Superman Movieverse Forum

2017
They waited but there was nothing more on the news about Luthor’s death. Still the phone didn’t ring.

Laura wiped her hands against her jeans and took a deep breath. It was no use speculating until they had more information. They would simply have to wait for the all clear. “How about some coffee?” she offered.

Bob nodded. “Sure.”

Charlie reached over and touched her shoulder again. Laura squeezed her husband’s hand. It’s going to be okay. Bruce will call and it will be okay.

“Jay,” Charlie said softly. “Would you go get your sister? She’s over at Kendra’s.”

“Sure, Dad.”

Laura watched after her son. He had spent most of his life hiding who he was, what he was. She understood how much he wanted to shake off the bonds of secrecy, to be able to announce proudly to the world who his parents were. Instead he’d been forced to lie to his teachers, his classmates and their parents. It wasn’t easy. He was, by nature, an honest person like his father and living a life of lies weighed heavy on both of them.

“Um, I won’t ask what your names were,” Bob said as he fixed his coffee. “But what did you do before…”

“Before our lives were ripped to shreds?” Laura asked.

Bob nodded.

“We did investigative work for Wayne Industries,” Charlie said. That was their fallback explanation if either of them slipped and let out things a school teacher or a plant manager shouldn’t have known. True as far as it went, but misleading in its implications – like so much of their lives.

“You must have been a pretty good team if Luthor and his bunch had you targeted,” Bob said.

“Yeah, we were,” Laura admitted.

“We still are,” Charlie corrected, pulling her into a hug. “Lane and Kent weren’t the only people Luthor had targeted for annoying him, or having relatives who annoyed him. We survived. And we will keep surviving.”

“What will you do if Luthor is really dead, if the threat really is gone?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “It’s not like we can just go back and pick up our lives where they left off.”

“It would be nice to be free to visit though,” Laura said. “See my sister and her kids, my mom. Christmas cards and emails are fine, but it would be nice to actually see them.”

The phone rang and Laura ran to grab it. Was it Bruce?

“Yes?”

“Lo, tell Charlie we have a brush fire over on Eldorado and one-forty-seventh,” a man’s voice ordered. Her heart sank as she recognized the voice – Jim Wilcox, chief of fire district one, the volunteer fire department.

“He’ll be right there,” she promised and hung up. “You heard?” she asked her husband.

“I’m on my way,” he said, grabbing his heavy canvas coat, helmet and two shovels from their hooks in the hall that connected the kitchen to the garage. “Coming, Bob?”

“I’m with you.”

“Be careful,” Laura ordered. Charlie just gave her a cheeky grin.

2007
“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the minister said.  “I present to you the newly married couple, Lois and Clark.”

They were now Clark and Lois Kellerman. That’s what it said on the marriage license and on their new ID and credit cards.

Perry White shook Clark’s hand while Alice White gave Lois a hug. The only other witnesses were Jason, and Alfred. Bruce was busy in meetings. He was hosting a retreat for the high-level executives of Wayne Entertainment and their significant others. As editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet, Perry ‘happened’ to be a high-level executive.

Clark was constantly being amazed at how much trouble Bruce was going to for them.  He knew he was one of the few people Bruce actually considered a friend, but this went far beyond the call of duty.

“Congratulations, son,” Perry said. “I just wish this was happening under better circumstances.”

“Don’t we all?” Clark asked. It had been six weeks since their alleged deaths, six weeks since Luthor and his thugs beat him to within an inch of his life. It had been a hard six weeks. He wasn’t used to pain or needing to eat and sleep. He was healing up nicely according to Doctor Klein, but he was chafing at how long it was taking. The physical therapy hurt like hell but Lois turned out to be his biggest cheerleader and his most stringent taskmaster.

Now she was his wife, at least in name. As for the rest, he knew she deserved better. Without his ‘gifts’ he was just an ordinary man and she would never settle for an ordinary man.

“How’s Richard doing?” Lois asked Alice.

“He’s in London right now,” Perry said, “working out some problems for us over there. He’s put the house up for sale. All of your stuff, and Jason’s, we had put in storage. Give me a list of the things you want most and I’ll make sure Mister Wayne gets them to you.”

