Title: Beginning to Heal
Series: Starting From Scratch 1
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Off-Screen Major Character Death
Fandom: Superman & Lois
Relationships: Past Clark Kent/Lois Lane
Tags: Canon Divergence, Dead Lois Lane, Dead Jon & Jordan Kent, Angst, Moving On
Summary: Clark hasn't had something to smile about in a long time, and he hoped for the day he could smile and mean it again.
Word Count: 4,055
Spoilers: Up Through Season 2
Author Notes: Long before the story starts, Lois dies along with the unborn twins.
Beta: ScarsLikeVelvet


Clark came inside of the house and dropped his coat onto the hook. He listened to the sounds of his mother as she moved around the kitchen. It was early in the morning, too early for Clark to be awake but not too early for his mother, who didn't sleep as much as she used to, at least not in one long stretch.

"Clark?" Martha called out, and then she appeared in the hallway. "You look tired."

"It was a long night," Clark said. He wasn't sure what he was going to end up doing.

"You look worn out."

"I'm fine." Clark walked down the hall and into the kitchen. He was hungry, and he hadn't wanted to go home to the empty brownstone.

"It's the anniversary; I'm glad you came here."

Clark sat down and waited for his mother to come over to him. He wrapped his arms around her and laid his head on her chest, listening to the beat of her heart in the normal, human way.

"I feel worn out."

"Go up to your room, get some sleep."

"Too hungry."

"I'll bring you food up there. Get showered and changed."

Clark wasn't going to fight with his mother. There wasn't a lot of fight left in him anyway.

---

"Clark Kent?" a woman asked.

Clark turned his head to look at her. He tried to place where he knew her from but couldn't. She was in a wheelchair, and it was evident that she had been through something. A look at her bones showed no issues, so it had to be neurological.

"How can I help you?"

"Are you Clark Kent?"

"Yes, I am."

"You haven't changed much at all since the funeral," the woman said before she gave a wane smile.

Lucy Lane, Lois' sister.

Lucy looked at Clark's hand. "You still wear her ring?" Lucy asked.

"She was my wife and the love of my life."

"Dad hates you, and he told me not to come to you, but you used to be really good at helping Lois with her cases. I did something stupid, and it's why I'm in this chair. Come with me? Just to the coffee shop around the corner."

"Or we can go to my place. If we are going to talk about sensitive stuff, I would rather it not be in the open."

"We can do that. I just didn't want you to feel like I was trying to get you alone to do something."

"You are Lois' sister, and while your father might hate me, I know enough about you to know what kind of woman you are."

Lucy nodded, and she laid her hands on the wheels of her chair before waving for him to lead the way.

"Are you just getting off work?" Lucy asked.

'I am. I was going to get dinner and just spend an evening vegging out in front of the TV."

"That sounds like something an old person does. You are still young. You don't go out and do anything?"

Clark shrugged. Everyone at the Daily Planet tried the same thing with him. He didn't mind group drinks out with them, but when it came to making him move on, he couldn't do it.

"I go out with friends." Clark touched his ring, and he rubbed at it, adding to the worn spot on the underside from him doing that for years. The metal wasn't of Earth, and it was stronger than any metal on Earth, so it didn't wear down as most metals did, but it did have a spot that was a different color than the rest of it.

The walk home was short and simple, Clark checked on Lucy a few times, and he waited for her to get to the stairs before he remembered that there was no ramp.

"I can pull you up, or we can go to the shop around the corner if you don't feel like being trapped in a place you can't get out of."

"No, it's fine. I am just not sure if you can get me up in there," Lucy said.

"Oh, don't worry about that. Pure farm-raised country boy here," Clark said. He waited for Lucy to turn around and get close before grabbing the handles on her wheelchair and pulling her up the stairs as gently as possible.

"I guess I always took you for some pansy, as my father liked to call you, but I should have known that Lois wasn't ever going to be happy with someone who was meek."

"It's okay; too many people do that kind of thing when it comes to me."

"My father used to respect you. Why did he stop?"

Clark backed off Lucy's wheelchair once he had her inside of the house. The place was spaced enough to get around inside of there with ease.

"I'm going to order some pizza for dinner. What do you take on yours?"

"I'm pretty easy about that. Just nothing super strong."

"Pepperoni, pineapple, onions, and green peppers?"

"Sounds awesome. I've never had it before, but I will try anything."

Clark grabbed the house phone, dialing the place he liked the best for pizza. He headed to the kitchen to find them something to drink. He didn't always keep things outside of milk and juice on hand. He didn't drink much soda. A tea pitcher was in the fridge, so he hoped Lucy liked it.

