting his chest and grinning.

Clark tried not to huff out a sigh. "If you want my opinion, I think the big city brings out the crazy in people more than any small town could." It might have just been his personal experience, but cities seemed to bring out the worst in people; like the tall buildings just drove them crazy after a fashion and they still tried to lash out in a socially acceptable manner.

"Clearly you don't read Stephen King." Lois said dryly.

"That's not relevant."

"Say that when spooky clowns start showing up in Smallville."

Clark rolled his eyes a little, allowing himself that much. Doomsday cults and meteor showers aside, Smallville was just too normal to be the target of anything subtle like Stephen King's eldritch clowns and zombie pets, events that affected only a handful of people. Weirdness came to Smallville in big, overt displays that were visible for ten miles in every direction.

Lois could say anything she wanted, but there was nothing truly subtle about Smallville.

Turpin settled himself on the other side of the table and set the files to one side. He eyed the little bastard up and down, pleased to find some vague signs of nervous-ness. He might have rattled Mr. Kent, but the rookie reporter had rattled him right back in return. Faust's heels bounced off the floor in a rapid-fire motion.

"All right, Mr. Faust. Can I call you 'Kyle'? I'd like to think we're getting along here." Turpin said conversationally. "Here's how the pieces fall. We have you on two separate charges of drug-trafficking and the attempted murders of Mr. Kent and Ms. Lane. If Mr. Kent testifies and the folks in Kansas are cooperative, we can pile on another attempted murder charge. The statute of limitations hasn't run out on your last attempt to kill Mr. Kent. Either way, you're looking at twenty to twenty-five years in Stryker's for the murder charge alone. If you're guilty of drug trafficking, it's Stryker's for life. Do you understand this?"

Faust snorted. "Gonna to tempt me by offering to scrape some time off? Please..."

"No, I'm not looking to lighten the sentence." Turpin replied, lacing his fingers together. Anyone who broke the law deserved to be whacked with the fullest measure of it. "I'm just wondering where you'd think you'd be safer."

The younger man frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the operation you were helping run looked extensive and we pulled down the main artery of it in less than an afternoon. I know there's still more we haven't found. But we have crippled a large part of it. We also know you're not the actual brains of the outfit. You were just the overseer." Turpin went on. His eyebrows drew together as he smiled coolly. "I can't imagine that your employer is going to be thrilled with you. Now think about what might happen if he gets his hands on you."

Faust did and beads of sweat started to form on his brow. His expression shifted from coolly unconcerned to troubled.

"Don't think you can threaten me and get away with it." he said, though there was a tremor in his voice.

"I'm not threatening you." Turpin said. "What I am doing is laying out the possibilities in front of you. Now, if for some unfathomable reason the courts find you not guilty as a result of a false testimony, you'll be out of police protection and running from your employer. I get the feeling that he won't be a happy man and neither will you."

Faust started to sweat more profusely.

On the other side of the glass, Lois made a noise of approval.

"I love watching this man work." she commented, smirking. "He's such a smooth operator. Do you want to know what his success rate is?"

"Not really." Clark admitted. But he had to admire the detective's collected calm; his heartbeat hadn't even fluttered. It helped that Faust was already nervous. A nervous man tended to give in faster.

"So here are your options." Turpin went on. "If you cooperate, spill your guts, we can keep you safe from the wrath of your employer. Stryker's has an extremely low incidence of someone getting shanked in their own cell. Doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, but I'm eighty-three percent certain you'll be safer in a maximum security isolation cell than you will be on the streets. Stryker's is designed to keep people out just as much as it keeps people in. So what will it be?"

Faust visibly trembled.

Then he cracked like bad foundation.

"Gigante! It's Sofia Gigante!" he all but shouted, staring over Turpin's shoulder at the one-way mirror like he could see Clark standing on the other side. "She's been trying to strengthen her foot-hold! The meth operation was her idea! All of it was!"

"Sofia Gigante?" Lois repeated in slow shock.

Clark thought for a moment over the name. "She's the one who can split granite with her face, right?"

"That's the one..." Lois said, a smile growing on her face. It was somewhere between thoughtful and triumphant as she considered the various ways this would play out. Either way, she saw victory in this one. "Yes! Smallville! Do you know what this means?"

"No?" Clark answered.

"It means there's a chance we could take her down!" Lois declared, grabbing him by the elbows and giving him a hearty shake.

