Family Hour
By Shayne Terry <byron212@yahoo.com>
Rated: PG
Submitted: December 2007
___________________


DISCLAIMER: I don't own Lois or Clark or Superman or any
associated characters. Lisa Lane is mine, though.

I'd like to thank Chris Patterson for her advice and technical
input on medical matters and to all the folcs who gave feedback
and suggestions on the way they thought the story should go. I
didn't use every suggestion, but they all kept me motivated.


The pounding rhythm of the music was like sex, grinding,
guttural, almost overwhelming. Lois swayed for a moment. Her
face felt numb, and she wondered if this was what her mother
felt like when she wanted to forget.

She wasn't supposed to be here at all. A fake ID, a quick lie...it
wasn't supposed to be that easy to get away from your parents.
There had been a time where it wouldn't have been that easy with
hers.

Now that they were imploding, their marriage disintegrating
faster than snow on a hot day, they didn't have time for Lois or
Lucy. It seemed to be all they could do to keep it together.

So they were at home, and Lois was here.

She hadn't even had to buy her own drinks. Different people had
been handing them to her all night.

For a moment she wondered where the others had gone, and then
she shrugged.

She was here to forget, not to worry.

Someone grabbed her arm and pulled her on to the dance floor. As
she danced, Lois stared at the glowing bracelet she was wearing.
How they got the tiny crystals embedded in it to glow she didn't
know, but it was the coolest thing she'd seen in a while.

Some guy out of Kansas was selling them for fifty bucks each.

As Lois waved her arm, she could see the pretty colors it made.
The light almost seemed to streak into a single trail.

**********

"I don't think we should be here."

Clark allowed himself to be shoved along by his teammates. This
was wrong, and if the coach found out they were all going to be
in hot water. Still, alcohol couldn't affect him as far as he
knew, and at least here in Metropolis he wasn't likely to find
any of those damned bracelets Wayne Irig's grandkid was
selling.

He hated the way they made him feel. He wasn't himself. At the
rate things were going, he was going to have to leave Smallville
sooner than later. Maybe the fad would fade after a few years,
but given what he could do, it'd be safer to stay away.

Clark winced as the pounding music overwhelmed him. By the time
he'd regained his senses, his buddies had already bribed the guy
at the door and they were in.

"You know what they say about city girls, Clark..." Pete said,
turning to grin at him.

"No," Clark said. He tensed, waiting for the punch line, but
Pete had already caught the eye of a girl across the dance
floor, and he was off.

As long as they stayed more focused on the girls and less on the
booze, they would probably be ok. Clark didn't want to have to
answer any questions about hung over teammates if he didn't have
to.

He was the sensible one. That seemed to be his role in life.
Sometimes he wondered if he just didn't have the same glands as
an ordinary person. He liked girls, but he didn't seem to have
the same sort of overwhelming feeling of need that some of his
peers had.

Maybe it made him a little superior, being able to....

Clark's sense of smug superiority vanished in an instant as he
caught the eye of a girl across the room. She was dancing on the
dance floor, her tight dress sliding provocatively up and down
her figure.

She was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen.

His entire body felt as though it was tingling. From his scalp
to his back and spreading outward, he felt numb.

Flushing, he realized that for the first time since he was a
child he felt sweaty and hot.

He began to work his way toward her.

*************

He was handsome, and obviously a jock. When he smiled, Lois felt
a familiar thrill going through her. It was something more than
what she usually felt when she saw a handsome boy. Tonight she
felt different than she normally did. Her world was falling
apart, and she felt...restless.

It felt as though anything could possibly happen, as though the
night was filled with endless possibilities.

As she slid up to him, she saw that he was noticing the bracelet
on her arm. He stiffened, and a sheen of sweat appeared on his
forehead.

She was sixteen and she felt numb. As she slid into his arms,
she at least felt something.

************

Hangovers were even worse than Lois had been told. Her eyes felt
as though they were stuck together with a mixture of sand and
mud. Her mouth felt dry, and her head pounded. It took her a
moment to realize that she was home in bed.

She had no idea how she'd gotten there.

A flash of memory, and she groaned. She'd been all over that guy
last night. She'd wanted to feel something.

Well, she felt something now. An unfamiliar soreness, an
unfamiliar ache was in places she hadn't realized existed.

She was never drinking again. Lois closed her eyes and tried
desperately to remember his face.

All she could remember was the feeling of his hands on her
body...the feeling she'd had when they were together.

His face was a blank.

At least none of the guys who went to her school had been there.
The other girls had split out early, and Lois was going to be
able to deny everything.

As far as the world was concerned, last night had never
happened.

Lois was just going to have to move on.

***************

Cold, clinical tile. The coarseness of the paper gown she was
wearing. The cold knot of fear deep in her gut...every visit to
the doctor was difficult, but this one was different.

Her periods had been affected by all the stress she was under.
Hopefully she was only nauseous in the morning due to the
stomach flu.

Maybe she'd get lucky and have an ulcer.

The doctor stepped into the room and looked down at her.

"Your STD panels are all clean, but we need to talk."

Lois slowly sat up.

"You're approximately three months pregnant. You need to start
considering your options."

Her world was never going to be the same.

**************

Thirteen years later, Lois thought exactly the same thing as she
stared at the hole in her living room wall. The couch was in the
back yard, crushed to bits, and she and her daughter simply
stood and stared at the destruction.

"I'm sorry." Lisa stared up at Lois, and for a moment she
reminded Lois of the sweet child she'd once been, before she'd
entered this rebellious phase.

Before all the freakish things had begun happening around her.
Fires starting spontaneously whenever she was angry. Getting in
trouble for spying on people, when she claimed she was nowhere
near them.

Losing all of her friendships because of things she heard them
say about her, when she wasn't even in the area.

Lois had been considering sending her to see Doctor Friskin, but
the hole in the wall put an entirely new light on things.

It was a brick wall, and her daughter had thrown a couch through
it.

Contritely, her daughter handed her the red glowing bracelet.

"Don't go through my jewelry box," Lois said absently.

Every time Lisa got into it, she got into trouble, but for some
reason, it just seemed to call to her.

"Take the couch out to the alley and make sure nobody sees you,"
Lois said quickly.

Seeing her daughter pick up the three hundred pound couch easily
and carry it through the back yard convinced her that it was
finally time to face the truth.

Her daughter wasn't completely human.

***************

For almost two years she'd worried that she might be
schizophrenic. Her best friend Janice had a brother who heard
voices and felt suspicious and was angry all the time. Lisa had
seen what it had done to Janice and her family, and she'd
learned enough to be frightened out of her mind.

Being schizophrenic meant they would send you away and lock you
up for weeks at a time. It meant that the people around you were
always watching you, waiting for signs that you were coming
unglued again.

It meant that the people in your life always had to be on their
guard, and that they got taunted about having someone crazy in
the family.

When she'd begun hearing the voices, she'd known what it meant.
Her time with her mother was limited.

At first it hadn't been so bad. Hearing stray conversations and
only later realizing that no one had been nearby to have them.
There had been no rhyme or reason to them. Sometimes the things
Lisa had heard terrified her. The time she'd heard the daddy
hitting his kid had sent her to her room with her hands over her
ears, biting her lip to keep from crying.

Sometimes she'd heard bathroom noises that made her giggle.
Other times they made her feel sick.

The older she'd got, the more specific it had gotten. Now it
seemed that the voices were always talking about her.

It was funny how little you really wanted to hear what people
really thought about you.

Grandma Ellen had thought she was fat, and that she had an
eating problem. That had lasted until last summer, when she'd
suddenly grown and discovered that it didn't seem to matter how
much she ate; she no longer gained weight.

Then Grandma Ellen had thought she was anorexic. Lisa had caught
the look on her grandmother's face whenever she went to the
bathroom, as though she was going to check for signs of vomit.

Aunt Lucy was nice, but she worried that Lisa didn't have enough
friends.

Of course, when you were hearing voices that sounded like the
people you thought were your friends talking behind your back,
it was hard to look for new ones. Especially since there was a
feeling in the base of her gut that at least some of the things
she was hearing were true.

Uncle Mike argued with her mother about their having their own
house. They could have so many more things, he argued, if they
would move back in with him. Her mother would argue about being
independent and setting a good example.

She'd tell Grandma Ellen though that she felt guilty for having
taken advantage of him all those years when she was small.

Her friends thought she was fat at first, and then they started
getting jealous. They'd make things up about her liking this boy
or that; they'd make comments about her being a slut because she
was developing earlier than they were.

As though the fact that most of them didn't even need a training
bra was her fault.

The bitter thing was that Lisa had thought she was pretty and
popular before all this happened, despite being a little
overweight. If she believed the voices, however, the more
popular she got on the surface, the more everyone despised her.

In Lisa's experience, the normal changes associated with
becoming a woman were more humiliating than gratifying. Shopping
for her first bra, her first period.

At least she never seemed to be bothered by much pain. It was
something she'd sometimes caught her mother muttering
resentfully about.

For almost two years, the voices had tormented her, and Lisa
hadn't been able to tell anyone, not even her best friend.
Anyone she told would freak out, and the next thing she knew,
she'd be locked away somewhere away from her friends.

She'd be stuck with other kids who really were crazy, and she'd
be stuck away from her mother.

Lisa didn't even want to think about the voices she'd hear at a
mental hospital. She'd seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest one
night with Aunt Lucy. Hearing people get their brains shocked
out didn't sound like her idea of fun, even if Janice assured
her that they didn't do that kind of thing anymore.

After all, she wasn't even sure what her voices were. Maybe she
was hearing ghosts, or memories.

She had nightmares sometimes about meeting the faces that went
with some of the voices, especially about the daddy who was
hitting his kid.

She hoped her own daddy wasn't like that. Her mother had never
told her much about him, saying only that he wasn't someone
she'd known well.

Sometimes she wished that she could get to meet him, that he'd
show up in a big white limousine, (or in her sillier times, a
white horse) and come save her mother from the life they'd
become stuck in.

As the bus pulled up to the school, Lisa winced. A month ago
she'd gone beyond hearing voices and had begun to see
things...naked things. It had terrified her at first. Janice's
brother only saw things when things were getting really bad for
him, when he'd been off his meds for a while.

Apparently this was going to be another one of those days.

Lisa closed her eyes for a moment and then stood as the bus
pulled to a halt. She ignored the whispers about how stuck up
she was and kept her eyes focused firmly ahead.

She could see the fleshless skulls of some of her classmates
ahead of her. Others looked as though they weren't wearing a
stitch of clothing. Lisa walked quickly, shoving past several of
the boys who immediately protested.

She slowed, reminding herself to be careful. It was getting
easier to hurt other people now, and while sometimes she still
forgot, the sight of the bruises she'd put on Janice's wrist was
warning enough. She didn't need to be expelled for fighting at
school. She certainly didn't need to get into any more trouble.

She was off the bus, and after that she kept her eyes firmly
down as she hurried away from the stop. She could hear Janice
calling to her, but she ignored her. She didn't want to see
Janice that way any more than she did anyone else.

Worse, Janice knew the signs, and it terrified Lisa that she
might be able to see that Lisa was seeing things.

It was a secret Janice wouldn't keep. She'd been raised to
believe that it was important to tell about things like that,
and the few times Lisa had even raised the issue, she'd been
firm.

Janice's brother had seen skeletons. He hadn't seen naked
people, but that wasn't the sort of thing he'd have talked about
to his younger sister.

It hurt, losing her one friend, but although Lisa could deal
with the voices, the hallucinations were more than she could
deal with.

Lisa hurried down the street, down row after row of identical
houses with identical lawns. People in the suburbs prided
themselves on looking just like everybody else, and although
Lois had sometimes wondered why her mother had chosen this life,
deep down, she'd known the truth. It was all her fault.

Lisa kicked at a stray rock, and winced as it flew across the
lawn to smash into the side of a car. A year ago, it wouldn't
have gone that much further than one kicked by a normal boy. Now
she was some sort of freak.

The thought that she might not be hallucinating, that the things
she was seeing and hearing were real was even more terrifying.
Aunt Lucy had let her watch the Exorcist one night when her
mother had been out late working. She'd had nightmares for
weeks.

What if she was possessed now?

It would explain the freakish strength, the weird hearing and
sight. It would explain Lisa's sudden inexplicable rages, times
when she felt as though she was standing outside her own body
looking in.

She loved her mother. She would never want to harm her. But
screaming and throwing a couch, that was exactly the sort of
thing that got a kid locked up. Lisa knew it, but she hadn't
been able to control herself last night.

Her guilt had kept her from sleeping all night, and her mother
hadn't looked any better the next morning. She'd slept beside
the hole in the wall so that no one would be able to come into
the house and steal things.

Lisa was ashamed of herself, and the worst part of it was that
she didn't have anyone left that she could turn to.

Her mother had sacrificed so much for her already. The voices
she'd heard assured her of that. She could have been somebody
big and important, living the kind of life Lisa only saw on the
movies.

Instead of being grateful, Lisa had thrown a couch at her. It
was going to cost a lot of money, Lisa knew, money they didn't
have, to fix it. That meant they were going back to eating
sandwiches for a long time, and they probably weren't going to
get to go on the trip this summer.

Lisa was as miserable as she'd ever been, and the worst of it
was that there was nobody she could confide in.

************

Lois felt trapped.

What was going on with Lisa was something beyond her control.
She was strong enough now to be really dangerous, but sending
her away to an institution wasn't really an option.