"Pizza will be here in about half an hour. They are pretty quick, and the pizza is awesome. I have milk, juice, tea, and wine."

"I can't drink wine. A few of my medications make drinking at all troublesome, even without the whole drinking and driving thing." Lucy waved at her wheelchair. "Sweet or unsweet tea?"

"Unsweet, but I have simple syrup. One of my work friends like sweet, and I don't, so I keep it on hand for him."

"Unsweet is fine with me. Need any help?"

"Not at the moment. I'll just bring the pitcher in here."

Clark escaped to the kitchen again, and he grabbed what was needed and set it down on the tray before heading back. He looked at Lucy, who was now by the mantel, looking at the pictures of Lois that were up there.

"She was so beautiful and so ready to be a mother. She wanted to correct the mistakes that our mother made with us. She saw it as a second chance. You were so doting with her cravings."

"Jalapeño pickles at three in the morning was the biggest," Clark said.

"What happened, Clark?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't mean with her and the boys. But after. When Dad just hated you so much. It's like hating a puppy. You are a reporter, and he always just said that he can't talk about it."

"I was working on something with him, and she was targeted for being Sam Lane's daughter, and he thought that I should have been there to protect her. That's all I can say." Clark picked up his glass and filled it with tea before sitting down. He left Lucy to make her own glass. "I can't talk about that, please."

"I'm sorry. You looked shocked to see me in the chair."

"I don't have contact with your father anymore. I see him having me followed on occasion; I assume it's his way of checking in with me. I wasn't aware that something had happened to you. I'm sorry, I would have been there to help."

"I've always had issues, I got most of the issues with mom leaving, and I didn't handle them in a good way. I got sucked into what I now know is a cult leader. She was charismatic, and she made me feel like she could fix me by finding the other half of me in another world and reuniting us. I got away from her after I was paralyzed, but I've found out that instead of going away, she's underground, hiding now. She's still recruiting people to her side, and it's killing them."

"Tell me everything about this woman. What is her name?"

"Ally Allston is the founder and leader of the Inverse Society. She talked me into trying to cross over and see it all, but it failed, and my spine was injured low enough that I couldn't use my legs all that much. Honestly, I don't mind it as it changed my view on life. I got to be with my father as much as possible afterward. I missed Lois in my life, and I told Dad I wanted to reach out, but he said you wanted nothing to do with us. I wasn't in a place where I could deny him. I knew, though, that you loved Lois so much."

"Did you see yourself?"

"Yes, but I saw a truth that Ally never wanted me to. I saw Superman's life there, hated by her for trying to save the world. He was in a house that was empty of anything that looked like it might be happiness. I could see images of him and what looked like a woman and kids."

"So why me?" Clark asked.

"Superman has no real interactions with anyone outside of my father since Lois' death. It was like she was the main connection, and he refused to find anyone else. If he does talk to anyone, it's you. I figure that's out of respect for your partnership with Lois. I need to find him and talk to him about her. He needs to consider her a threat."

Clark could hear no subterfuge in her voice, and she seemed like she was telling the truth.

"And your father?" Clark asked.

"He refuses. He doesn't see her as anything but a pest who has no real power, but she scares me, Clark. I stole something from her, and she's going to want it back." Lucy reached into a small pocket on the inside of her wheelchair and pulled out a pendant. Clark could tell it was powerful just from looking at it.

The pendant felt like Clark was touching a live wire, but he didn't care much about that as he debated what he would do. He looked at Lucy's face, and her eyes were on the pendant. He made his choice at the fear he saw there.

"Come with me," Clark said.

"Okay." Lucy waited for Clark to telegraph which way he was going before she turned that way and followed along behind him.

Out in the backyard, Clark listened to the brownstones around him, and there was no one in them or at least close enough to see him what he was about to do.

Turning the pendant, Clark got two of the four sides in each palm, and he started to bend it, and then it shattered; none of it cut his hands.

"CLARK!" Lucy shot forward and grabbed Clark's hand, shocked when there was no blood. "How?"

"There is a reason why Superman doesn't interact with anyone outside of me, and that's because it's easier to hide who I am when no one is talking to me. I was elsewhere when Lois was kidnapped. I was doing something for Sam, and he promised that Lois would be safe. It broke me."

Lucy looked up at Clark's face, and then she looked around. "Get inside!"

Clark laughed at the way that she was freaked out a little bit. "I need to get all of the pieces of this. Can she trace it to you stealing it?"

