TOCPart 2Ultra Woman landed on her fire escape and nudged the window to her apartment open. Her second trip to S.T.A.R. Labs had been a bust. Literally. The red Kryptonite video camera laser had actually exploded this time. She’d barely had time to grab Dr. Klein and duck and cover behind the Plexiglas shield before the debris rained down upon them. It was just the cherry she didn’t need upon the top of her sundae of a day.
Seven seconds later, she was sitting in her Superman nightshirt and schlumpy robe on her sofa, digging into a half-gallon of triple chocolate ripple with chocolate chunks ice cream.
She was just finishing the last bite when someone banged on her apartment door. “Lois! Lois! Open up,” Clark called.
“It’s not going to work, Clark. I’m no good for you anymore. You were hurt because of me,” she replied. The Newtrich sisters had tried to use Clark to get to her. They knew that Lois was Ultra Woman and had almost blown Clark up to get her to come rescue him. “Until you figure out how to get your powers back,” she went on. “I’m staying right here. Everyone will be safer that way.”
“Lois, can we please talk about this without a door between us?” Clark asked.
With a groan, she set her ice cream carton down on the coffee table and went to unlock all five locks. She opened the door a crack and returned to the couch. “I’m not changing my mind.”
Clark entered the apartment and shut the door behind him. “Lois, earlier this evening I was kidnapped by aliens and they performed these weird experiments on me, which gave my girlfriend temporary insanity.”
“You think that’s funny?” Lois asked through pressed lips.
He smiled sheepishly. “A little funny.”
She scowled at him.
“Too soon?”
She gave him such an intense look that it made his shirt steam.
Clark started fanning himself. “Okay! Okay! Too soon. You don’t have to incinerate me!”
Lois closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. “The only person who should have these powers is you, Clark,” she admitted. Her voice was rough as she held back her tears. “You know how to control them, how to control yourself.”
He sat down next to her and took her in his arms. “It’s okay.
I’m okay, Lois. You’re still getting used to them, and I’m getting used to not having them.”
“I’m no superhero, Clark,” she said, taking hold of his still-warm shirt and burying her face in his neck with her eyes still tightly closed. “If I find the Newtrich sisters, I’m going to end up on a killing spree for what they did to you.”
“No, you aren’t,” Clark whispered, and she felt him kiss the top of her head. The soft kiss was so intense she could swear she could feel it radiating over her body.
“Oh,
yes, I will. You don’t know how mad I was when I saw you sitting on that bench, tied up, and covered in sweat and blood. I just wanted to rip off their arms and hit them with ‘em,” Lois growled.
“You’d be surprised how often I feel that way,” he said. “Actually…” He paused and she heard him tap his watch. “Hey, look! It’s Tuesday.”
She would’ve glared at him if she weren’t afraid that he’d burst into flames. So, she kept her face pressed against him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Clark ran his fingers down her cheek and tilted up her chin so that she was looking him in the eye or would have been had allowed herself to open her eyes. He set his glasses down upon her nose and she slowly, hesitantly lifted her lids.
“I pretty much feel that way every week, Lois. Sometimes, every day of every week.”
“How do you stand it, Clark? How do you stand me?” she protested.
He shrugged. “You’re worth it.”
“
Claaaark. I’m serious.”
He sat up straighter. “And so am I. I’m not this perfect being, Lois. I get angry, too.”
“Yes, but when I’m mad the allied nations should be called… and that’s without superpowers,” she countered.
Clark smiled. “I love that you’re passionate.”
“This much passion shouldn’t have superpowers; someone could get hurt,” she reminded him. Her gaze darted to that scratch on his forehead he’d gotten from flying debris when she’d broken the table in the Newtrich sisters’ workshop. She ran her thumb over the scratch. “Someone did get hurt. Lots of people got hurt. All those people in… in Brazil died because of me,” she said, tapping her chest. She continued, her voice softer, “They didn’t have a chance, Clark, because Ultra Woman wasn’t good enough. Why couldn’t I have been faster?”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “A wise woman once told me that Superman can’t save everyone. Every little bit that he can do, though, is enough. He gives people hope where they didn’t have any before.”
“Ultra Woman is no Superman,” she grumbled, refusing to yield to his soft chest.
“No. No, she’s not,” he agreed. “In some ways, she’s better.”
“Ha!”
“You’re giving a whole generation of women a new role model to look up to. You’re proving not only to them, but also to a bunch of stuffy old men out there, that you don’t have to be male to be a hero.
And you’re doing it without wearing a bikini,” he reminded her.
Well, she couldn’t argue with that logic. So, she returned to a topic she could debate. “Oh, Clark, if something worse ever happened to you… if there was ever some time I couldn’t save you… I would never be able to live with myself… Who knows what I’d end up doing to the world?”
“I love you, too, honey,” he replied.
All this unconditional support and love was getting annoying. “Clark, what I’m trying to say is that I can’t live like this. It isn’t safe for anyone,” Lois said, standing up. “If we can’t reverse this… if I’m stuck like this for the rest of my life, I want you to move on. Find a nice girl who won’t hurt you, settle down, and get married. Clark, have a bucket load of those kids you want. You deserve that. I want you to be happy.”
“Lois, I
am happy with you.”
“You say that now, but can you imagine me PMSing with these powers? There won’t be enough chocolate in the world to calm me down. I’d be a danger to you
and Metropolis. I should just leave now while I still can, and become a hermit somewhere,” Lois said. She rushed into her room, put back on her Ultra Woman suit, and returned to Clark, who had barely time to blink while she was gone. She held out his glasses.