There was no telling what they would do if they discovered what
she was able to do while she was locked away. Lois would lose
all control over the welfare of her child then, and she didn't
want to find out too late that Lisa was being locked away in a
lab somewhere.

She couldn't even share this with anyone. Her own parents would
have her committed if she talked about this. Lucy wasn't
reliable, and might tell someone. Uncle Mike might
understand...although Lois would hate to ruin the special
relationship he had with Lisa.

She didn't want to see horror in anyone's eyes when they looked
at her little girl.

Wearily she sat on her one remaining chair and switched the
television on. She was going to have all day to wait while the
bricklayers did their work.

************

"Mom?" Lisa asked cautiously as she stepped into the darkened
house.

By the light of day, the hole was even larger than it had seemed
the night before, even though the bricklayers had already
replaced half of it.

Although it was only a little after six, they'd already
apparently taken off for the day. Lisa had heard her grandfather
mutter about unions often enough to know what that meant.

Her mother was sitting in the darkness, the television turned
down low.

She'd had to use a sick day from work for this, and that was
something her mother couldn't afford to do often. She didn't get
paid on those days, and Lisa felt her guilt increase even
further.

Her mother glanced at her and gestured toward the television.

"They've been playing this all day."

There wasn't a place to sit, so Lisa stood as Lois turned the
volume up.

On the screen was a tiny figure in a blue and red outfit. He was
flying, and it almost looked as though he was carrying an
airplane.

*****************
The hum of the wheels against the road was hypnotizing; the soft
sounds of soft rock playing on the radio reminded Lois of long
trips she'd taken with her own parents when she was a child,
before everything had gone sour between them.

Usually the hum of the road had been enough to let her drift off
to sleep to the sound of the music, after she'd shoved Lucy as
far as she could on her own side of the seat.

Lisa had never had that kind of sibling rivalry; she never
would. Lois had had her child too young, and further, there had
been some genetic abnormalities that had made the pregnancy
especially difficult on her body. She'd almost died, and the
damage done to her had been more than she liked to think about
still.

So Lisa was always going to be alone. She was never going to
have to fight over clothes or dolls or boys. She wasn't going to
know what it was like to stand up for a little sister, to huddle
together and comfort each other when their parents were
fighting.

She'd never have that special relationship and part of Lois
regretted it. It had been hard enough raising one child alone;
even with all the help Uncle Mike'd had to offer, it had
sometimes been all she could do to get up in the mornings.

Yet Lois would never regret having her, despite the dreams she
still sometimes had of a glamorous life as a big reporter.

She glanced over at her daughter and wondered just how much she
hadn't told Lois.

This Superman could do so many things. He was strong; he could
set fires with his eyes. He could hear cries for help from miles
away.

Lisa had admitted to hearing things that first day. It explained
a lot. It explained her sudden coolness toward her grandmother
after she turned ten. Ellen had always been careful to keep her
vitriol away from impressionable ears, but when those ears could
hear telephone conversations from all the way across the house,
it meant that Lisa had been exposed to things Lois would have
rather protected her from.

Lois was just glad that there had never been any serious men in
her life. That would have resulted in the kind of psychological
scarring she didn't want to deal with.

It hurt to think that she'd been suffering all this time,
thinking she was crazy and that if she told she'd be sent away.
Lois's job was to protect her little girl, and she'd failed.

It was an old familiar guilt. There were so many things she
wanted for her daughter, things she'd never been able to
accomplish for herself. This was the last in a long line of
failures.

She'd never been able to provide the kind of material things
she'd wanted to provide. Living with her Uncle Mike had helped,
but it was only in the last few years that she'd been solvent
enough to even consider moving out on her own.

Glancing over at her daughter, who was staring straight ahead,
Lois wondered what other things were going on with her that she
hadn't bothered to tell her.

"Are you ok?" she asked.

Sometimes it felt as though she didn't know her daughter
anymore. Things had changed between them for the past two years,
and it was only now that she was beginning to get an inkling of
the reason why.

Lisa nodded, and then returned to staring out the window. She'd
been silent for most of the trip, enough that Lois had begun to
worry.

Since that first day, Superman had been on television, in
magazines, on the radio. He'd saved hundreds of people from
earthquakes and floods and car accidents. He'd made it clear
that there was no place on earth that he didn't consider under
his protection, with the exception of Metropolis, which he'd
avoided.

It wasn't something that anyone but Lois would have noticed, but
there were hundreds of cities in the world, and not all of them
had required his services as of yet. Reporters barely had time
to shout a few questions at him before he was off to perform yet
another few rescues.

The world was desperate for any piece of news about him. In some
ways he was bigger than the Beatles, and there were pictures of
crowds of admirers trying to swarm him, to touch him, to share
in some way a piece of what he had.

None of that made him easier to find; to the contrary, he made
rescues and didn't spend long at any one place. Lois could
sympathize. Having a needy world always wanting something from
you...she couldn't imagine.

Lois had begun to lose hope, after three weeks. It didn't seem
as though there was any way to contact this Superman. He didn't
have any known place of residence, and he didn't even seem to
play favorites in terms of where he worked.

It wasn't until she'd seen an article on the news that Lois had
realized her chance. An obscure millionaire, some sort of mining
magnate in Colorado, had set up a Superman foundation. It was a
charitable organization, and, according to follow up articles in
the paper, Superman had agreed to appear at a celebrity
auction.

"Do you really think he'll be there?" Lisa asked, finally
breaking the silence.

Lois nodded. "He's been pretty good about keeping his promises
so far."

"Not with me," Lisa said, her voice sounding strained.

"If he'd known about you...if we'd known...it would have been
different."

How different Lois couldn't know. She knew nothing about the man
other than that he claimed to be from another planet, and that
he spent great portions of his day devoted to helping people.

"He pretends that he just showed up recently," Lisa said. "Isn't
that a lie?"

"Well," Lois said. "We're not sure that he might not have been
just visiting...or it might not be him at all. He might just be an
uncle or a cousin or something."

There was the chance that he could be just one member of a
family, or that he was part of an invasionary force. Lois hoped
not. It was going to be hard enough to face the man with a child
who was almost a teenager. It would only be worse if she had to
beg for their lives at the same time.

The only thing she knew was that he would have some answers.
He'd be able to answer some of the questions that Lisa and Lois
both shared.

Were there ways for Lisa to control her abilities? Would she be
able to fly? What else was she likely going to be able to do?

Just how human was she, really?

In the long run, it didn't matter to Lois. Lisa was her
daughter, even if she was really some sort of green bug eyed
thing from another star. Lois had a sense, however, that it
mattered a great deal to Lisa.

Lisa had been alone for far too long.

"I'm sorry I didn't believe you," Lois said, after another long
period of silence.

Lisa had claimed that people were saying things about her,
things she couldn't possibly have heard. She'd never had a good
explanation for it.

Lisa shrugged. "I wouldn't have believed me." She didn't look at
Lois, simply stared off into the darkness.

***************

Everything went as planned with the auction. The charity earned
more money than anyone would have expected. Superman got more
publicity, and the Superman Foundation was one more step toward
becoming a self sustaining force of good in the world.

There were so many things he had to answer for, and this
wouldn't begin to make up for them, but it was a start.

Stepping out onto the red carpet, Clark avoided the instinct to
blink as flashes of light from dozens of photographers hit him
all at once. There were celebrities in front of him and behind
him, but he was the one the media was interested in today.

It still felt wrong, all this celebrity. He'd spent his life in
hiding, concealing what he could do, fearing the response of the
unthinking mob. People hated what they didn't understand;
everything he'd seen had convinced him of that.

What he hadn't understood was that people had an insatiable need
to find something to believe in. Pete had told him this, but he
hadn't believed it.

As he stepped onto the red carpet and prepared to fly away, he
found the world seeming to slow down around him. Everything
seemed to freeze around him as his vision seemed to constrict.

In the crowd...she was there, staring at him.

The woman he'd wanted to forget...and had never been able to.

She was the woman who had changed the course of his entire life,
and he didn't even know her name.

***********

The sounds of the crowd around her seemed to fade into
nothingness. Lois felt as though the entire world was condensing
down into a single point. She could have sworn he was looking
directly at her, but before she could call out to him, he was in
the air.
It was a breathtaking sight, more than she would have imagined.
The cape billowed out around him, and it gave him the look of
something otherworldly.

A moment later, he was gone.

Lois felt numb. They'd driven two thousand miles over the space
of two and a half days, and it was all for nothing.

She felt Lisa's hand tighten on hers, and she looked down at her
daughter.

This wasn't the end. They'd contact him one way or another.

************

High in the darkness, Clark stared down at them as they left the
crowd. The woman and the young girl looked frazzled and weary.
They looked as though they hadn't slept in days, as though
they'd been traveling and had slept in their car.

He couldn't believe how clear her face was. She'd been the face
in his dreams for years, the one person who had haunted him
after all this time.

She'd been his first introduction to the poison that had come to
define his life, and yet he didn't blame her. As far as he could
see, she was the one person he'd known who hadn't had an agenda.
She hadn't asked anything of him, and he'd known instinctively
that what they were doing wasn't something she'd done before.

It had been awkward, clumsy, wonderful. There had been something
about it that made it different than later, more skilled
encounters. She'd had a vulnerability about her, a feeling that
all it would take would be a single tap, and her whole world
would shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.

He'd flown for the first time that night, buoyed by the
unfeeling sensations of new love. His joy had only grown. This
was the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with.
She was going to be the one.

Of course, away from the red poison, he'd gotten sick, and his
memory had gotten fuzzy. He couldn't remember exactly where he'd
taken her that night.

Worse, the next morning the other guys on the team had talked
about it, turned what had been a beautiful encounter into
something ugly and tawdry.

He hadn't even known her first name, but that was going to
change.

He took a quick note of the license plate number on the battered
brown station wagon that was parked haphazardly.

The girl spoke. "What are we going to do, mom?"

"We're going to get in contact with Mr. Kent. He set up this
foundation. Surely he has some way of getting in contact
with...him."

They were trying to contact Superman? For a moment Clark was
tempted to simply land beside them, but his native caution
prevented it. He wasn't sure why they'd traveled this far to
find him, and he wanted to know more before committing himself.

"I thought he saw you," the girl said.

"I did too, honey." The sound of defeat in that familiar voice
was almost enough for him to reconsider.

Before he could reconsider again, he was off.

With her, of all women, he couldn't trust himself.

***********

Wearily, Lois staggered into the tiny motel. Switching the
lights on, she was relieved to see that it was at least clean,
although there was a faint scent of mildew. The tiles in the
bathroom were cracked, and the bed had a slight sag to the
middle, but on her limited funds, it was all they could afford.

It had been a foolish idea, coming all the way out here to find
Lisa's father. What had she expected was going to happen? Did
she think he was going to be rich and famous and that he would
instantly fall head over heels for her and take her away from
her mundane life?

Back child support would have been nice. It would be nice to be
able to buy Lisa the things she wanted without having to worry
about the bank balance.

By saving diligently, Lois had created a tidy little nest
egg...one that had been wiped out by the bricklayer's bill.

It was frustrating, seeing all the things she wanted slip away.
Biting her tongue at work because she needed her job, because
her daughter needed to eat and have money for clothes. If she'd
only had to worry about herself, she'd have said to hell with
it. She'd have taken risks, jumped at chances.

Lois wouldn't have been stuck after two years in a dead end job
as a researcher. At the very least she'd have demanded to be put
to work full time so that she could have gotten benefits.

The pay wasn't so bad, but the crushing cost of living in even a
suburb of Metropolis ate every penny and then some. Being able
to afford even a smallish house in a poorer neighborhood of town
had been a minor miracle.

It was a bitter pill, sometimes, editing the work of people she
knew had far less potential than she. Unfortunately, being a
reporter required dedication, talent and a willingness to work
hours that Lois just couldn't afford.

She was all Lisa had.

Still, she wasn't without skills. She'd start work tomorrow at
getting in contact with the head of the Superman Foundation,
Clark Kent.

*********************

Clark read the license plate number into the telephone. In a few
hours, he'd have the name of the mystery woman and along with it
her life story. It paid to keep an agency on retainer for that
sort of thing.

He wasn't sure why she'd brought the girl. Whatever business she
had with him wouldn't include anyone else. They'd shared a night
together a long time ago, and while it had been mind blowing and
earth moving, it wasn't the sort of thing that people crossed
mountains and oceans to find again.

He'd been that naïve once, and part of him still missed that
innocence. Believing in the innate goodness of human beings;
that had been his parents' lesson to him. Part of him still
believed it. If it didn't, he wouldn't be taking the risk of
going through the whole Superman rigmarole.

Inspiring people to find the goodness they'd lost. That had been
the sales pitch, and there had been something to it that had
appealed to Clark. Perhaps it was his own twisted need for
redemption, or perhaps it was just that it seemed like something
his parents would have wanted.

Deep in his soul he wanted to believe that people were good,
that who he became when exposed to the red poison wasn't his
true nature, but that it was some sort of aberration.

He stared at the awards on the walls. Making money while under
the effects of the red poison was the easiest thing in the
world.

Finding gold, oil, even diamonds, was child's play to someone
with his abilities, and buying the land up cheap before testing
the area had been even easier.

It had been getting the money for the first mine that had been
the hardest. Clark wondered if he was still banned from Las
Vegas casinos, even ten years later. No one had ever been able
to prove that he was cheating, yet the results had been
impossible to ignore. He'd taken the money and run, starting a
business empire.