"What do you mean?" Clark asked. He strongly suspected what she meant, but he hoped he was just mis-hearing or she wasn't voicing her intentions clearly enough.

"That's an open confession, Smallville! That's gut-spilling! That's a finger!" Lois explained, gesticulating wildly at the mirror. She was practically jumping on the spot. "Sofia Gigante is guilty of something and she's so guilty that one of her underlings would rather get locked in solitary for the rest of his life than sit with the general population! That he won't take visitors because that means getting shanked! That means we can bring down the last actual crime family in Metropolis! All before the year ends! Oh, it's Christmas in the city, Smallville!"

Clark held up a hand. "But you told me that if you're going to investigate the Gigantes, you have to be very careful about it."

Lois shrugged. "That goes without saying, but you have to understand what this is. This is one of those stories that only come around once in a blue moon. I'd say... maybe once a year and you never get it twice. To be on the front lines when something this big is going down? That's gold, Kent. It's the golden ratio of press reporting. We have to take advantage of this."

"We?"

"Of course. It's a two-man job and I'm still officially your mentor until Monday."

"But-- we?" Clark repeated, understandably alarmed by what Lois was suggesting. All the noise she had made about being cautious with the Gigantes heave-ho'd right out the window on the word of a man who had just enough to lose to make him desperate.

"Yes 'we'! I'm not going to start tugging threads like that without back-up!" Lois complained. She was completely mad about her methods but she knew where to draw the lines, thank you very much. And going in to the Gigantes without someone watching her back? She wasn't that crazy.

"Listen to me, Smallville. If every minnow and bottom-feeder says that Gigante is their megalodon, then we need to start looking at the great whites in between. To properly take down a mob boss, we need to get rid of the load-bearing lieutenants first. Now in my experience, there are legitimate businesses through which the lieutenants launder the money."

Clark raised an eyebrow. "In your experience? Ms. Lane, you seem to have experience in a lot of things you shouldn't have experience in."

"I was a stupid teenager. It happens." Lois said, shrugging but not outright defending herself. Her rebellious teenage years had taken her rather further afield than most, but that knowledge was coming in handy now.

"And we're also not cops." Clark went on. "I don't think we should be snooping."

"The cops aren't going to touch Gigante with properly damning evidence, like her at the crime scene itself." Lois pointed to the interrogation. "That isn't going to be enough. Furthermore, there are some dirty cops in the system who could make the paperwork disappear. Not many, but they're in the right places. They can stonewall the good guys. That's why we're going to do all their leg-work for the good cops."

"I-- don't know." Clark said hesitantly, crossing his arms. He wasn't worried about his safety; he couldn't even be hurt by conventional methods. He was worried about his secret, because he wasn't ready to tell it. Especially not to someone he had met just a week ago.

When it came to secrets and keeping them, Clark wasn't sure he could trust Lois. Half her career was built around digging into other people's dirty laundry. It was possible she had more moral integrity than he was currently giving her credit for, but he barely knew her at the moment.

"Seriously, what's the worst that could happen?" Lois asked, half-goading him. "So you lose a tie. You have to get another new suit. Your hair gets singed again." She slapped him on the arm in a friendly way. "Don't worry, Smallville. As long as you're with me, you got nothing to worry about. Now, do you want to be a hero for Metropolis or not?"

Clark stared at her wordlessly, gnawing over the choice. For his career, this would look really good and he wanted job security for the long-term. Financial security really had a way of maintaining happiness. He didn't want to be worrying profusely about his bank account. Survive Lois Lane for one week and get a good story out of it, and his future at the Daily Planet would no doubt be cemented.

On another hand, he couldn't deny that he had come to Metropolis with an itch to make a difference in any way he could. Bringing down the last crime family in the city would certainly do a service to the people, but he wasn't sure he was going to be prepared for the messy fall-out.

On the third hand, Lois was going to run into this whether he was there or not and it sounded like there was a good chance she could end up in the hospital, so he might as well put his bullet-proof chest to good use.

"All right... Where do we start?" Clark asked.

"That's the spirit!" Lois cheered, punching his arm enthusiastically, a manic grin on her face. "Lane and Kent! Lois and Clark! Look out, Metropolis! We're coming for you!"

And Clark wondered just what sort of madness he was about to wade into. But then he supposed that when it came to wading hip-deep into madness, there was no one better to be beside than Lois Lane.

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