“Thanks, Perry,” Lois said. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

Alice sighed. “He’s doing as well as can be expected, I suppose. He honestly thought he was Jason’s father.”

“I never told him he was,” Lois said. “And I did try to tell him differently.”

Alice simply shrugged. Clark didn’t know if she believed Lois or not. Without the ability to tune in on heart rate, he wasn’t as sure as he used to be about things like that.

“Losing you and Jason like that, and then finding out you weren’t dead at all but you hadn’t bothered to let him know…” Alice said. “I know you never meant to hurt him, but still…”

“It really wasn’t my choice,” Lois said. “Mister Wayne’s people were afraid Richard might be targeted too. They thought it was better if he thought we were gone. Even my parents weren’t told until after Superman’s funeral.” Lois sighed. “They couldn’t be here today because there was no good way to explain why my parents would be visiting Gotham City. There’s no reason at all my father would be seen in the company of Bruce Wayne. At least you and Perry have an excuse.”

“Do you know where you’ll be going?” Alice asked.

“Somewhere in the Midwest, I think,” Lois answered. “Mister Wayne has everything arranged.”

“We leave in a few days,” Clark added.

Perry gave him a searching look. “You know I don’t believe a word Luthor said about you. But I also want you both to know that there’ll always be a place at the Planet for you.”

“We’ll be back before you know it,” Lois told him. Clark didn’t need super hearing to know she was lying – he knew her tells too well, the over-bright smile, the little tilt of her head. He knew Perry knew them too.

It was a comfortable fiction. Everyone, except possibly Jason, knew that Lane and Kent would never be writing for the Daily Planet, or anywhere else, ever again.



Three days later, Lois, Clark, and Jason Kellerman got off a plane in Minneapolis. They took a cab to a suburban neighborhood, to a yellow tract house with a neat picket fence nearly buried in snow.

The inside of the house was filled with neatly labeled moving boxes. The furniture was simple and inexpensive. Jason ran through the house to see which room was his. Lois and Clark followed him more slowly.

Whoever Bruce had assigned to take care of them had done an excellent job. Jason’s room was in the back with a single window looking out over a large fenced yard. The room was filled with Jason’s toys.

Clark noted the house had a top of the line security system and he had no doubt the built-in computer network was at least as sophisticated as the security system.

Lois was putting on a brave front, but Clark knew she had to be feeling at least as overwhelmed as he was. Without super speed unpacking was going to take days and they weren’t even sure what was in all the boxes. At least the beds had been made and their clothes hung up.

“Oh God,” Lois murmured looking around. “This is what the rest of our lives looks like.”

“It’ll be okay,” Clark tried to assure her. He pulled her into a hug and after a moment she relaxed against his chest.

“Hey, maybe now you’ll have the time to write that great American romance novel you used to talk about,” he said.

“What about you? Is the next Tom Clancy hiding out in Minneapolis?”

“Could be.”

She disengaged from his arms and took his hand. “The bed in our room looks like a California king.”

“Yes?”

“I thought we might try it out.”

His heart jumped and she seemed to sense it.

“Clark, did you think I just married you so Jason would have a father?”

“I…”

She hushed him by pulling down into a kiss.

It was just has he remembered it from so long ago. Sweet as honey. He let her tongue explore his mouth.

After a moment he pulled back. “Lois, I’m not the man you fell in love with. You know that.”

She studied his eyes. Hers were hazel with specks of blue and gold. “Clark, I fell in love with a man who was intelligent, gentle, sweet, and kind. He was also the only partner Perry ever assigned to me who could actually keep up with me. The fact that he could bend steel in his bare hands was a definite plus.”

“Perry didn’t assign Superman to be your partner,” he reminded her. “And you never paid all that much attention to the guy in the glasses and tweed suit.”

“Did it ever occur to you that the reason I went on so much about Superman was that I was afraid I might fall for the guy in the glasses and tweed suit? You were always my favorite person to abuse, you know. Perry said we bickered like an old married couple.”