It pained him, the thought of all the people he'd cheated along
the way. People had been sitting with fortunes and they'd let
them go for pennies on the dollar.

He wasn't sure how he was ever going to be able to make amends.

Closing his eyes, he sighed. All he could do was hope that it
would be enough.

***************

"My name is Lois Lane," Lois said into the telephone. "And I
would like to speak to the President of the Superman
Foundation."

"The President is a busy man, Ms. Lane. He is currently in a
meeting, and he will be unavailable for several hours." The
voice on the other end of the line was cool and professional,
obviously well versed in screening the assortment of crackpots
and greedy money seekers who were likely to try to talk to
someone of Clark Kent's wealth and position.

Inwardly, Lois sighed. This was going to be as difficult as she
had feared. She'd amassed a file on the Superman Foundation
before she'd left the paper; there were advantages to working as
a fact checker after all. She'd hoped to be able to set up a
straight forward meeting, but...

The tone of the woman's voice changed. "I see that we've had a
cancellation at noon. Perhaps you would like to schedule a
meeting for twelve o'clock today."

"I...ah...I'd like that."

Lois felt a little stunned as she let the telephone receiver
drop. Now she just had to figure out a way to convince the
President of a charitable foundation worth millions if not
billions of dollars to let her contact his cash cow, without
revealing the true reasons for the visit.

The last thing she needed was the media firestorm that would
erupt if the world learned that Superman had a love child.

*****************

Clark stared at the file in front of him. Lois Lane, age 29.
Resident of New Troy throughout her life. Graduated with an
Associate's degree, current employee of the Daily Planet. They
had her listed as a contract employee, as a fact checker. He
wondered if they were somehow hiding the fact that she was a
reporter.

Although Superman sought the limelight, and encouraged
publicity, the last thing Clark Kent needed was any time in the
press. He'd been refusing interviews for years. For a copy
editor looking to break into the big time as a reporter, this
would be a major first step.

By all rights, he ought to send her away and avoid her as much
as possible. It was the sensible, safe thing to do.

He could go back to his dual life; lonely and secretive on the
one hand, and always playing a role on the other.

If he wasn't looking forward to this interview more than he'd
looked forward to anything in years, he'd be on the next plane
out of state within the hour. He had people who were experts at
canceling appointments.

But after what seemed a lifetime of being alone, he finally was
being given a chance to relive the one night that had been a
splash of unforgettable color.

He couldn't miss that, not for anything.

*************

Staring at her reflection in the cracked mirror for the last
time, Lois straightened her business suit. Black, it was her one
all purpose garment for interviews, funerals and other official
events. Keeping it pressed and looking crisp after all this time
had been a minor miracle in itself.

Lisa was already dressed, and for once Lois hadn't had to prompt
her. She was dressed, and for once her clothes had stayed
pressed and clean. Her hair, usually somewhat unruly, was for
once combed and she'd actually asked Lois's help in making it
look good.

Lois only hoped she wasn't disappointed. They were only going to
meet the President of her father's foundation, not her father
himself...not unless things went much better than Lois expected
them to.

They'd be lucky not to be thrown out on their ear. At that point
their only choice would be to fake some sort of disaster and
yell "help Superman." Even then, if he was out of earshot they'd
be out of luck.

"Remember what I told you," Lois said shortly. Manners were
different when you spoke to the rich, and many of them seemed to
regard children as noisy, toxic annoyances.

Lisa nodded. Lois couldn't make out her expression; it seemed to
waver somewhere between anxiety and excitement.

For her this was the chance of a lifetime. Lois had no doubt
that she'd always dreamed of her father as coming in on a white
horse to save them all. It wasn't all that different from her
dreams when she was young, of a father who would turn his back
on his work and spend time with his family.

How much worse it would be to look at every man who passed you
by and wonder if he was the one. Lois hadn't even been able to
offer her the comfort of a name, or a picture, or even a
description. She'd managed to keep the uglier details of the
encounter from her daughter, but there had been questions she
hadn't been able to answer.

Why did her eyes have that slightly exotic cast to them? Was her
father partially Asian, or was there something else going on?
Was she going to grow up tall, or was she doomed to be short?

Did she have other grandparents, and what were they like?

There had been an endless parade of questions when Lisa had
finally been able to realize just how different her life was
than those of her friends.

It was a sign of just how good a child she was that the
questions had trailed off over the last few years. Lisa had seen
how much the questions had hurt Lois, and she'd eventually
stopped asking them.

That didn't mean that Lois didn't see them reflected in her eyes
sometimes. Every time a good father would be shown on
television, Lisa was riveted. She watched the same shows over
and over again.

Knowing the void she'd left in her daughter's life made Lois
want to cry sometimes.

Lisa stood and Lois brushed some lint off her shoulder. "It's
going to be fine."

*******************

As Lois pulled up around the back of the building, near the
servant's entrance, she felt hideously self conscious. Her
battered brown station wagon was an eyesore compared even to the
vehicles driven by the servants. These tended to be late model
sedans, mostly in dark colors.

A classic Rolls Royce that would not look out of place in a
James Bond film was being washed by a heavyset man wearing a
chauffeur's outfit. He glanced at them and immediately glanced
away.

Lois frowned. In her experience, you could tell a lot about
someone by the attitudes of the people who worked for them.
Sullen, secretive employees usually meant a sullen secretive
master.

According to her research, he'd gotten the place for a quarter
its value at action. Two hundred eighty acres, four trout ponds,
horse paddocks, a gazebo and vast expanses of glass looking out
onto the magnificent Colorado skyline.

The mansion was visible from below, seeming to sit on the side
of the mountain. Access was limited to a single road, and the
whole place seemed designed for isolation.

This was the place of someone who wanted to shut themselves away
from the rest of the world.

Lisa's eyes were wide. She hadn't been exposed to much luxury in
her life, and this place obviously impressed her.

She kept looking at the wide gazebo barely visible through the
Aspen trees.

Lois straightened her shoulders and said, "Are you ready?"

Nodding somberly, Lisa fell into step behind her.

**************

Staring through the window, Clark wondered why she'd brought the
child with her. That it was hers there was no question. The
detective's report had been quite clear about that. Yet it
seemed irresponsible to drag a child all the way across the
country just to get a news story.

For a moment Clark toyed with the idea of having a child of his
own, but he knew it was impossible. Lana had been a healthy,
fertile woman and all the tests had shown that he was
genetically incompatible.

He was the last of his kind, and he was never destined to have
children of his own.

It hurt a little, the thought that he was always going to be
alone, but perhaps it was for the best. No one would want a
father like him, someone afraid to go out into the world. He
wondered what his parents would have thought of the lonely life
he'd been forced to lead.

The strange feeling of excitement in his stomach only grew by
the moment.

***********

Leaving Lisa behind felt wrong, even if she was just through the
door. She'd be able to hear anything that was said anyway, and
Lois knew she was strong enough to take care of herself from
anything short of Superman.

Compared to the other rooms in the house, this one was almost
sparse. There was a huge desk, heavy leather chairs and the
entire back wall was one gigantic window looking out over the
mountain.

The view was impressive. One could almost imagine that you were
suspended in mid-air, flying over a landscape that was majestic
and beautiful.

A man was standing with his back to her, staring out the window.
He was wearing an Armani suit, and Lois guessed that his shoes
alone cost more than everything she was wearing.

"I understand that you want to talk to Superman." The man's
voice was a pleasant tenor with a light Midwestern accent.

"Mr. Kent?" Lois asked.

The man turned and Lois felt her stomach drop. There was
something indescribably familiar about him, as though she'd seen
him every day for years without even registering it. Dark hair,
exotic eyes, tanned complexion...she couldn't put her finger on
it.

He nodded and stepped forward, offering his hand.

Lois kept her grip firm, and she was surprised to find that his
handshake was both warm and firm. He held her hand for a moment
longer than was polite, and her hand tingled a little after he
finally released her.

"I'd like to make an appointment to speak with Superman," she
said.

Mr. Kent gestured for her to take a seat. He waited until she
settled into the plush leather chair before following suit.

"It's not the policy of the Foundation to arrange interviews
with reporters, Ms Lane." The man on the other side of the big
desk sighed. "We'd be overwhelmed with requests in less than a
month, and the work we've been commissioned to do would never
get done."

"He's given interviews to reporters before. Linda King, for
example..."

Lois hadn't been able to get hold of Linda to find out how she'd
gotten the interview. Apparently, Hollywood had already gone to
her head.

Lois had always hated how smug and sanctimonious she'd always
been about having a "real job" in journalism anyway.

"Kal El may decide on a case by case basis to make exceptions to
the rules, but we can't afford to. He's provided us with the
opportunity of a lifetime to make a real difference in the
world. We can't afford to lose his goodwill."

He sounded more like a lawyer than a maverick businessman. Lois
scowled.

"I'm not planning to do an interview with him. This is
personal."

"Oh?" Mr. Kent leaned forward.

"We're old friends who just lost contact with each other."

"I highly doubt that. He's only been on the planet for..."

"Tell him that I know he's been on the planet in disguise a lot
longer than most people think. I met him more than ten years
ago, and I need to talk to him."

******************

Clark froze. He'd thought she'd been unconscious when he'd flown
her home all those years ago. His memories were fuzzy, tainted
by the red poison, but he'd been sure.

Old familiar feelings of panic clutched at him as his mind
raced. Had she known about him all this time? Was she toying
with him?

How much was she going to want to keep his secret?

The Superman experiment was a mistake. He'd known it from the
moment it had been proposed to him. Coming out in public, even
if he was in disguise, was just going to make it easier for him
to be identified and hunted down.

All the money in the world wouldn't protect him if the
government became involved. They'd freeze the assets they knew
about, and it wouldn't take them long to find out about the
other, more deadly poison. He'd never be able to sleep soundly
again.

He'd be hunted, and the friends he'd managed to make would
vanish into the wind or they'd be used against him.

"I don't know what you are talking about," he said, hoping that
the quiver in his voice wasn't as audible as he thought it was.


"If he just arrived a few months ago, where is his spaceship?"
Lois Lane stared at him intently. "What was he doing before he
rescued the President's plane? Where does he live when he's not
off doing rescues?"

"None of those are questions people haven't asked before," Clark
said. "Of course, most people consider them to be conspiracy
theorists."

"I have incontrovertible proof," Lois said.

He could hear the rhythm of her heart, the pace of her
breathing...he could see the pupils of her eyes. She wasn't lying;
she really believed that she had proof of what she had said.

"How much do you want?" he asked.

Lois Lane stared at him for a moment, as though she didn't
understand the question.

"What?"

"How much would it take for you to go away and pretend that
you've never heard of Kal El?" He reached into his pocket for a
checkbook.

The woman scowled. "What are you talking about?"

"Life has got to be tough on a proofreader's salary," Clark
said. "Living paycheck to paycheck, never quite being able to
make ends meet. Wouldn't you like to be able to buy a nice house
and an education for your daughter? How would you like to be
able to afford some of those things you always dreamed about?"

He glanced through the wall behind her, where the daughter had
been sitting quietly in a chair.

To his surprise, she seemed to be staring right back at him.

***********

"It's not that I don't believe you," Clark continued. "The
question is, will anyone else?"

"Yet you're here offering me money to keep quiet about it." The
expression on Lois's face wasn't what he'd expected.

He'd expected that she'd start negotiating a price immediately.
In his experience, that was what gold diggers did, they tried to
get the most money out of a situation with the least effort.

It disturbed him that she'd brought her child with her. What
sort of woman brought her child with her when she was trying to
extort money from someone?

The same sort of people who might have sent a child on a rocket
like some sort of experimental animal?

Clark had seen enough in his time in foster care to know that
parents weren't always what they should be. That he'd had
wonderful parents for the first ten years of his life was the
only reason that he wasn't a worse person than he already was.

Glancing back up, he noticed that the girl still seemed to be
looking at him through the wall. It was an optical illusion, of
course. She had to simply be staring at a point on the wall and
his mind was playing tricks.

It was unnerving.

Realizing that Lois seemed to be waiting for a response, he
said, "I haven't always been the person I've wanted to be. It's
hard to be and succeed on the scale I have."

Pausing purposefully, Clark said, "This Foundation is my chance
to change all that. It's my chance to really make a difference
in the world in a way I never even imagined before. We have a
chance at reducing world hunger, curing diseases, helping to
lift people out of poverty."

"I'm not here to..." Lois began.

Clark said, "They say that what we do now won't matter in a
hundred years. I don't believe that. I want a chance to leave a
better world for my children and grandchildren."

"It's not..." Lois started to say.

"Superman has given the world hope." Clark paused again. Years
of experience in the boardroom and on the podium had given him a
sense of timing and delivery. Lacing the story with bits and
pieces of the truth didn't hurt. "But all of it is based around
a sense of trust. It's hard to believe in something. It's easy
to fall back into apathy and cynicism."

He did want to make the world a better place, although it wasn't
his great passion, or even his idea.

There would be no children or grandchildren for him, although he
might enjoy watching those of others from a distance.

"We're at a critical time in the process, and we can't afford to
have scandal disrupting everything." He looked carefully in her
eyes. "We've hired several hundred people, all of whom have
families that depend on them. You wouldn't want to put innocent
people out of work."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his checkbook. Quickly
writing out a number and signing it, he pulled it out of the
book and slid it across the table toward Lois.

She stared at it as though it was a snake, and he could hear her
breathing pick up and her heart rate accelerating.

She was tempted, and he wondered if he should have added another
digit to the total.