"Yes, if she looks hard enough, and she will. Why?"

"You are pretty vulnerable."

"I won't have my father protecting me."

"I thought that maybe a friend of mine who can get a hold of me when it's needed. He's a good man, and he can protect you."

"Did Lois know?"

Clark didn't answer until he was seated in the living room again. He picked up his tea and took a drink as Lucy got herself settled down. "Yes, she knew. I told her when I knew that I would marry her and that I wanted to be with her forever. Your father was already tapped to control me, and it was pretty easy to tell him. He wanted Lois happy, so he made it all work. He kept her happy by protecting me. Even after Lois died at his enemy's hands, he never revealed who I was. He doesn't let anyone else handle me either. He hates me for how I wasn't able to save Lois, but he hates himself more because he promised me that he would protect her."

"It was something that no one could have seen coming," Lucy said.

"This is very true. Lois had been asking for the DoD to make something that could be used in an emergency to make sure that I could get places."

"Why are you telling me all of this?"

"You are lost in this world, just like I am. Your father told me that you didn't want anything to do with me. I'm not sure what his plan was other than ensuring that you didn't get mixed up in all of this. I think about Lois every morning when I wake up." Clark touched his ring again, spinning it around on his finger. "I think about the boys every day as well."

"She wanted to be a mother so badly. I hate that someone took her from being able to do that. I wanted her to have it. We weren't on the best terms at that time, but I mourned her. We haven't seen each other since the funeral, and I'm sorry that I listened to my father."

"And I'm sorry that I listened to him as well. I feel like I might have retreated in my grief and cut off most people."

"So tell me about this friend," Lucy said.

"His name is James; Lois might have talked about him under the name Jimmy. He shed that name a few years ago."

"He's the one that was the first to photograph you, isn't he?"

"Yes, he's been the only friend I have. I haven't allowed anyone to cross over into knowing all of me."

"And you did with me."

"You are Lois' sister, Lucy." Clark looked at his ring, and he thought about it. He had been clinging to a ghost for so long.

"So why don't you invite this friend over for pizza? I don't think he'll get here before it gets here, but he can warm it up. Or you can with those eyes of yours."

"You are taking this well."

"I've known something was up with my father for a long time, and his hatred of you didn't make sense to me. This is like seeing something for the first time and understanding why your life felt just a little off. It wasn't enough to affect me; just make me aware that it was there."

"James is already on his way. He was coming over anyway, and he'll be happy with pizza."

"You weren't going to tell him not to come over when I came?"

"No. He's my sounding board on all things. I wasn't going to cut him out of this just because it was something to do with the family." Clark stood up a second before the doorbell rang, and he headed toward the door to get the pizza. He frowned before he heard Jimmy talking to the delivery guy. Clark opened the door and glared at Jimmy, who had already paid for the pizza.

"Put that frown away, Clark."

"You paid."

"Yes, I did. Now, let's get-" James cut himself off as he saw Lucy in the living room. "Ma'am."

"James, this is my sister-in-law, Lucy Lane. Lucy, this is James Olsen."

"I have heard a lot about you, Miss Lane," James said. He handed the pizza off to Clark and came over to shake Lucy's hand.

"My sister used to talk about you with a lot of respect, and Clark here trusts you."

"Oh, speaking of trust." Clark laid the pizza down, and then he ran to the bedroom to get one of the ELTs from the safe and sped back down to the living room.

Lucy had a look on her face that Clark knew well, people who had never been around him when he was like this. James' face was priceless, though, and he kept looking between the two of them.

"He just told me," Lucy said.

"I need your help, James. Lucy did something that made her a target for someone who I think might be a danger to her. I was hoping that she could live with you for a while." Clark turned to Lucy, and he handed over one of the ELTs that he had on hand. He flipped open the cover and touched the button to show her how to work it. "Press that, and as long as I'm not actively fighting someone else, I'll come for you."

"I've seen this on my father's desk at his job, and he's brought it home with him before."

"Yes, it emits a sound that I can focus on and get where it comes from with ease. It's better than yelling for me and worrying that the sound of your distress gets lost in the world of sounds."

"Thank you."

"My guest room is full of the stuff from the remodel. She can stay here tonight, and then you and I will work on clearing it tomorrow, and then she can stay with me."

"I have some James' clothes you can wear," Clark said.

"I took one of the cabs to get to the Daily Planet to talk to you. I still live with dad."

"We can get your things tomorrow from there to have enough stuff to last a while and so visit to get the rest."