Clark took her hands in his. “Lois, I love
you, and I’ll love only you for the rest of my life. There’ll never be anyone else. So, you might as well stay here, and we’ll work through this together. If you can learn to love me without any powers…” His voice faltered.
Lois could see the sadness in his eyes as he misunderstood what she was saying. “Oh, Clark! No!” she interrupted, zipping out her window in a gust of wind.
When she returned two minutes later, Clark was sitting on her sofa. He appeared as if Cupid’s arrow had punctured his heart, instead of filling it with love. He glanced up in dazed surprise as she landed softly on the floor next to him.
“So, that’s what that’s like?” he said, his voice rough. “I’m sorry if I’ve ever flown off on you.”
Lois knelt down beside him, taking his hands in hers. “Clark, of course I still love you. If anything, I love you more now that I understand everything that you’ve taken upon your shoulders due to your powers. I’ve realized that it isn’t your abilities or the Suit that make you Superman, it’s you,” she said. She reached under her cape and brought forward the engagement ring he had offered her several months and thousands of tears earlier. She had just removed it from his desk drawer at work. “Clark Kent, will you please do me the honor of asking me to marry you?”
Clark looked down at the ring and then back up to Lois’s face. “Who’s asking? Ultra Woman or…” He lifted up her mask. “Or Lois Lane?”
“
I am.” She pulled off the mask, tossing it aside. “There is no Ultra Woman without Superman.”
They both stared at the fallen mask. The truth lay before them. There would be no Superman without Ultra Woman.
He swallowed before taking a deep breath. “Lois, would you be willing to marry this ordinary man with no powers and just an ordinary suit?” he asked, holding out the open ring box.
Lois stared at him and saw a slight shake to his hand. Her gaze traveled down to the ring. “I can’t,” she said, setting her hands over his and watched as his face fell at her words. “Because even without powers, Clark, you’re no ordinary man.” She took the ring out of the box and held it up. “But if you’re asking me to marry the most extraordinary man in the world with or without powers, my answer is ‘yes’.”
Clark eyes sparkled with unshed tears.
Lois held out her hand and he slipped the ring on her finger. “If you don’t mind a little super powers in your wife.” She hovered off the floor, took his jaw in her hands, and pressed her lips to his.
He slid his arms around her, pulling her out of the air and to his chest. She opened her mouth, and he deepened the kiss.
Every intake of breath, every murmur of pleasure, every whiff of his soap mixed with his sweat, every touch of his tongue on her tongue and on her teeth and gums and…
He pulled his face away, breathless and panting. “Wow! I’m not minding in the least.”
She growled and brought him back against her. She wasn’t finished.
Every one of her nerve endings was singing in pleasure. Never before had she felt more alive or more out of control. She
wanted Clark… all of him.
She stood up and grabbed his hand. “Come on!”
His brow furrowed. “Where?”
“I heard a news report about a thunderstorm outside of Raleigh. If we hurry, we just might make it,” Lois said, scooping Clark up so that he was cradled in her arms.
“Uh… Lois, I’m not too comfortable about this,” he said, as she stepped up to the windowsill.
“It’s dark. Nobody will see you,” she replied, floating them out the window.
“I thought that you didn’t mind me being an ordinary man,” he said as they zoomed into the clouds.
“I don’t.”
“I’m not sure I want to be struck by lightning,” Clark admitted. “On purpose.”
“It’s just a temporary fix until we can capture the Newtrich sisters, and take their red Kryptonite away from them. They must have figured out that your powers are transferable with the red Kryptonite laser and have made another one. That’s the only reason to lure me into a trap,” Lois said. “We can use their new laser to beam your powers back from my body.”
“How are we going to do that exactly?” he asked, as they left Metropolis behind them.
“You’ll distract them. I’ll take the Kryptonite.”
“Are you sure it won’t affect you?” Clark wondered. “It made me pretty apathetic last spring.”
“It doesn’t affect me. Dr. Klein showed me the Kryptonite in the video camera this afternoon and then again a few minutes ago. I haven’t been apathetic all day. The opposite in fact,” Lois announced. “I’ve been
ultra moody all day.”
Clark’s eyes widened. “Uh… Lois, do you think we could stop somewhere and discuss this?”
“We’re almost to Raleigh.”
“Lois, Dr. Friskin and I discovered that the red Kryptonite doesn’t make me apathetic; it amplifies my emotions. Maybe you’ve been ultra moody today because you were exposed to red Kryptonite and not because…”
Lois stopped and hovered just outside the storm clouds. “Are you sure you want to finish that sentence, Mr. Kent?”
Clark glanced down at the ground far below them.
“Are you saying that I’m not in
control of my emotions, Clark?” Lois roared.
“No. Never!” he exclaimed, raising his hands in self-defense before quickly taking hold of her again.
For some reason, she didn’t believe him. It was probably that extra shake to his voice when he spoke or the fact that his heart was racing a mile a minute. “Are you frightened of me, Clark? Do I scare you?”
“Lois, you’re flying us into a storm cloud in order to strike me with lightning. If this doesn’t work, you’ll be Ultra Woman forever, and I’ll be dead,” Clark reminded her.
“I trusted you with my life once. Trust me and know that I love you,” Lois said, zooming them into the clouds and over to where the lightning spiked the air. She held up her right hand with the engagement ring on it.
“Lois, no!” Clark screamed, holding more tightly onto her.
A flash of light struck her hand, passed through her body, and into his. “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it, Kent?”
***End of Part 2*** Comments