Glancing back at the closed door, almost as though she could see
her child on the other side, Lois turned and said, "Damn the
money. I need to meet with Superman about a private matter."

She stood up, and then paused. "I'd like it to remain a private
matter, but I'll make it public if I have to."

Clark stood as well, and as he moved around the side of the
desk, it was almost as though the child's eyes followed him.

It was unnerving.

"I'm sure you'll tell him where to find us," Lois said. "I hope
he'll be discreet."

"Where are you going?" Clark asked, a little dumfounded.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

"Home," Lois said. Without saying another word, she turned and
left the room, pulling the girl along behind her.

Clark had a feeling that he'd just made a big mistake.

**********

Lois's anger wasn't enough to salve her shame.

She'd been tempted. The sort of money he was offering her wasn't
enough to never work again, but it was enough that Lisa might
finally have the sort of life Lois had always wanted to give
her.

No more scrimping and saving. No more worrying about juggling
bills.

Lois might even be able to find the sort of job she'd dreamed of
doing, and she might be able to make it stick. That sort of
money engendered a certain amount of confidence. Nothing like
knowing that you wouldn't have to work for a year or more before
finding your next job.

Lisa would find her father sooner or later. If she learned how
to fly, she'd find him whether he wanted to be found or not.

Glancing at Lisa, Lois winced. There were tears in Lisa's eyes.

She'd heard the whole thing, of course, and it must have been
hurtful.

Maybe it had been a mistake bringing her. Uncle Mike would have
been happy to have put her up for a few days, and then she
wouldn't have been exposed to this kind of ugliness.

They reached the station wagon, and Lisa slipped into her seat.
The door on her side wouldn't lock, and Lois hadn't had the
money to repair it.

As Lois slipped into her seat, all she could hope was that
Lisa's father followed up. They were sacrificing financial
security for a meeting which had no guarantee of working out.
While Clark Kent might be a multimillionaire, as far as Lois
could determine, Superman didn't have a dime to his name. At
best, he'd have a stipend provided by the foundation for new
pairs of red trunks.

There was no way to know what sort of a person he was without
meeting him.

She slipped the key in the ignition and sighed. Looking over at
her daughter, she asked, "Did I make the right decision?"

Lisa reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it in a gesture
of support.

Lois stared at her daughter, and then nodded. Slipping the gears
into position, she began backing out of the driveway.

There were too many questions that were left to be answered. If
Lisa was going to be able to fly, then when? Were there other
abilities that she was going to develop? How could she control
them?

The image of Lisa suddenly levitating out of her chair in the
middle of class made Lois shudder. Adolescence was hard enough
without being made to feel like a freak. That it would be the
start of a major scandal wouldn't help either. Lois had been in
the industry long enough to know what reporters were likely to
do in pursuit of the story.

It was hard being the target of public attention when you were
rich, but at least there were resources to help guard privacy.
For the working poor, however, there was no escape.

They had as much to lose from exposure as he did.

Lois sighed as she negotiated the steep road that led down from
the Kent estate. She could only hope that Lisa's father was a
nicer person than Clark Kent.

*****************

"You have to go after them."

Clark sat with his eyes closed. The whirring of the motor and
the familiar sound of breathing was the only indication he had
that anyone was in the room with him at all.

He must be more disturbed than he'd initially thought.

"Someone left the intercom on again, I see." For all his good
qualities, Joshua was a terrible snoop. "This is all your
fault."

Opening his eyes, he glared at the younger man.

"A beautiful woman comes and refuses money to go away." Joshua
grinned at him. "This is my fault how?"

"I knew this whole Superman idea was a bad one. I look like an
idiot, and people are already starting to come out of the
woodwork. How long do you think it will be before somebody makes
the connection?"

Joshua smirked. "Maybe you'd have more of a love life. I hear
that the mile high club is particularly popular this year."

Clark shuddered. As a habit now, he scanned an area before
landing. Any sign of the red poison, or the green, and he
avoided the area like the plague.

"You were dying here," he said. "Did you really want to spend
the rest of your life withering away behind these walls?"

They'd had this argument too many times to be worth mentioning.
Clark turned slightly and stared out the window. If he looked
carefully with his special vision, he could still see the
battered old station wagon as it made its way down the one road
leading into the estate.

"What did she mean, she'd met you more than ten years ago?"
Joshua asked suddenly.

Clark shrugged, staring down at the table.

"You mean she's..."

Clark sighed. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to be
having.

"You do know she's the only woman you've talked about in years."
Joshua's eyes narrowed as he studied Clark's expression
closely.

Lana was the only other woman who'd ever been important in his
life, and she, of course, was a forbidden subject.

Even Lois he'd only talked about when he was coming off of the
red poison.

"She didn't even recognize me," Clark said. Part of him had been
hoping that she would, that they'd be able to start again fresh.
She'd shared something with him that night that was more than
just sex, and he'd hoped to find it again.

"As flattering as I'm sure that was, I'm also sure that if you
don't hear her out it's going to nag at you for the rest of your
life." Joshua shook his head. "Life's too short."

With that, he pulled away from the desk and turned his
wheelchair toward the door.

Life was full of bitter ironies.

****************

Three days there and three days back. Lois had missed a week of
work, and it all felt as though it had been for nothing.

Pulling up into the driveway, she glanced over at her sleeping
daughter. Lisa had been so good throughout everything. She'd
barely asked any questions, although Lois wasn't sure if that
wasn't just from her feelings of hurt and disappointment.

There were reports of a disaster in China, something involving a
dam and evacuating villages. It explained why Lisa's father
hadn't looked for them right away.

It didn't make the disappointment any better. Part of Lois had
been hoping that Superman would stop them before they even left
the hotel. He owed her that much after everything they'd both
gone through.

Wearily, she stepped out of the driver's seat. She was going to
have to wake Lisa and get her to bed.

She froze as she heard the sound of movement from behind her.
Turning quickly, she fumbled for the mace on her keychain.

If she'd had the money for martial arts lessons, she might not
be so slow.

Stepping out of the darkness, a figure moved into the flickering
light of the one streetlamp near her house.

"Ms. Lane?" The voice was naggingly familiar. "I understand that
you wanted to meet with me."

It took her a moment to understand the implications of the cape,
and in the darkness his boots looked almost black. But then it
hit her.

Superman had arrived.

Lois stood frozen for a moment. She'd come to accept that she'd
been on a fool's journey, and now that it appeared that she
wasn't, she wasn't sure what to do.

"Would you like me to bring her in?" Superman asked.

She nodded slowly, hoping he could see her in the darkness.
Waking Lisa right now didn't seem right. She didn't want the
first expression she saw on her father's face to be one of
disbelief.

The door to the station wagon opened, and Lisa stirred a little
as the overhead light came on. Lois caught a flash of red as he
bent inside to lift her out of her seat, and a moment later he
stood again, the light reflecting off the red of his trunks and
the blue of his leggings.

He nudged the door shut gently with his hips, and then he was
moving across the lawn easily, as though Lisa's hundred or so
pounds didn't weigh anything.

To a man who could lift airplanes, Lois supposed that it
didn't.

Realizing that he was waiting on her, and suddenly conscious of
the empty windows of the houses surrounding them, Lois fumbled
with her keys for a moment as she hurried forward.

Her hands were unexpectedly shaky, and she had trouble fitting
the key in the lock. Glancing back at the silhouette of the man
behind her didn't make things any easier. She wished she'd
thought to replace the bulb on the entrance light.

As the key finally slipped into the lock, Lois felt a moment of
shame at the thought of the interior of her home. It was shabby
and run down, obviously not what this man was used to if he was
spending time around the likes of Clark Kent.

No marble floors or long elegant staircases here.

He slipped inside behind her, and a moment later he'd headed
down the hall in the direction of Lisa's bedroom.

For a moment, Lois wondered how he knew where to go; then she
remembered that it was one of his abilities, seeing through
things.

She switched on the light and grimaced. In her haste to move
she'd left more of a clutter than she'd intended.

It was ironic that in her life before Lisa she'd been a
meticulously neat person. As a mother, however, she'd discovered
that children create chaos, and that oftentimes a clean house
was simply one where the child hasn't yet come home.

He was out of the bedroom, and there was a blur. Lois stumbled
back as she realized that all of her luggage was now sitting by
the door. He'd unloaded it all in the space of an instant.

Lois felt a moment of tired gratitude before realizing that all
this did was hurry the moment of reckoning.

He stood in the hallway, with the light behind his head like a
halo, and Lois wondered what she was going to say.

He spoke first. "You wanted to speak with me?"

Lois nodded and gestured toward her chair. The couch was still
gone, of course, leaving the living room looking open and bare.
The carpet seemed threadbare and worn, and she felt embarrassed
again.

He shook his head slightly and chose instead to stand by the
wall. There was something about his body language...it was tense
and distant.

Was he worried about what she had to say?

Sitting with him looming over her didn't seem like a good idea,
so Lois gestured toward her kitchen, which at least had
barstools around a breakfast nook.

"Would you like something to drink?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I had something in Shanghai."

It was subtle, the message that he was a world traveler and that
his time was important. Lois forced herself to turn and head for
the refrigerator for some orange juice. As tired as she was, she
needed a little sugar in her bloodstream, and there wasn't time
to make coffee.

She could feel his eyes on her back as she deliberately poured
herself a glass and took a quick sip before returning the carton
to the refrigerator.

Turning back to him, she said, "Do I call you Superman? Kal
El?"

"Kal will be fine," he said.

Lois moved back to the breakfast nook, where she pressed her
stomach against the counter.

"Are there any other beings with your abilities out there?" she
asked.

It would be embarrassing to bring up the paternity issue if it
turned out that he had cousins and uncles out there with the
same abilities.

"Not to the best of my knowledge." He shrugged. "I've been
looking for a long time and haven't found anyone else like me."

Lois relaxed. That made this all a little easier.

"Is this going to be an interview, then?" He sounded a little
disappointed, and Lois wondered just what he thought had
motivated her to bring him here.

Lois shook her head. "This is personal. Twelve years ago we met
each other for the first time at a bar called the Blue Monday in
Metropolis."

He stared at her without speaking.

"I...wasn't myself. My parents were getting a divorce and I...I'd
been drinking."

He stiffened a little, and his face went blank. Lois wondered if
he was only now recognizing her.

She wondered how many other women he'd met on nights like that
in bars all around the world. Had there been so many that he
didn't really remember her?

"You were wearing a Midwestern University jacket, but I remember
you saying you didn't actually go there."

"Let's say this was all true," he said finally. "Why have you
chosen to contact me now?"

"If it was just about me, I'd have left you alone, but I'm not
the only one involved in all this."

He looked confused.

"Nine months after the night we met, I gave birth to Lisa."

***************

Clark frowned. He'd expected an ugly accusation of rape,
followed by a demand for even more money than he'd offered her
in the first place. Without Superman, there would be no Superman
Foundation, and so she'd reason that he'd have access to the
money.

For once, she'd even have a point. She'd been clearly
intoxicated and not in her right mind. Under normal
circumstances, he never would have done anything with her, no
matter how tempting he'd found her to be.

He couldn't even afford to tell her the truth. He'd been just as
impaired as she'd been; his judgment had been shattered, and
what they'd done together had been a mistake. It had been a
mistake even if it had been one of the brighter memories of his
life.
Instead, she made this ridiculous claim.

She'd been a virgin the night they'd met, and so unless she'd
done something soon afterward...

"That's impossible," he said flatly.

Lois shook her head. "There was nobody else, and...I have other
reasons to think so."

"My physiology is very similar to that of a human being, but I
am not human. I can't have children."

It had been a devastating blow the first time he'd heard it, but
it was something he'd come to terms with.

Children just weren't on the cards for him.

"She threw a couch through my wall," Lois said. She gestured
toward the living room, and by leaning back Clark could see
where newer bricks had been placed among the old.

It looked like a slipshod job to him, as though someone had
rushed through without trying to match the bricks to the wall.

"She can hear things from a mile away," Lois said. "And then
there are the fires."

Reaching behind her, she pulled a large basket of candy away
from its place on the countertop. There was a huge scorch mark
with a distinctive pattern radiating out from the center.

It was a pattern he'd seen before. When he'd first been learning
to control his heat vision, there had been more fires than he
wanted to think about.

He'd been thrown out of more than one foster home with a
reputation for pyromania because of it, and he could remember
with excruciating detail just how terrifying it had been.

His mind flashed back to his first meeting with Lois Lane.

The girl had seemed to be staring at him right through the
wall.

For a moment the world seemed to go white around him. He'd spent
his life thinking that he was going to be alone. This changed
everything.

It felt as though he'd been punched in the chest; he couldn't
catch his breath. He felt as though his hands were shaking, and
he could hear his pulse pounding in his ears.

His mind raced, and all he could think was that his life was
never going to be the same.

If there had been a mistake in this, did that mean he could have
had other children? Could he have moved on from Lana, found
someone, lived the sort of life he'd dreamed of instead of the
life he'd been living?

He glanced back through the walls to where the girl was
sleeping. Her complexion was like his, and so was the shape of
her eyes. She had her mother's hair, but she looked so much like
him that it took his breath away.

************

Lois sat, waiting for him to respond. In the dim light of the
kitchen she thought she saw him pale a little and sway
slightly.

He was silent for a long, interminable moment. She couldn't read
the expression on his face, which suddenly seemed older than it
had a moment before.

Lois had a sinking feeling this wasn't going to go as well as
either she or Lisa had hoped.

