“Mr. Luthor?”

“What happened?” Luthor growled.

“He disappeared.”

“I hope, for your sake, that you mean that in a ‘I made him disappear’ sort of way.”

“No, sir. I mean the kid just disappeared. One minute, it looks like he’s going comatose just like the doc’ said he would, the next the babysitter’s blocking my view and by the time it all clears out the kid isn’t in the house anymore.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Johnson.”

- - -

“He has a cell phone now?” Richard asked, only sounding slightly surprised.

“Yeah,” Lois said, trying and failing utterly to smile. “It’s easier to contact him that way. Chief Henderson has the number, too.”

“How does he pay the bill?”

“Who knows? He’s from a different planet,” Lois shrugged. She didn’t want to have this conversation with Richard at the moment. All she could think about was Jason, not breathing, just like right after he was born. That had been pure hell, she’d never felt so helpless in her life, including all the times she’d fallen off of high things with no way to check her fall.

Lucky Superman was always around.

But this was Jason. Superman’s son. The only thing that could hurt Superman, could hurt Clark, was kryptonite, and, by extension, the only thing that could hurt Jason, really hurt him, was kryptonite, which begged the question: where was the kryptonite?

Lois wanted to turn the room inside out, but she couldn’t do it with Richard and Charlotte watching her so closely. Charlotte was still looking at the window, awed, and Richard looked utterly miserable, absolutely forlorn and worried out of his mind. Besides, Clark would be able to feel if kryptonite was present and locate it faster than she ever could; she would only be wasting her time.

Taking deep breaths, Lois dug Charlotte’s usual fee and then some out of her purse and handed it to the college student, thanking her and promising to call when they found out which hospital Superman had taken Jason to. Reluctantly, Charlotte allowed herself to be seen out.

Richard sat on Jason’s bed, fists clenched, eyes trained on the window. Lois paced the room for awhile, then went into her bedroom and took off her gown and jewelry, kicking off her shoes and leaving the lot of it haphazard on the bed. She pulled on her sweats hurriedly, and a thick pair of socks, though she didn’t find the usual comfort in them.

Clark had him, he’d know what to do; Jason would be fine.

So why doesn’t he at least call?

After pacing some more, she joined Richard sitting on Jason’s bed and staring out the window while she waited. She hated waiting.

They’d returned to the apartment close to one o’clock, but it was passing four before Richard finally left, having to return to his hotel to pack his things and shower before his plane left; no matter how much he wanted to, staying wasn’t an option—he had an important interview with the U.S. ambassador to Germany in Berlin he couldn’t miss (he’d already been in Metropolis for half a week, visiting with family and whatnot). Lois promised she’d have Jason call him, and see if she couldn’t, maybe, talk Superman into giving them a lift across the ocean for a lunchtime visit, if at all possible. Making plans like that didn't bring any more confidence in the case of this latest medical upheaval, but they could pretend it did.

Lois fell asleep on Jason’s bed, curled up with his pillow in her arms, near seven, though it wasn’t a very restful sort of sleep. Near ten, Clark gently shook her awake.

“Where’s Jason? Is he okay? What happened? Why didn’t you call?”

“Jason will be fine,” Clark assured her in his deep, reassuring Superman voice, the one that held so much confidence that it was possible to ignore the fact that he looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, and just believe him.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I was out of cell range, I’m sorry.”

“Where did you take him?”

“The Fortress.”

“The Fortress? What was wrong with him? Did you leave him there, alone?”

“C’mon,” he said, not answering her questions and making her want to stamp a foot and glare at him for it. “We should get back. Where’s Richard?”

“He had to catch a plane.”

“Oh.”

Clark held her close as they flew; that tingling, not quite numb sensation she’d felt once before, when he’d been kissing her so thoroughly, itched across her skin, but she hardly noticed. His naturally high body heat kept her warm as they soared through the sky above the clouds, the beautiful play of the sunshine so unfiltered that it was almost too bright hardly registering.

The Fortress was just as alien-looking as she remembered it. There were the huge hexagonal pillars that rose out of the ground at seemingly random angles, forming the walls and ceiling, and the sort of dais and platform that served as the pain control panel for the place. Clark flew her to a wing that she didn’t remember from her previous trips to the Fortress, though. It seemed to be a medical wing of sorts, with gurney-looking crystalline platforms, panels of lights in the walls, and the sort of sci-fi, futuristic medicine-looking gadgets that could only be a Kryptonian infirmary.

“Jason,” she murmured when she saw him, lying down on one of the gurneys, the only one that looked as though it had been activated. He looked peaceful, like he was simply asleep, even as his pajamas floated around him as though he was immersed in water, though he certainly wasn’t. He was ensconced in rippling yellow light that varied up to white and back to yellow in its intensity. On the side of the gurney, a blue light seemed to be keeping time with his sleeping heart rate, a green light monitoring his breathing. “Is he alright?”

“He’ll be fine in a couple of hours. He’s asleep right now, while the machine does its work.”