He chuckled at that. ‘Oh, I've seen how the other half lives. My sister, for instance... three kids, two cats, one mortgage... I'd go bananas after a week,’ she said. He’d just started at the paper, was just learning the ropes. She was brilliant, feisty, head-strong. He’d never met anyone like her.

It took her nearly three years to finally connect the dots. He’d been standing, talking to Jimmy about something and he was aware that she was studying him, making connections, conclusions. She even went so far as to jump out Perry’s office window to force him to act openly. Luckily, he managed to save her life without being seen or suspected, but it was a close call.

Then Perry sent them up to Niagara Falls to look into a honeymoon scam. Superman had made a rescue at the falls that afternoon and Lois was suspicious that he happened to be there. Later that evening she confronted Clark with her suspicions again.

“You are Superman. Aren't you?”

He tried to deny it. “Lois, we've been through this delusion of yours before. Don't you remember what you almost did to yourself, jumping out of a building thirty stories up? Can't you see the tragic mistake you almost made?”

She smiled thinly at his reflection in the dressing table mirror while she put on her makeup. “You're right, Clark. I did make a tragic mistake. What a fool I was...” She opened a drawer in the dressing table and pulled something out. She swiveled in her seat and he realized she had a pistol in her hand and she had it leveled at him.

“I bet my life instead of yours.”

“Lois, don't be insane,” he protested. “Lois, you're crazy!” He could see her finger on the trigger, the muscles contracting and he knew there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t make things even worse. The gunshot echoed in the room.

He stayed standing.

“I knew it,” Lois said. There was a touch to triumph in her voice, and wonder. “I guess I must really have known it for the longest time...”

“You realize, of course, if you'd been wrong,” Clark allowed himself to say, dropping his voice to its more normal register and straightening to his full height. “Clark Kent would have been killed.”

Lois chuckled softly. “How? With a blank?”

Clark closed his eyes in frustration. In the stress of the moment, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he hadn’t felt the bullet strike him.

“Gotcha,” she added, a gentle smile on her face.

They went to the arctic fortress. She hadn’t stayed awed for very long. They had dinner and made love. For the first time in his life he felt complete, whole. There was nothing he couldn’t do with her at his side. It hadn’t lasted.

“If you will not be Kal-El,” the Kryptonian AI stated using the image of his long dead father. “If you will live as one of them... love their kind as one of them, then it follows that you must become... one of them.”

He had walked willingly into the chamber that would make him human. Human so he could love her as a man. Human so they could make a life together.

But in that cheap hotel in Alaska, he saw the sorrow, the disappointment in her eyes while they lay in the bed together watching the news on GNN. Watching the reports of the disasters that Superman wasn’t attending to – a killer tsunami in the Philippines, a jumbo jet that ran off the runway in Moscow and burst into flames killing all on board. That he’d taken a beating in a run down diner hadn’t helped.

“Maybe we ought to hire a bodyguard from now on,” Clark suggested bitterly.

“I don't want a bodyguard,” Lois told him. “I want the man I fell in love with.”

“I know that, Lois. And I wish he were here...”

“Clark?” Lois’s question broke into his thoughts.

“I was just…”

“Clark, Superman is dead. But you’re not. I didn’t marry Superman. I married you.”

“But he was…”

“He was bigger than life and nearly everyone loved him. But you have to let him go. We have to let him go.”

“It’s hard,” he admitted. “I watch the news and…”

“I know. I know you want to help. I know you need to help. We just have to figure out what Clark Kellerman can do to help.”

“When did you become so wise?” he asked softly. He caressed her hair, studying her face. She had aged in the past six weeks. Some of the brightness had gone out of her eyes and there was a tiredness in her posture that hadn’t been there before.

She smiled and the age and tiredness seemed to disappear from her. “I’m the mom of a very special little boy and I’m finally married to his very special father.”

Clark found himself smiling. She was so wonderful. He was almost afraid it was a dream – that he was going to wake up and find she was gone.

“Now,” she continued. “Are we going to bed, or am I going to have to knock you down so I can have my way with you on these uncomfortable looking boxes?”