"I'm...I'm going to..."

His face changed, and his head turned. He looked almost grateful
as he said, "There's an emergency. I...I've got to go."

He stepped around the counter and said, "We need to talk more
about this later, but not tonight."

Lois nodded. She was exhausted, and it was probably going to
take him a little time to process the whole thing.

He reached up to her shoulder and brushed a few strands of hair
off her shirt. Lois thought she saw him palm a couple of strands
awkwardly.

A moment later he was gone.

Lois sighed and prepared to unpack. In the end, the ball was in
his court. He'd said he thought he was sterile. Nature had
proven him wrong.

Creating a child was easy, being a parent was not.

The next few days were going to give Lisa's father a chance to
show what sort of man he was. For Lisa's sake, Lois hoped that
he was a good one.

Otherwise Lois would be the one who had to pick up all the
pieces.

**********

"She has a genetic mutation," Joshua said, turning the screen to
face Clark. "It literally occurs in about one person in a
million, and under normal circumstances, it makes fertility
difficult or impossible."

"But not in this case," Clark said tersely. The information on
the screen didn't mean anything to him, so he looked at Joshua.
"What does it mean?"

"It means that my theory of a single common ancestor between our
two species gets a major step forward," Joshua said. "More
immediately, it means that I was wrong."

"So I can have children."

"It's estimated that less than six thousand people in the world
have this mutation. Half of them are male, half are children,
and most of the remainder are probably married."

"But there's a chance that there are more of them out there."

It wasn't as though Clark had been profligate. He remembered
every woman he'd ever been with. It did mean more work for his
teams of investigators, and more humiliating revelations of
things he'd prefer to remain private.

If there was the slightest chance that any others were out
there, he'd find them.

"It's a slim chance," Joshua said. "You hit the jackpot with
this one. I'd have missed it totally."

Fifteen hundred women in the world he could possibly have
children with, and he'd somehow managed to find her.

Josh began setting his equipment to the side. "Funny thing is,
she'd have had a hard time conceiving with anyone else. Her
extra gene connecting with yours...it's like you were made for
each other."

In the days before he'd bought Luthor Labs for a song, this
wouldn't even have been an issue. DNA tests had taken weeks or
even months. He'd have spent months wondering what had happened
without knowing the truth.

Now that he knew it, he had to decide what to do with it.

The telephone rang, and Clark absently picked it up. He said,
"Yes?"

Listening to the voice on the other end of the connection, Clark
scowled.

*****************

"You've been gone a week. I don't know what you expected."
Corwin Ellison didn't have the presence Perry White had once
had, but he had no compunctions about making hard choices.

"I expected a little something better than a pink slip," Lois
protested. "I had a funeral."

"You were at the Superman Foundation gala." Her editor threw
copies of the pictures on the desk. "Ralph was covering it."

Ralph was the least competent reporter in their stable, and he'd
had it in for Lois since she'd threatened to make a sexual
harassment complaint against him.

He hadn't dared to do anything overt; other employees had made
complaints against him. However, given an opportunity like this,
he would have jumped at the chance.

"I can explain," Lois said.

"Unless you have some sort of major news story involving the
event, something that would excite the public and bring back
some of the readership, I'm not interested."

Lois stared at him for a moment. She had exactly the sort of
story he was wanting, but it wasn't one she'd ever be able to
tell.

"I've been disappointed in you for a long time, Lois," Corwin
said.

"I do good work here!" she protested.

"You hate working here, and it shows." Corwin shook his head.
"You were born to be a reporter, and you hate it that lesser
talents are moving on while you are stuck in the same place."

Lois stared at him, shocked. She hadn't talked about her
feelings about work with anyone; the gossip network ensured that
anything she said would eventually reach the bosses' ears.

"I may not be an old warhorse like Perry White was, but I've
been in the business to see what's sitting right in front of me.
Those freelance articles you did last winter? Those were
brilliant. If you'd been doing work like that the whole time
you'd been here, the paper might not be in the shape it is
today."

Lois flushed. It wasn't her fault that she'd had other
responsibilities.

"There weren't any day shifts open," she said sullenly.

"From what I've seen, you'd have done better with the hard news.
As it stands though, I've already got a replacement for you."

Lois stared at him in shock.

"The Daily Planet doesn't need anyone who isn't one hundred
percent dedicated to her job."

***************

Lois sat staring at the breakfast nook, feeling numb. She'd
hated her job, but now that it was gone she felt numb.

She knew that a floodgate of worries was waiting at the edge of
her consciousness, just waiting to overwhelm her. What was she
going to do? Were they going to be able to keep the house? Would
she be able to feed Lisa?

Just how humiliating was the job search going to be? Lois had
always been able to avoid government assistance, through luck
and the help of her Uncle Mike, but he didn't need anyone at the
diner at the moment, and she'd asked too much of him already.

She could beg her father, but that involved humiliation she
didn't even want to think about.

Everything seemed to be rushing toward her all at once, and once
the protective veil of her shock wore off, Lois knew she'd be
inundated and overwhelmed.

Being responsible for a child was sometimes terrifying.

She'd hoped to be able to enroll Lisa in some summer programs,
giving her something better to do than hang around her uncle's
diner all day. Now, with money tighter than it had been in a
long time, all that wasn't going to happen.

Lois closed her eyes. Going to the gala had been an impulsive
decision, and impulsive was the one thing she couldn't afford to
be as a mother. She had to be reliable and steady, not quirky
and undependable.

Her own father had taught her that.

The sounds of the doorbell ringing were a welcome relief from
the morass of her own thoughts.

Lois rose slowly, feeling as though she'd been beaten. She
wondered if she was coming down with the flu.

The doorbell rang again, and she hurried to answer it.

As she opened the door, she felt a sense of astonishment. The
last person she'd expected to see stood on the other side of the
door.

Clark Kent.

**********

By daylight her house was even more pathetic than it had been in
the darkness. The carpet was threadbare, the fixtures were
obviously old and in need of repair and the whole place, while
clean, had an aura of fading neglect.

Clark fidgeted as he waited for her to answer the door. He'd
forgotten to take the investigation detail off Lois Lane once
they'd gotten her biographic data, and so they'd stayed on the
clock.

Following her after she was escorted from the Daily Planet,
they'd called him.

She opened the door, and she looked unkempt. Her hair was
slightly mussed and her eyes were reddened, as though she'd been
crying.

She was as beautiful as ever, and Clark fought to ignore the
traitorous part of him that wanted to take advantage of this
moment of weakness. Most likely, she'd reject him and ruin any
chance of his having a relationship with his daughter while she
was still a child.

"Ms. Lane," he said. "I've come to apologize."

She stared at him as though he'd grown another head, and he
sighed. "May I come in?"

He hadn't had time to get a limo, and so he'd flown out. He
didn't want her or her neighbors to make any sort of connection
between the two events.

She stepped aside and he walked in.

Reflexively he glanced into his daughter's room and he winced.
In foster homes he'd learned quickly that it was important to be
neat and tidy. Beds made straight and crisp and belongings
packed so as to be always ready for the next move had been his
constant companion.

Although what he could see of Lois's room was tidy, Lisa's room
looked like a bomb had exploded inside.

The chaos didn't reach the rest of the house, and it hadn't been
that way when he'd been visiting the other evening as Superman.
In three days she'd torn her room apart.

Lois was looking at him expectantly.

"I'm sorry for my behavior the other day," he said. "I was wrong
about you."

It was a galling admission. He hadn't become one of the richer
men in America by admitting to being wrong. Showing weakness was
one of the best ways to lose everything you had.

Yet he'd been wrong. Lois Lane had had multiple chances to try
to take advantage of the situation and she hadn't.

Trusting her completely would probably take time. He'd been
betrayed too badly in the past to completely trust anyone.

Lois nodded slowly. "All right. You've apologized. You can
leave."

"That's not the only reason I'm here," Clark said uncomfortably.
"Kal feels terrible about the situation he's put you in. If he'd
known, he'd have been involved from the very beginning."

"Why isn't he here telling me this?" Lois asked.

"He's a little conspicuous," Clark said. The real reason, of
course, was that Kal El in civilian clothes looked exactly like
Clark did. "And he asked me to make you an offer of a job."

Lois stared at him for a long moment, her face expressionless.
"You heard about my afternoon."

Clark shrugged uncomfortably. "I have contacts."

"What sort of job is he wanting me to do?" Lois asked. Her voice
was suspicious.

This was a dangerous subject; trusting Lois with this
information would be difficult, even though it was absolutely
necessary.

"Do you remember those pieces of jewelry that were a fad around
Metropolis a few years back? The ones that glowed in the dark?"

She should. She'd had one.

Lois nodded.

Clark hesitated. "Apparently the gems they are made from are
meteorite fragments from Kal El's home planet. They are
poisonous to him."

*****************

"What do they do to him?" Lois asked, her mind racing. If they
were poisonous to Kal El, chances were good they weren't good
for Lisa either.

"Long term exposure is damaging," Clark said. "Short term...the
red gems affect judgment and morality. The green gems cause pain
and possibly death."

Lois's face froze. "You mean there are pieces of jewelry out
there that can kill him."

Clark nodded soberly. "You are one of only four living people
who knows the truth about this."

"I have one of those pieces in my room," Lois said.

Clark Kent stared at her. "Under the same roof as your
daughter?"

"I had no way of knowing."

The anger outbursts and behavior problems hadn't begun until
Lisa had found the bracelet.

Lois turned quickly and headed for her bedroom. Her heavy
jewelry box had been a gift from her father, and it sat in the
corner of her bedroom.

Clark followed her, but he stopped at the doorway to her room as
though an invisible barrier had been put up.

Throwing the lid to the box open, Lois winced as she realized
the bracelet was gone.

"What was the job you wanted me to do?" Lois asked, staring at
the place the bracelet had been.

"I want you to track down the other pieces of jewelry and get
them for me," Clark said. He'd entered the room by this point
and stood beside her. "Kal El has been throwing those we've
found so far into space, but without knowing why it's important,
it's hard to find dedicated people."

And no one would be more dedicated than a woman trying to
protect her daughter.

"I'll take it," Lois said.

**********
Absently, Lisa spun the bracelet around and around on her wrist.
It had been wrong to take it from her mother's jewelry box, but
somehow she didn't care. She felt different when she held the
bracelet, more confident and assertive.

She didn't worry that people thought she was a freak, or about
what people might say about her. The gossip that she heard
constantly didn't seem to bother her much at all when she had
the bracelet.

Her grades were even better.

Lisa had always been a good student, but the misery of her day
to day existence had been hurting her grades. It was hard to
concentrate when you were listening to the teachers in the
teachers' lounge talking about the students at the same time as
you heard the workers in the kitchens talking in rapid fire
Cuban.

It was harder when you sometimes couldn't see the paper you were
writing on because your special vision kicked in and you ended
up looking through the floor at the worms and cockroaches
underneath the school.

Lisa's life was a parade of horrors, but somehow, everything
seemed better when she had the bracelet.

While she had it, she had all the confidence in the world. There
was no fear, no doubt. There was only what she wanted and how
she was going to get it.

She felt guilty about the cheating when she didn't have the
bracelet. Normally she would never do anything like look through
the teacher's desk at the answer sheet. Her mother had taught
her the value of hard work, after all.

Teachers loved the more confident version of her. Normally the
last one to raise her hand in class, she was more assertive now,
and they were complimentary.

How much she'd craved attention wasn't something she'd liked to
think about. Now it was something she didn't worry about.

"I heard that Katie did it behind the bleachers last week."
Myrna Peters was one of the biggest gossips in school. She also
had an eye for who was in power and who wasn't. There were
subtle gradations in status even in the sixth grade, and for
most of the week, Lisa had been on top.

The story about Katie was untrue, of course. Her boyfriend had
made it up in front of his friends. Lisa had heard the whole
thing. It wasn't her concern, even if normally she'd have tried
to defend the girl.

Children her age lived in a world their parents never heard
about. More jaded than previous generations, they sometimes
spoke a language of their own.

Status was king at Lisa's school. The richer kids taunted the
poorer. The beautiful kids made fun of the ugly. The weak were
left in the dust socially.

They were like a pack of dogs just waiting for a new pack
leader.

Lisa had been at the bottom of the totem pole far too long. It
was time for her to be top dog.

**************

"Just what does this thing do to them exactly?" Lois asked as
she slipped into the station wagon.

As Clark Kent slipped into the seat beside her, looking out of
place in his Armani suit, Lois wondered where his limousine had
gone.

Most likely he'd sent it away. Having an expensive car pulling
up in front of a house in her neighborhood wasn't the best way
to remain inconspicuous.

That he'd have the car pull up down the block and walk the rest
of the way only underscored how paranoid and suspicious he was.

It had to be a lonely, isolated life, living that way. Lois
couldn't imagine being able to trust no one, although this
secret of Lisa's was beginning to make her understand.

It wasn't something she could share with her parents. Her father
would be dispassionately interested in what made Lisa different
than anyone else. Her mother...well, Lois couldn't take the risk.

Uncle Mike would probably be able to accept her, but that would
mean he'd have to carry the burden of the secret as well. She'd
already asked enough of him.

"Where are we going?" Clark asked her.

"School. It's where most twelve year olds spend their day at one
o'clock in the afternoon." Lois slipped the car into drive and
pushed the gas a little harder than she needed to.

She could see Clark Kent tensing beside her, and part of her was
vindictively happy. He deserved anything he got after the way
he'd treated her the last time.