“What was wrong with him? What’s the machine doing?”

“I don’t know how it happened, but it looks like he inhaled some sort of kryptonite dust,” Clark said, shuddering. “I can only imagine that he must’ve inhaled it over a period of time, or the pain of it would’ve alerted him that something was wrong long before he stopped breathing in his sleep.”

“Thank God Charlotte went in to wake him when she did,” Lois said, shuddering at the thought of what a few more minutes could’ve done to her little boy. Clark pulled her close again, holding her as they both looked down at Jason lying on the machine as Clark continued to explain.

“It was in all his air sacs and clinging to all his lung and bronchial tissues all the way up to his throat—it’s not in his nasal passages, though, which is odd.”

“His inhaler,” Lois said immediately. “The dust could’ve been in his inhaler.”

“But how? We’re the only ones with his inhaler, and I would’ve noticed if even a tiny amount was snuck into them.”

“What about the ones he has at school, with the nurse and the recess monitor?”

“Somebody could’ve tampered with them…”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Clark shuddered, holding her a little closer. Her skin tingled again, this time not so much as itch as a tickle, prickling across her skin. “The light therapy will cleanse his body of outside agents; it will also, more than likely, move the development of his abilities forward. This machine simulated the rays of the yellow sun, tweaked with a few special Kryptonian-developed frequencies.”

“Poor Jason,” Lois shuddered, resting her head against Clark’s shoulder, burying her face in his pajama shirt. “He’s having such a hard year.” Clark rested his chin on top of her head, one of his hands rubbing along her back comfortingly.

“Life shouldn’t be this hard,” he agreed, then sighed. “I called his school while I was en route to get you, letting them know he wouldn’t be in for a few days, and I called Perry to let him know that Jason had a bad attack and we probably wouldn’t be in today.”

“What did he say to that?” Lois couldn’t help but chuckle, knowing herself and knowing Perry, he would probably assume that they were too hungover to work.

“He talked to Richard, I guess. He said to take all the time we need.”

“Good,” she sighed, wrapping her arms around Clark and clinging to him. A thought occurred to her; “Did you check yourself for any inhaled kryptonite? If somebody put it in Jason’s inhaler, somebody could be sending it airborne other places he, or you, frequent…”

Clark disengaged from her and she immediately felt bereft. Not only did his warmth leave, and it was on the chilly side despite the climate control, but that tingling that had been more pleasant the longer it had thrummed across her skin faded as well. He walked over to the next gurney over and pressed a few glowing buttons before lying down on it. After a moment, a clear, glass-like dome rotated out of the gurney so that it was over him, then white-blue light scanned him head to foot before flashing in various specific places across his abdomen. When the lights finished, a light on the side of the gurney flashed white once and the dome rotated back out of sight.

Clark got off the gurney and took her had, leading her over to the wall where a touch brought a display into view. It looked like an x-ray, only bones weren’t the only things to show up. There were many repetitions of the same image, each slide showing a different layer of him: bones, muscles, soft tissues, cartilage, organs. There were close-ups of the organs in his torso, which he touched, making the images larger and removing the full-body images.

“Not a hint of kryptonite,” Clark said, sounding relieved but not surprised. “So only Jason was exposed to the inhale-able stuff.”

“Who would do this?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. Clark knew she knew, too, and didn’t answer.

“I just want to know how he had access, who he used.”

“We’ll have to talk to his teacher, the principal, check the nurse and Mr. Chen and see if anybody besides them could’ve gotten a hold of the inhalers.”

“What if it was the nurse or Chen?”

“I hope not,” Lois couldn’t help but hold his hand a little tighter, and he wrapped his arms around her again as they walked over to stand by Jason. “He really seemed to like Mr. Chen, and I’ve met the nurse a few times before, she seemed alright to me.”

“I hate this,” Clark said vehemently.

“I do too.”

“I’m sorry,” Clark said, pulling her closer again so that he could rest his chin on her head.

“This isn’t your fault.”

“I meant for not being here, before. I don’t know how you could’ve gone through this, after he was born, when he was even smaller and more helpless, and he had so many problems…”

She held onto him a little tighter, not sure what there was to say. She was sorry he hadn’t been there, too. She’d missed him most, then. She and Richard still hadn’t known each other very well, though they weren’t strangers anymore either. Her family had been overwhelmingly supportive, as had Perry and Jimmy and all her colleagues, and yet none of that had helped to make Jason any better. As far as anybody had known, he’d been a few weeks early, but he was so frail. His little lungs had barely been able to breathe for him; he’d been whisked off into in incubator almost immediately and kept there the first night of his life outside the womb.

It had been terrifying.

She’d wanted Clark, her rock, to be there to hold her hand, who would know what to say to comfort her. Not her family, who were oppressive with their hope and their hugs, nor Richard, who was good for holding her hand, but was a nervous wreck, both because of Jason’s condition and because the General had been breathing down his neck the whole time, and that didn’t help her any. Clark wouldn’t have crowded her, but he would’ve supported her and distracted her and reassured her, as he did now. Now, he held her and was quiet; they were just there together, worrying together, knowing nothing either of them could say would make it any better.