"Dad's not going to be happy about this."

"Well, as soon as he was told this might be something big like that, he should have come to me so that I could check her out."

"So, who are we going to be looking into?" James asked as he opened the lid on the pizza and grabbed a slice.

Clark waved for Lucy to get a slice out next.

"Ally Allston," Clark said.

James choked on the pizza and looked at Clark and then at Lucy. "You are the woman that was nearly killed. I saw a report about it, but it was hushed, and I wasn't nearly as into the investigation stuff as I was back then."

"Yes."

"Okay, this is going to be a hell of an investigation, but I am in."

---

Clark looked at where Allston was being put into the back of a DoD SUV. He looked at Sam and could see the anger there on his face. It wasn't directed at Clark for the first time in a long time.

"Superman, a word?" Sam asked as he cocked his head toward the SUV that Sam used. It was made to where no surveillance could listen in, not even a parabolic mic. It was as safe as it could be for them to talk about things pertaining to Clark Kent. Which was rare but sometimes it was needed.

"How is Lucy doing?" Sam asked.

"She's doing okay. She's got a crush on James, and he's smitten right back. I didn't mean to matchmake, but we shall see if they keep on going. Lucy made a comment about moving in with me to make me not as stuffy. I am not sure what I feel about it."

"I can have my guys move her into your place. They won't say a thing about it. I think that it would be best for her and maybe for you. As long as it doesn't hurt you."

"I feel like I'm living my life in reverse," Clark said. He looked out the window and looked at where the clean-up from the raid on Allston's compound was ongoing. He had been there as back-up, which had been the best option as the men had been able to handle it on their own until right at the end when Allston's other self came over, and then she was pissed when one of the men got her pendant and got it to Clark. She had no way home. It had been chaos, but in the end, the other Allston had been killed, and the one from this world had been irate.

"Grief does that. You've not moved on in a very long time. You've been static, and so was I. You need someone that you can talk to that knows Lois better than Olsen does."

"I never thought I should move on but seeing Lucy has shown me that I stopped this all on my own. She could have let her injury destroy her life."

"She's a Lane, she's made of tougher stuff than most, but even we have issues. I am sorry for how I have acted. I thought I could protect my daughter better than you ever could, and my pride got her and my grandsons killed. My bosses were worried about what your change was about, and I kept it a secret. I hated you because I couldn't hate myself, but I couldn't sully Lois' memory by turning you in and making it known. I thought about it, but that would have made me not worth my daughter's memory."

"I never worried about you giving up my name. You are an honorable man. It was pure luck that put you in my path."

"I'm thinking about retiring, but then when I do, I just get this fear about who will replace me and what they will do to you. My closeness with you is well known, and they would resent that."

"What are you saying, Sam?"

"What I am saying is that until it's time for me to really give it up, I can't do it because of my mind or my physical capabilities; I'm in this spot. I'll protect you and the world for as long as I can."

"That's good. I'm glad."

"Lucy wants to have dinner. I'll talk to her about moving in with you and letting her know that I fully agree with it."

"I think it will be nice to have someone to come home with, even if it's not a partner."

"Lois told me that you never put stock in the body or gender. You fall in love with the mind. If you ever move on. I'll not hate whoever it is. I hope that you know that."

"I do know that, and I'm happy. I don't think I will, though. I don't think that I can. Even to this day, my love for Lois is part of me. I can't let anyone else in there." Clark laid his hand on the handle. He looked out. "Do you need me to stay for this?"

"No. We can handle this part. Stop by the DoD and get an ELT for Lucy."

"I gave her the spare that I have on hand for emergencies. I can wait to get another for the next time I am there."

"Okay. I just wanted to make sure she had one."

Clark could see the pain on Sam's face about it, thinking that if only Lois had one, Clark could have found her in time. He could have his family with him still and not have this gaping hole in his heart that he feared would never heal up.

"Go ahead and go. I can handle this, and if I need you, I will get a hold of you," Sam said.

Clark nodded, and he slipped out of the SUV and headed away from people to take to the skies. He circled the planet a few times before he headed home, afraid that someone besides Sam was tracking him. Lucy and James were there with what looked like homemade pasta. It had been a long time since Clark had eaten a meal made by someone who wasn't him that wasn't take-out. He inhaled and exhaled before putting on a smile, hoping that he would be able to smile for real one day.

The End

I write fanfiction for fun. It's a hobby and a stress relief. I refuse to stress over my writing. What you see is what you get. Errors, plot holes, and all. Thank you for reading my story!