If she pulled around the corner a little faster than she
normally did, who could blame her?

**********

Clark was beginning to wonder how long it would be before he got
full custody of Lisa Lane. The way Lois was driving, she
wouldn't be alive much longer.

As Lois spun around yet another curve, Clark noticed a commotion
up ahead.

He heard Lois cursing under her breath as she took in the
flashing lights and smoke ahead of them.

She was out of the car in a flash, and Clark was trailing
behind. The entire class was standing outside of the school, and
fire trucks were lined up outside the building. A glance inside
with his special vision showed Clark that the firemen had the
fire under control. A couple of classrooms were going to have
extensive damage, but the rest of the school was going to be
just fine.

As he felt the familiar feeling of fire caressing his skin, he
stepped back quickly. He couldn't afford to lose his head when
he was around either of them, and every exposure to the rock was
harder to come back from.

He saw Lois walking up to one teacher in particular, and he
allowed his mind to wander.

He could hear the children talking about the fire, and about the
way Lisa Lane had dumped a tray of soup on the head of one of
the other girls in their class. The more he listened, the
grimmer he felt.

She was new to exposure to the rock, according to Lois. She'd
had it buried in an attic until their recent move to their new
house, and even then it had been hidden in her heavy jewelry
box, which would have provided some protection.

She still had vestiges of whatever goodness Lois had installed
in her, or the extent of things wouldn't have been a couple of
burned classrooms. Given that children didn't really understand
the nature of consequences, the possibility of someone being
hurt or worse was high.

Seeing that no one was looking, he stepped behind a corner and
flashed into his full speed. In the space of a moment he was
back with a heavy lead pouch. By the time the sonic boom had
hit, causing the children to look back in his direction, he was
already somewhere else.

Lois puzzled him. She seemed like an intelligent woman. Yet she
hadn't realized that stones that were still glowing thirteen
years after she'd gotten them might be radioactive.

Lisa was sullenly giving the bracelet to her mother. At least
Lois still had that much hold on her. If it hadn't occurred to
Lisa before, it would soon that Lois no longer had the ability
to force her to do anything.

He needed to meet her as Superman sooner than later.

************
Bracelet in hand, Lois stalked back to the car. They were going
to have a long talk when Lisa got home about stealing. Whatever
she'd done at school would also be a topic of conversation.

She noticed Clark standing well away from her car. On the hood
was a dull gray pouch.

"Put it in the pouch," he said.

Staring at him for a moment, Lois did. The pouch was heavy, like
the lead aprons she'd had to wear at the dentist's when she got
x-rays.

"Fold it up several times."

Lois did so, and she noticed that only then did Clark approach
the car.

"This stuff is poisonous to them," Lois said suspiciously. "Why
are you standing so far away?"

"It can cause cancer in humans," Clark said, reaching out to
take the pouch gingerly from her. He slipped it into another,
heavier pouch. "The artist developed a tumor on his spine and
hasn't been able to walk since."

Lois felt her face pale. "You mean..."

"It requires long term exposure," Clark said. "And the
radiation's effect on humans requires...closer contact than with
Kal El's species."

"I stopped wearing this after...that night. It had too many
memories," Lois said.

"I'm glad," Clark said. "It wouldn't have been good for the
fetus."

For the first time his voice sounded genuine.

"You were standing so far away," Lois said.

"I'd been exposed for a long period of time, Ms. Lane, before we
knew exactly what effects it had on the human body. I have to be
more careful than the average person."

She nodded and noticed that even with the bracelet wrapped in
lead he handled it gingerly.

"So this could be causing all kinds of health problems in people
who didn't just chuck it after a couple of weeks as a fad," Lois
said.

Nodding, Clark said, "I understand there's only two weeks left
of school. I'd like for the two of you to come spend a few weeks
with me while my people get you up to speed on what's expected
of you."

"Why would I ever want to stay with you?" Lois asked.

"It's a little conspicuous, having Lisa's father visiting in the
suburbs. He comes to my house all the time, as we have to
consult about Foundation business."

So no eyebrows would be raised if he slipped off from time to
time to visit a wayward daughter.

"What are people going to think about me moving into your
house?" Lois asked.

Clark shrugged. "They'll think the truth, that you work for me.
I haven't exactly been creating headlines in the tabloids."

He put a hand on her shoulder, and Lois found herself staring at
his hand as he continued to speak.

"This is the right thing. It'll give Lisa a chance to know her
father away from everybody, without the newspapers and
television crews."

He was still trying to sell that angle. He was just as much of a
snake as he had ever been.

As he removed his hand from her shoulder, Lois realized that it
still tingled where he'd touched her.

She felt an old, forgotten feeling in the pit of her stomach,
one that she'd been sublimating for years. The last time she'd
felt it had meant an unending amount of trouble for her. Lois
had a feeling that this time wasn't going to be any better.

She was attracted to him.

Crap.

*************

Lisa had been subdued since the day of the school fire. Lois
hadn't asked whether she'd set it deliberately, and Lisa hadn't
said anything. The shame in her eyes would have been there
either way.

Meeting her father would have to wait, she'd explained already,
until they reached the Kent estate. Lois could sense that Lisa
was more and more disappointed with each passing day.

Even the last days of school, traditionally a time of tremendous
excitement, hadn't lightened her mood. Lois could only hope that
the change in scenery was going to be good for her.

Clark Kent hadn't offered to get them a flight, and in an odd
way it made Lois feel a little better. She was uneasy enough
about accepting his largess; she'd spent most of her adult life
earning everything she'd gotten the hard way. It felt wrong to
accept charity all because a rich man wanted to keep a secret
and another man wanted to keep his daughter close to him.

It wouldn't be a good message to send to Lisa. Lois had a
feeling that she'd already been looking for the easy way out
with the bracelet.

The glowing reports by her teachers of her last few days hadn't
helped any.

***********

Lisa stared at the huge building through the trees. She hadn't
really noticed it the last time; she'd been too excited at the
thought of meeting her father.

It wasn't fair that her mother had already met her father and
hadn't even bothered to wake her up. What was worse, she'd
gotten rid of the bracelet, and no matter how hard Lisa had
searched, she hadn't been able to find it.

For a few days she'd been popular and confident. She hadn't
worried about what other people thought, and she hadn't worried
that her father hadn't come to see her. Life had been simple and
clear.

Now everything was muddled and confused. The few true friends
she had she was leaving for the summer. She'd never been away
from Janice or any of the others for so long. She was going to
meet a father she didn't know, and for all her dreams and
fantasies about just that, there was fear too.

What if he was like the fathers of some of her friends?

Not every daddy was good. Lisa had had an unpleasant education
in this since her hearing had begun to develop, and even more so
with her vision. She'd seen some of the things people were
capable of doing to each other, and it was starting to affect
her.

Even things she didn't want to hear, she couldn't shut out.
Grown-up things, good, bad and embarrassing. Lisa knew more
about what went on behind closed doors than she would ever admit
to anyone.

As the station wagon wheezed up the hill, Lisa blinked and
realized that she didn't hear any of that now. She could hear
the servants in various parts of the house, and the sounds of
the trees and the wind, the fish and the small animals, but the
horrifying cacophony that had surrounded her entire life for
months now was gone.

The silence was thunderous. It wasn't until it was gone that
Lisa realized just how loud everything had been. Her entire
world had been one huge bundle of noise, and although she'd
gotten used to it, it had been affecting her more than she'd
realized.

Her ears rang with the silence, and Lisa closed her eyes for a
moment to drink it all in. She couldn't believe she'd been so
nervous before that she hadn't seen it.

This place was paradise.

***************

The rooms were huge and luxurious, with a view of the
mountainside that wasn't like anything Lois had ever seen. If
the furnishings were a little too heavy and masculine for her
taste, at least the beds were soft and the rooms had their own
sunken bathtubs with Jacuzzi pools.

"Are you sure there aren't any smaller rooms?" Lois asked.

The man carrying their luggage shook his head. "Those rooms are
for staff. As a guest, this is the smallest set of rooms in this
wing of the house."

"Are there many other guests?" Lisa asked brightly.

Undoubtedly she was wondering if there would be other children
for her to play with. The Kent estate didn't seem like the sort
of place that was welcoming to children. Their noise and color
would interfere with the peace and harmony of the place.

"You are the first in several years," the man said. "Everyone
who is here lives here. Your daughter's room is next door."

With that cryptic pronouncement, he was gone.

The room was half the size of her house. The mahogany bed frame
was sturdy and polished; the quilts were heavy and lush. Pie
wedge tables and antique chairs sat near a huge fireplace.

"Look at the bathroom!" Lisa said.

Black marble everywhere, with brass fixtures, a raised Jacuzzi
tub and mirrors covering the entirety of one wall. The sink was
a simple basin in the middle of it all, rising from the floor.

There was very little counter space, but at least the toilet was
concealed and in a different room.

It was Lisa's room that was the shock. Unlike Lois's room, this
room was bright and airy. A huge window covered one wall, with a
spectacular view of the mountainside and the lakes below.

There were toys of every description scattered throughout the
room, including videogames, dolls, some antique and some new,
and some, including a teddy bear, that were almost human sized.

Clark Kent was still trying to buy her out, but this time he was
trying to do it through her daughter. It would be easy to bribe
an impressionable child, ignoring the fact that she would
eventually have to return to a life that didn't have this sort
of luxury.

Lips tightening, Lois said, "Stay here."

She was going to give Clark Kent a piece of her mind.

*************

Lisa stared morosely into the lake. The fish were swimming, and
if she looked at them just right, it looked as though little
fishy skeletons were floating through the air.

Her mother had told her to stay put, but she hadn't said how
long. Lisa had gotten bored and had made her own way outside to
the lake. She could still hear her mother arguing with some of
the servants in another wing of the house.

If she'd only asked, Lisa could have told her that Clark Kent
wasn't on the premises. He had a strange pattern of heartbeats,
different than those of anyone else she'd ever met.

She blinked as she heard heartbeats coming not from behind her,
but from above. She looked up and saw a flash of cape and a blue
outfit.

A moment later, he was down. He stared at her, and Lisa wrinkled
her nose. He smelled of oil and fish and the sea.

For a long moment he did nothing but stare at her, and Lisa
wondered if he was waiting for her to say something. It was odd
that she suddenly couldn't think of anything to say.

Her mouth felt dry and her palms felt moist. This was the moment
that she'd been waiting for her entire life, and she was messing
it up. She'd hoped to show him that she was a smart and pretty
little girl, that she was good, so that he would always want to
be with her and never go away.

Instead she was standing like a lump.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. He almost seemed to be studying
her face.

Lisa frowned. "Why?"

"If I'd known about you, I'd have been in your life a long time
ago."

Lisa couldn't stop staring at him. He had the same exotic look
to his eyes that she did. His skin was the same color as hers,
his hair was the same.

Lisa nodded. She took a step forward, and frowned. "Why do you
smell like that?"

"I was at an oil spill in Alaska," he said. He looked at her and
said, "You can smell things normal people can't."

"That just started last week," Lisa said. She scowled. In a
classroom filled with newly developing bodies, the smell of
chalk, lab animals and other chemicals had been nearly
unbearable.

"It gets better," he said. "You'll like it here. They don't use
any strong chemicals, so most of the smells are natural ones."

"So it'll always be like that if I stay around people?"

He shook his head. "You'll get used to it. It's just that when
you are starting out your brain doesn't know how to make sense
of the new information it's getting."

"Will I be able to fly?" she asked. It was the one question
she'd been dying to ask since she'd first learned of his
existence.

"I hope so. It's the best part of being what I am." He
hesitated. "Would you like to see what it's like?"

Lisa stared at him for a moment, and then nodded. Her heart was
suddenly beating rapidly. As he stepped toward her, she ignored
the smell of fish and oil, and a moment later, his arm was
around her.

She closed her eyes for a moment. It felt like coming home.

A moment later, they were airborne, and Lisa discovered a part
of herself she'd never known existed.

****************

Lois cursed to herself. Clark Kent had invited her to his home,
and he hadn't even had the grace to be home when she arrived?
She'd expected a little better of him.

She wasn't sure why. It wasn't as though he'd given her any
reason.

She glanced out the window as a flash of blue and red caught her
attention. Her heart leapt in her chest as she realized that her
daughter was in the arms of a stranger, flying high above the
trees.

A moment of terrifying anxiety struck her all at once, and she
began to race down the hall, looking for an exit. She hadn't
given her permission for any flying expeditions.

She'd wanted to be there the first time Lisa met him, to cushion
the blow if he wasn't what she'd expected.

Instead, he was doing something incredibly dangerous with her.
What if he dropped her?

She'd spent her entire life protecting her, more than aware of
just how fragile little bones were, how tender and soft young
flesh was.

Superman was an alien, and by all reports he couldn't be
injured. What if he felt her too tight, broke bones, or what if
she wiggled too much and he lost his grip?

It was insanely dangerous, and it wasn't something she was going
to stand for.

A moment later she'd found a door to the outside, and she was
racing for the last place she'd seen them.

They were already setting down, and Lois slowed her pace as she
approached. It wouldn't do to lose her temper in front of Lisa,
but she needed to have a long talk with the man of steel.

Lisa was already running up the hill. "Mom! Mom! Did you see! We
were flying!"

The expression of joy on her face was something Lois hadn't seen
in a long time. It was then that Lois realized that the toys and
the mansion weren't the real danger. Lisa had never been all
that interested in material things, and had in fact been more
level headed than she had been.