“I hate this, too,” she whispered.

After what seemed like days but was only a few hours, the pulsing light stopped and the underwater effect on Jason’s clothes settled. The gurney beneath him glowed green and hummed for a minute, and then it powered down. Jason slept on, but Clark seemed to relax around her, reaching out and pressing the same combination of glowing buttons that he had before lying down on the other gurney. The same glass dome rotated into place, the same white-blue light show flashed, and then she followed him over to the wall again to look at the images from the scan. They looked the same, if smaller, as Clark’s from before. Again, he seemed to relax beside her.

“Not a trace of kryptonite left in him.”

“Thank God.”

Clark scrubbed tiredly at his eyes before walking over and picking his sleeping son up off the gurney, moving slowly so as not to wake him. Jason sighed and snuggled into Clark’s shoulder, his breath even and deep. Lois wanted to cry from relief, but instead she just followed Clark as he carried Jason out of the infirmary section of the Fortress toward one that was more familiar. He passed the huge bedroom chamber in which Jason had been conceived and went through the next door down. It was another bedroom, only smaller, with a smaller bed with the same silver sheets. Clark put Jason on the bed and tucked him in, kissing him on the forehead before stepping back and turning to face Lois, looking even more exhausted than she felt.

“So he’s fine now?” she had to ask, looking down at Jason, sleeping, completely oblivious. “He’ll be okay?”

“All the scans say he’s fine, but I’m sure he’s even more exhausted than we are. “Light therapy is… tiring.”

“You’ve done it before?”

“Twice, yes. Once before there was any sort of Superman, when I almost literally stumbled upon a mess of kryptonite when I was journeying through Africa, the other time shortly before I left in preparation for space travel.”

“Oh.”

They stood beside the bed for awhile, watching Jason sleep. His breathing was even, his face peaceful. Lois had the urge to wake him, but it sounded like he would desperately need the rest after the light therapy…

“Let’s go to sleep, Lois,” Clark murmured, pulling her close again; she’d begun to weave slightly as she stood beside him. “Jason will sleep for another eight hours at least, and the security systems will let us know the moment he wakes up.’

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

She kissed Jason goodnight and Clark put an arm around her shoulders, guiding her back into the other, larger bedroom.

“When I disabled the A.I.,” he explained, “I ran through all the Fortress’ protocols and programs, making sure I hadn’t disabled anything else and enhancing security.”

“I would’ve thought security would’ve been tight enough that the likes of Luthor couldn’t get in,” Lois growled, more angry that Luthor had had the audacity to try than anything else. She set her sweatshirt aside and crawled between the familiar silvery sheets, enjoying the smoother-than-silk feel of them as they whispered across her skin.

“I assumed it was,” Clark said darkly, joining her in bed. She cuddled into the crook of his arm, pressing her ear against his chest to listen to the rumble of his voice as he kept speaking. “Now it definitely is. The gap in the ceiling is the only entryway left barring attack of Kryptonian warheads, which don’t exist anymore. Security is tight to the point of redundancy, and everything is routed through a log that I can go back and check after the fact to find out what happened, exactly. When Luthor took the crystals, there was no log; there was no way to tell who took them or a way to track them or anything.”

“There’s a way to track them, now?”

“Yes. And duplicating them would be easier if I needed to. And the father crystal is even safer, locked in the vault.”

“There’s a vault?”

“I’ll give you both a tour in the morning. I don’t think you even saw the whole lot of it last time you were here.”

“We were a little busy,” she couldn’t help but smirk. Clark just chuckled, kissing her before settling into a comfortable position and holding her close as they both drifted off to sleep.

A/N: Wow, I ought to do cliff-hangers more often! That was quite a response, guys; thanks!! We have now officially reached the last planks of that annoying bridge I had to build between the beginning pre-written and the middle/end pre-written chapters I had; expect fairly regular updates from here (probably every Tuesday and Thursday, if things keep going the way I hope they will)! Thanks for hanging in here with me, I hope you're all still enjoying it.

Just to address one thing I got in the reviews that I felt was a valid point: it was just sort of assumed that since Charlotte and Richard saw Kal-El in sweats, they'd automatically make the leap to Clark being Superman; for the sake of the plot, they are too thick for that. Based off of it taking Lois so long to actually pin him down in the movies, Charlotte and Richard are going to remain more-or-less clueless for the time being. Richard still thinks Jason is actually Clark's, having not witnessed just what got Lois and Jason locked in the pantry on the Gertrude in the first place, but having seen Lois and Clark interact at the farm and whatnot. And Charlotte was panicking too much to put Clark's face and Superman's face together, especially with the former wearing the defining glasses and the latter with the defining curl. So his identity is still secure on their parts at the moment.

And you should all go read Shattered Illusions by KLynneL because I'm beta-ing it... and because it's a good story ;)