But this...this was something that she couldn't share with her
daughter. This was something wonderful and amazing and
mysterious, and it was easily the sort of thing that could turn
a young girl's head, no matter how dangerous it was.

Lois forced herself to smile at Lisa, and then turned to
Superman.

"Is there any way we can talk?" she asked, her eyes glancing
toward Lisa.

She had no idea how far her hearing had grown, but she supposed
that he would have a better idea.

He nodded. Turning to Lisa, he said, "Why don't you head back up
to the room and get unpacked. We'll talk later."

Lois bristled at the casual way he gave Lisa orders; as though
he'd been her father his entire life. He hadn't put the time in.
He hadn't stayed up all night when she was young. He hadn't
dried her tears, or sacrificed for her.

What gave him the right to move right into her life as though he
belonged there?

"She can hear everything for miles," Superman said.

Lois blinked, shocked. She hadn't realized that Lisa's abilities
were that far advanced. All Lisa had told her was about being
able to hear things on the other side of the school.

He held out his hand. " If you want to talk, we'll have to
fly."

Lois glanced back at Lisa, who was obediently making her way
back up the slope toward the mansion.

"Do you think she'll be ok?"

"I can hear a lot further than she can," he said. "I'll keep us
in earshot."

Lois nodded. Before she could continue, he spoke in a normal
voice. "If you need anything, just call out."

It took Lois a moment to realize that he was talking to Lisa,
who was already a hundred yards away. She glanced back in time
to see Lisa raising her hand in acknowledgement.

He held out his hand, and Lois hesitated. This was exactly the
sort of thing she planned on complaining about, but this wasn't
a conversation she wanted to have while her daughter was in
earshot, no matter how far away that might be.

She took his hand, and a moment later his arm was around her
waist.

Then they were flying.

*******
As they rose into the air, Lois couldn't help but gasp. She'd
never been particularly impressed with the experience of flying
in an airplane; her limited experience had been to attend
funerals as a teenager, and mostly she remembered feeling
cramped in a smoky environment.

This was something entirely different. The world fell away below
them, and Lois didn't feel any sensation of acceleration. If it
hadn't been for the feeling of the wind against her face, she'd
have wondered if they were moving at all.

>From the air, the Kent estate was beautiful. It was almost as
though it had been designed to be viewed this way, instead of
from the more mundane view on the ground. The earth and the sky
in Colorado were more breathtaking than Lois had remembered;
she'd never been one to pay much attention to the scenery, but
here there wasn't much else she could do.

She should have been terrified that he was going to drop her,
but instead she felt oddly safe and secure. This was a man who
could lift space shuttles and move faster than supersonic jets.
If he were to drop her, there was no doubt in her mind that he
would be able to catch her before she fell.

She hadn't remembered him as being this impressive before. She'd
been more concerned with his role as Lisa's father, but in the
space of a moment it occurred to her. This really was a man from
another world. He was proof that Earth really wasn't alone in
the larger scheme of things.

Finally tearing her eyes away from the world below her, Lois
looked at the man who held her in his arms. He was a handsome
man, the sort of man who would have turned the heads of her
friends. He'd certainly turned her head the first time they'd
met.

It was a shock to realize that she was still attracted to him
now. This was the second time in a couple of weeks that she'd
been attracted to a man, and Lois wondered if this was what it
was going to be like from now on. She'd been a mother for a long
time, and she'd shut that part of herself away. It had gotten
easier to do that than to mourn for all the missed parties and
boys and dates.

She'd done what she'd always done and focused herself on one
thing to the exclusion of everything else.

Were other women this aware of every attractive man who crossed
their path? Or was it just men who were super rich or powerful?

Lois hated to think that she was superficial enough to have her
head turned by a mansion, or a fancy cape and tights.

Her lips pursed. She'd come here for a reason. No matter how
amazing the experience of flight was, it didn't change the fact
that she was angry.

When he finally landed on a large ledge miles away from where
they'd begun, Lois squinted. She could barely see the Kent
estate from here.

"We had to come this far?" The thought of her daughter being
able to hear things to this distance in a city the size of
Metropolis was horrifying.

"If she hears as well as I did at her age, yes." Kal El stepped
back from her, and Lois was suddenly aware that the air was
cold. She ignored it.

"You didn't have any right taking her flying without my
permission," she said. "What if you'd dropped her?"

He didn't bother to respond. Instead he crossed his arms and
stared at her.

Lois flushed. "It's not a ridiculous question."

"I'm fast enough to catch her," he said. He disappeared and it
took Lois a moment to realize that he was behind her. "And at
this point, I'm not sure a fall of that distance would hurt
her."

Lois blinked. "What do you mean?"

"My abilities developed gradually," he said, "but the last time
I felt pain was when I was six. How long has it been since she
scraped her knee or hurt herself?"

Her thoughts racing, Lois tried to remember the last time she'd
had to comfort her daughter from anything other than emotional
pain.

"I can't remember," she said at last.

"When was she last sick?" he asked.

"She was sick as a baby," Lois said. "Not often, and it never
lasted very long. It hasn't happened in years."

"I was never sick," he said. "Not even as a child. Being part
human must make her a little more vulnerable."

"Wouldn't you have gotten sick on Krypton?" she asked.

"Krypton was an advanced planet," he said. "They'd gotten rid of
most illnesses."

The way he said it rang false to Lois, the first false note in
the conversation.

"So you don't know if you'd have been sick or not," she said. It
irritated her that he knew these things about her daughter.
She'd been living with Lisa all her life, and she didn't know
any of these things.

Of course, this was the reason they'd taken the monumental risk
of driving cross country to find him. These were things no one
else would be able to tell Lisa.

That didn't make it any easier.

"I'm not going to do anything unsafe with her," Kal El said.
"Keeping her safe is important to me."

"She's all I have," Lois said.

"You came here for a reason," he said. "Growing up with that
kind of power and not knowing what's happening or why...it's
terrifying. It's the loneliest feeling in the world to realize
that you are the last...the only one like you."

It didn't sound like he'd grown up on Krypton. Lois nodded
encouragingly.

"I don't want her to go through what I...I don't want her to go
through something like that."

"She's going to have a lot of questions," Lois said. "What will
she be able to do...what will she need to watch out for. Is there
some way to control what she's going through?"

"I'll be there for her," he said. The look in his eyes was
convincing, filled with remembered pain.

"Just...don't shut me out," she said. "She's my daughter, and I
don't want to feel like the third wheel. I want to be involved
in any decisions."

"So no taking her to Paris without you," he said. At her
expression, he grinned. "I can be anywhere in the world in under
two minutes. It might take thirty minutes with passengers."

She'd dreamed of traveling once, of going to Ireland and Tahiti
and Italy.

"Um...just how long will it be before she can fly?"

His expression became carefully neutral. "The first time I flew
was the night we met. I was seventeen."

Lois felt heat rising to her face. He'd first flown on the night
they'd been together. It wasn't suggestive on the outside, but
it felt that way, as though flying was a metaphor for something
else.

"I'll have to make sure she isn't doing any unauthorized flying
when she's sixteen or seventeen," Lois said dryly.

She took a deep breath. Girls tended to develop earlier than
boys, and so there was no telling what the actual progression
was going to be. However, this man knew things about what was
going to be happening to Lisa, and furthermore, he was her only
link to a world that was reportedly dead.

"Let's work together on this."

***************

Although Lisa could see them talking quite clearly on the
mountaintop, she couldn't hear a word they were saying. Her
mother was faced away from her, and her father was turned at an
angle, although he occasionally looked in her direction.

Lisa wasn't sure how she was going to feel, having a parent who
knew exactly what her limitations were. While she'd been wearing
the red bracelet, it had occurred to her that her mother
couldn't actually force her to do anything she didn't want to
do. Fear of losing her mother's love had been the one thing
keeping her in check.

Her father though...she had no doubt that he could do just about
anything. He was stronger, faster, and he knew everything about
how to use his abilities. He wasn't a knight on a white
stallion; Lisa didn't know what he was yet. All she knew was
that he was finally here, and a knot that had been inside her
for her entire life was finally beginning to unwind.

The sound of wheels rolling against tile behind her startled
her, and she turned.

A skeleton sitting in a wheelchair faced her.

Uncertainly, Lisa smiled. Back when she'd been afraid she was
crazy, seeing people as skeletons had scared her. It had seemed
like sure proof that she was one step away from being taken away
from her mother and locked away in a terrifying place forever.

Now, she preferred it to seeing people naked. That had been the
most horrifying day of school ever. The discovery that most
people absolutely needed clothing had been a shock.

Seeing them as muscles moving without skin had been the worst.
All in all, clean bones were preferable to seeing floating
guts.

Now, Lisa mostly looked people in the face...or skull.

"Hello," she said.

"You must be Lisa." The skeleton had a pleasant voice, even if
it did insist on grinning at her.

Nodding, Lisa said, "I'm supposed to be here."

"My name is Joshua," the skeleton said. "I'm a friend of your
father's."

Lisa nodded. The Superman Foundation was based here, so surely
some of these people must be his friends, even if the skeleton
butler was rude.

"I have a present for you," it said. "I made it myself."

Dangling from its bony fingers was a familiar piece of jewelry.
It was a bracelet, and it looked just like the one her mother
had, the one which had been so fascinating.

The wheelchair clicked forward as the figure said, "Go
ahead...take it."

Lisa stared at the bracelet, and almost involuntarily she
stepped forward.

She wanted the bracelet, but her mother would never let her keep
it. Still...maybe she wouldn't mind if she held it for a while.

What could it hurt?

*******

Lisa took the bracelet and frowned. The old familiar feeling of
relief wasn't there. The bracelet looked the same as the one her
mother had once had, but the jewel wasn't glowing.

"It's ruby," the skeleton called Joshua said. Its voice was
hesitant. "I used to make these with something else, but I
didn't know it was bad for people."

"Why would you give me something like this?" Lisa asked, trying
to push her disappointment away. In her experience, men didn't
give young girls jewelry without wanting something in return.
The things she'd seen and heard were proof of that.

"It's my way of saying I'm sorry." Joshua's voice became
serious. "I hurt a lot of people with those bracelets, and I
can't really do much to help them, although I'm trying."

Lisa stared at the bracelet. Without the glowing gem, it didn't
seem nearly as fascinating. In fact, it seemed a little cheap.
"Would it be all right if I gave this to my mother? She...lost
hers a little while back."

The skeleton nodded.

Lisa felt a breeze at her back and she realized that her mother
had returned. Turning, she saw the familiar shape of her
mother's skeleton, delicate and petite. In the past few months
she'd gotten to know the look of it well, and now it looked as
different from everyone else's skeleton as her mother herself
did.

Blinking, Lisa fought to keep her jaw from dropping. Her father
didn't look like a skeleton at all! He looked the same as when
she saw him last, including his costume, except that she
couldn't see his cape.

She could hear it whipping in the wind, which meant that it was
as invisible as the walls of the house.

She turned to Joshua, who was still a skeleton. "Thank you for
this."

Glancing around, Lisa could see skeletons working in the
kitchen, out in the garage, and a few cleaning in various parts
of the mansion. Some were on the second floor, which gave them
the curious appearance of being suspended in mid air.

When her sight was like this, Lisa had to be very careful. She
was effectively blind and would tend to run into walls and doors
if she wasn't careful. Luckily, she'd had a lot of experience
faking it.

She smiled at her mother as she entered the room. She couldn't
see her expression, so she had to judge by the tone of her
voice, but she'd had a lot of experience with that as well.

"Hello," her mother said, seeing the man in the wheelchair for
the first time.

"My name is Joshua Lang," said the skeleton, holding out one
hand for a bony handshake. "I live here."

"Oh?" her mother said.

"I did the genetics testing on Lisa's father," Joshua said. "I'm
also the one who made the jewelry you'll be helping get rid
of."

******************

Blindly, Lisa speared a piece of meat off her plate. Everyone
was still skeletons, and she was starting to worry. It had never
gone on for this long before. She could tell the general
location of the meat from its smell, but she still had to be
careful, or someone would notice.

"I was working out on the Irig farm helping to move rocks and
clear the fields for planting," Joshua said. "It was late in the
evening when I stumbled across the first of the glowing
gemstones."

Lisa nodded, chewing her food slowly. Mr. Kent hadn't showed up
for dinner yet, and her father had left for some sort of unnamed
emergency hours ago.

"I had it checked out with a Geiger counter." Joshua's voice was
defensive. "I wasn't entirely stupid. What I didn't realize is
that Geiger counters aren't as sensitive to high energy
radiation."

Her mother nodded encouragingly.

"I'd been working with crafts since I was small; my mother
taught me, and she had all the equipment I needed. For ten bucks
and a little chip of crystal that Wayne Irig gave me for free, I
could make a piece of jewelry that I could sell for fifty.
Better still, I could make five of them in a night."

"Your money problems were over," Lois said.

"Well, I wouldn't say that, but it did help pay my way through
college," Joshua said. "I kept the crystals under my bed, and I
slept with them every night."

"And that's what happened to you..." her mother said. "Mr. Kent
told me about the tumor."

Joshua chuckled bitterly. "Something keeps glowing for years,
you'd think it'd occur to me that it was radioactive."

Lisa heard the sound of someone coming in from the other room.
Her eyes widened as she saw Mr. Kent stepping inside the dining
room.

Unlike the others, he was not a skeleton. Instead he seemed to
be wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt and nothing else.

Lisa frowned. Usually, when her vision went strange, it saw
everyone the same way. Everyone was a skeleton, everyone was
nude, or everyone was a collection of floating intestines. It
didn't work one way for one person and another way for another.

He looked at her and then looked away. Lisa knew she probably
was staring, and it was probably rude, but she couldn't help
herself.

There was a familiar smell in the room; fish and oil. It was
fainter than it had been before, now being covered with the
smell of soap and shampoo, but it was there. Lisa looked around
wildly. Was her father going to join them all for dinner?

No matter which direction she looked, she couldn't see him.

"Lisa?"

Lisa glanced back up at her mother and was relieved to see
familiar flesh instead of bones. A quick glance showed that
everyone else looked normal as well.

Joshua looked older than she would have thought, given his
voice, but he seemed nice enough.

Clark Kent was seating himself and whispering to a
servant...something about bringing coffee.

Lisa stiffened as she realized she was hearing something else. A
familiar heartbeat, faster than anything human, was in the room
with them.

Was invisibility going to be one of her powers? Why was her
father spying on them? They'd be happy to have a meal with him.

"Kal El had to help with a dam that collapsed in China," Mr.
Kent said. There was a strange sound of pride in his voice. "He
saved two thousand villagers and helped divert waters that would
have destroyed their homes."

Lisa turned her head. If she could only pinpoint the sound,
she'd be able to find out where her father was hiding.

The sound was coming from Mr. Kent's part of the room, which
would make sense. Lisa hadn't heard it until he'd come into the
room. Her father must have slipped in behind him.

Lisa took a bite and winced as the sound of her own chewing
thundered through her head. There was so much she had to learn
about all of this; she only hoped her father would be able to
find the time to help her.

"I understand that the Foundation is doing a lot of work in
foreign countries," her mother said politely.

"It's enlightened self interest really. Malnourished people have
suppressed immune systems, which make them the perfect
incubators for new and deadlier diseases. If you'd seen some of
the things I'd seen..." Mr. Kent's voice trailed off. "I haven't
been doing this very long, and I've already seen a lot of things
I wished I hadn't."

There was a weird sound of guilt to his voice. Lisa tried to
ignore it and hone in on the sound of the heartbeat. When she
found her father, she was going to throw something at him-
probably a carrot.

The surprise that her father was invisible would help her mother
forget her rudeness at the table.

"How long have you been doing this?" her mother asked.

Lisa didn't hear the reply. She stiffened as she realized that
the sound of the heartbeat wasn't just coming from near Mr.
Kent. It was coming from Mr. Kent himself.

**********

The look of realization and shock on his daughter's face was an
unwelcome addition to the meal. He'd hoped to be able to keep
his secret for at least a while longer, but given the senses
that they obviously shared, it wouldn't have lasted forever.

It hadn't lasted more than a few hours, and Clark suspected that
if he hadn't had to leave, the disguise wouldn't have lasted
more than a few minutes.

"Don't tell your mother," he murmured under his breath. Although
the words would have been inaudible to a normal listener, Lisa
clearly heard them. The look of doubt on her face prompted him
to say, "I'll explain later."

Damn. He'd promised to be honest with Lois about his
relationship with Lisa, and here he was already screwing it up.

But he had his reasons. After what had happened before, he
wasn't going to share his secret with anyone who didn't already
know it. It was too easy for people to take advantage. It was
too easy for him to get hurt.

Now it was even more imperative that he keep his secret. Before,
he could have always flown away. If he'd been found out, there
was enough money in secret accounts in the Caymans and in
Switzerland for him to live in luxury for the rest of his life.


But Lisa couldn't fly, and she was emotionally attached to her
mother, who was even more vulnerable. It would be very easy for
someone to use Lois to get Lisa. He'd told the truth when he'd
told Lois that her safety was his highest priority.

Lisa was in as much danger from the red poison and the green as
he was, but her mother wasn't. He didn't know her mother; other
than one night together and what little time they'd spent
together recently, he wasn't sure he could trust her.

He'd been betrayed in the worst way a man could be betrayed, and
sometimes he wondered if it was always going to leave a scar on
his soul.

He and Lisa were going to have to have a serious talk. He wasn't
ready to tell her mother yet, and he had to convince the girl of
that.

What had happened with Lana could never happen again.

************

Staring at her father, Lisa shook her head slightly. He wanted
her to lie to her mother, and that wasn't something she was
ready to do. Her mother had been there for her for her entire
life, while her father was still an enigma. All she knew about
him really was how she felt when she was around him and that he
could fly.

She frowned as she realized that it wasn't entirely true. Her
father was also the man who'd insulted her mother when they'd
first met, the man she'd felt angry with and wanted to hit in
the stomach.

It was confusing. Who was her father? Was he the gentle man
she'd flown with, or was he the emotionally distant man in the
business suit?

After a moment, she nodded slightly. She'd talk to him and make
her own decisions. She couldn't see any good reason to keep the
secret from her mother, but then, she didn't always see what
motivated adults. The world they lived in seemed unnecessarily
complicated to her. They seemed to worry incessantly about
things that seemed to be clear to her.

Her mother was good. To Lisa, it seemed as though that ought to
be enough for her father to share his secret with her.

If he shared his secret, then maybe good things could happen.

Maybe they'd like each other.

Lisa had known better than to even fantasize about her mother
becoming involved with Kal El. Superman was an alien who flew
around and helped people. He didn't have a job, likely couldn't
help pay rent and he wouldn't be able to provide anything like a
stable life for either Lisa or her mother.

Worse, it would mean that for the rest of her life everyone
would look at Lisa as though she was a freak, even if they never
admitted she was actually her father's daughter.

But Lois Lane and Clark Kent....that was a different story. A
millionaire getting married wasn't bug news at all, and having
someone like him for a father would only make Lisa the envy of
her class. They could be together forever and be happy, and Lisa
would have a full time dad instead of one who just dropped by
for occasional visits.

Telling her mother the secret would solve everything, Lisa was
sure.

Her father had better have a very good argument as to why she
shouldn't.

**************

Clark could hear Joshua going over the basics of the search for
the poisoned jewelry down below. It was a concession to her
pride that he was even involving her at all; his people were
quite competent. That they hadn't been completely successful
over the years was a sign of just how enthusiastic Joshua had
been about making the things, and about the dimming effect of
time.

Too many people weren't sure what had happened to the bracelets.
They'd lost them or thrown them away, had them stolen or just
lent them to people who never gave them back. It was a
convoluted maze of a problem, and it was costing much more than
it should have cost.

He heard Lisa step into the room behind him.

"Why?" she asked.

It was a complex question, and Clark considered his answer
carefully.

"I want to get to know your mother better," he said finally. He
stared out the window out over the lake. The moonlight lit
everything in high relief. He wondered how it would look to a
normal person's eyes.

"Before you tell her?"

Lisa approached, and Clark stepped to the side so she could look
out over the lake.

"The last time I told someone my secret, it didn't work out very
well," Clark said. It was an understatement.

"My mother wouldn't do anything to hurt you," Lisa said. "She's
a good person."

Clark had thought Lana was a good person too. In high school,
she'd been a little overbearing, but he'd thought she'd cared
about him. It had been more than he'd had with anyone else.
After he'd made his first million, she'd gotten a lot
friendlier.

It had hurt when he'd realized that she liked who he was while
under the influence of the red poison a lot more than she'd
liked the person he really was.

When he'd realized what she'd been doing, it had felt like
something inside him had died.

"She might not mean to," Clark said, "But sometimes we hurt
people without even knowing what we are doing."

Lisa just stared at him, and Clark looked away. For some reason,
he felt as though his throat was closing up a little.

It shouldn't be this difficult.

"I'm not Superman," he said. "I don't want her thinking I am."

"So you aren't my father," Lisa said skeptically. Given her
senses she knew better. "You can't fly and lift things and..."

"That's not what I meant." Clark stared out over the lake.
"Superman is good. He's heroic, trustworthy, kind. Me...I'm not
even a nice person really."

It was a hard thing to say, especially to someone who should
have looked up to him. Admitting that he wasn't the person he
ought to be, that he was damaged, was more than he had wanted to
do. Yet it was important that Lisa believe him, and part of that
was to tell at least part of the truth.

"So it's all a lie," Lisa said. Her voice was neutral, and her
expression was carefully blank.

Shaking his head, Clark said, "Superman is who I always wished I
could be. I think I might have been like him if my parents had
lived, or if some of the bad things that happened to me hadn't
happened."

Lisa stared at him, and Clark cleared his throat. "If your
mother knew...she'd have certain expectations. She'd think I was
one kind of person when I really am not. In the end...she'd be
disappointed."

"So you want her to know the real you," Lisa said quietly.

Clark nodded.

"Ok," she said simply.

They stared out at the landscape together.

It felt strange. It was important that Lois not know who he was,
and Clark had set out with the intention of telling Lisa a lie.
She wasn't old enough to handle the truth.

Yet as he was telling it to her, Clark had realized that it
wasn't a lie at all. There was a reason for his gut reaction at
the thought of Lois finding out who he was.

For some reason it mattered what Lois Lane thought of him.

He'd enjoyed his time with her as Kal El. She'd looked at him
differently than she did when he was Clark Kent. As Clark Kent
all he got from her was thinly veiled contempt. That he hadn't
done much to earn anything else didn't change the fact that this
was the response he'd come to expect from almost everyone.

He'd gotten that from Lana in spades.

Yet as Kal El, she looked at him differently. She treated him as
a different person, and as much as she tried to hide it, there
was respect in her eyes.

He'd hate to lose that.

****************

Lisa felt elated. Her father wanted to get to know her mother
better, and he wanted her to know him. It reminded her of Beauty
and the Beast; on the outside her father wasn't a nice person.
He wasn't friendly or even very kind. Yet the face he showed the
world was that of a man who was everything he claimed not to
be.

After she'd begun to believe she was schizophrenic, Lisa had
become interested in psychology. She'd borrowed books from her
grandfather's library when he wasn't looking, and she'd tried to
read as much as she could. Most of it had been over her head but
some things stuck.

One thing was that people tended to become who they were treated
as. If everyone treated someone as though they were a bad
person, eventually they would come to believe it. If everyone
treated someone as a good person...

People loved Superman, and wherever he went people showered him
with love and affection for what he did. Even if her father
really was a beast, that sort of thing couldn't help but change
him.

All his mother would have to do was to love him.

Lisa suspected that if she knew the truth, she never would. Her
mother resented Kal El for the hardships they'd had to go
through for her entire life. It didn't matter that he hadn't
known about Lisa; he should have found her mother again.

Clark Kent, however, hadn't done anything but behaved like an
*** . >From what Lisa understood, her mother encountered a lot
of people like that at work every day. He'd done a good thing by
giving her mother a job. If he spent much time with her, he'd
surely show her that he wasn't as bad as he pretended to be.

Lisa could have a normal family, the kind of family that she'd
dreamed of as a child, but better.

There wasn't any way her father was as bad as he pretended to
be.

*****************

A single point of light flickered in the darkness, and the smell
of cigarette smoke filled the air. The single shaft of light
from the doorway illuminated the ashtray, filled with dozens of
stubbed out butts.

The man blinked into the darkness. He knew better than to reach
for the light. When she was in this sort of mood it wasn't worth
it.

"I trust you have a report for me?" The southern accent was
marred by the roughed sound of a smoker's voice.

"She's moved in with him," he said. "Her and the kid."

The single point of light snapped out viciously, landing in the
ashtray. "Damn him."

"They're in separate wings of the house," he said. It had seemed
important, considering how she had taken the news of his trips
to Metropolis.

"Like that matters. Where did he put the brat?"

He coughed, suddenly uncomfortable. "In the nursery."

The ashtray coming out of the darkness almost caught him by
surprise, but he'd been waiting for something like it. He
flinched out of the way and it shattered on the doorframe beside
him. He felt a trickle of liquid against his ear and realized he
was bleeding.

"After everything we went through, he puts the brat in the
nursery?" The muted sound of rage in her voice worried him. She
wasn't stable at the best of times and now he didn't know what
she was going to do.

"Keep an eye on them. Find out why he's brought them to the
house." The voice was suddenly curt.

Relieved that he'd gotten away so lightly, he backed out of the
door, never letting his eyes stray from the spot he thought she
was in. He'd learned never to turn his back on her.

As he shut the door, he was startled to see a greenish light
burst forth in the room, illuminating a bracelet and the hand
that wore it.

If the money wasn't so good, or if Clark Kent had been something
more than a crabby recluse, he might have reconsidered what he
was doing. As long as Kent had spent his life hiding, it hadn't
seemed like such a bad job.

Spying on someone who never did anything was easy money.

Now...he was beginning to regret the deal. Deep in his gut he knew
that something bad was going to happen. For all that they'd once
been married, she'd been content as long as he'd been as
miserable as she was.

Now that Lois Lane and the kid had entered the picture, he
wasn't sure what was going to happen. He didn't dare turn
against her now, though.

Lana Luthor was crazier than a March hare, and if she thought
he'd betrayed her, she'd kill him. Worse, though, was what she
would do to him before he died.

***********

The maid waved at her as she walked by, her face a horror mask
of moving muscles surmounted by floating eyeballs.

Grimacing, Lisa tried to keep her eyes on the floor. It was a
skins day, the one she most hated. Skeletons had a nice, clean
look to them and were sometimes even a little amusing.
Disembodied guts floating in midair at least had the virtue of
being somewhat interesting. Naked was embarrassing, but at least
people looked like people, and Lisa could just stare at their
faces and try not to look any lower.