*15*
She wants to see Jonathan and Martha. They’ve been in the hospital for eight days now, and Lois hasn’t seen them yet. In her mind’s eye, they go straight from laughingly pushing her toward that boutique to bloody and broken in that ravine Clark uncovered uncomprehendingly quickly. In her mind’s eye (in her fractured dreams), they are dying and pale on black stone ran through with yellow lines and splotched with scarlet blood, a ripped green awning serving as their shroud. In her mind’s eye, there is no rescue, no hospital, and no smiling, hugging Clark.
Martha is out of intensive care, worrying others more simply because she will not stay still, will not stop trying to get up to go see Jonathan, rather than because she is not recovering. Jonathan is still in intensive care, still watched carefully by hovering doctors, but he has not slipped back into a coma, and they tell her that he wakes up for small periods at a time, to blink at them even though he cannot yet speak. Lois thinks she would give almost anything to be able to replace her emerald and scarlet memories with these new white and gray images (anything to soak in more of Martha’s acceptance and Jonathan’s kindness; anything to know and see that not all hope is gone).
But she cannot.
“I’ve managed to spin their presence here as a one-day family outing, a novelty,” James told her bluntly over the phone, “and I’ve led people to believe you were only sighted here because you were just leaving from a visit with your sister. But if you keep showing up--not just here, but invited into the Kents’ rooms, obviously connected to Superman’s family--there won’t be any way to spin this. We’ve only just managed to get things under control, Lois--don’t mess it up.”
And James wins the argument as simply as that, because she will not steal their lives from them again, will not come back into Clark’s life only to once more publicize his secrets (as if she has no other skill in life, no other reason for being). So Lois ignores her own urgent desire and her restless energy, and she stays behind. Alone. Locked in a haven made into a prison filled with the echoes of her first meeting with James, his warnings and fears about what she might do to Clark and his family. His threats (and maybe she did not take him seriously then, but she has come to know James since, his ferocious resolve, his scary intensity, his all-consuming love for the Kents, and she will not ignore his very serious threats now) if she does bring ruin to them.
But more than the threats, she cannot ignore or forget the forgiveness offered her by Martha and Jonathan, the care and the second chance. Cannot forget the loss in Clark’s eyes, the desperation in his embraces, the gratefulness in his eyes for her simply being there.
No. If any danger is to come to this small, struggling family, it will not be because of her.
But still. She wants to see them. Wants to escape this prison of silence and light and emptiness. Wants to do something, anything, other than flip channels between news of the earthquake (though at least they’ve finally moved on from Superman’s aberrant behavior) and news of the astonishing and unexpected, all-but-overnight fall of Lex Luthor and his empire.
It had shocked her, the first time she’d heard his name. Not because she knew him and dated him and had once looked for a story (that had apparently been bigger than she even guessed at), but because she had not expected to hear the name of her city or the name of someone the old her had known. It surprised her and took her aback because that seemed another lifetime, a world lost to her forever, and the sound of their names, the image of the familiar streets and the ubiquitous LexCorp symbol and the severe features of Lex are like wispy remnants of a dream she tries in vain to remember once waking.
So she watches the news of evidence brought to light and witnesses agreeing to testify and an anonymous source working with the Metropolis police and Henderson calmly fielding press conference questions as his men move constantly in and out of LexTower behind him, and she wonders what she would have thought of all this before her article (before her Pulitzer Prize, and her accolades, and her place in history, and her nightmares).
Not that it matters. Metropolis is far away. Perry has reporters so much better suited than her to cover this particular story and make sure the Daily Planet isn’t left behind in the dust. She has her own problems, here, to handle. She has a new life to figure out how to live (and she wonders if it is like blasphemy to compare her own journey to this new world with that of tiny baby Clark’s journey from Krypton to Earth).
Besides, she can only watch so much TV. Can only bottle up her frustration and anger with their angles and stories for so long before she feels herself begin to fray at the edges. If this hiding had been necessary even just a month ago, she thinks she would have been able to stay locked away in here without losing her sanity. But it is not a month ago, and she is not quite the listless, defeated wraith she was on her arrival. Fire runs through her veins, titanium ribbons bind her bones, and she needs to do something (preferably to help Clark, but after a week of this forced inactivity, she will take anything).
It’s past noon, she is wearing a path in the carpet along the counter, and the keypad to open the elevator’s solid doors seems to be taunting her. She has been staring at it for three hours now, but she is still as far away from it as ever.
It shouldn’t be this hard to push in the code Jonathan showed her and then step inside the elevator, but then, it shouldn’t be possible for her to be in Clark’s home by invitation either, so clearly the world is full of impossibilities.
“Come on,” she whispers to herself. If Clark can come back from the abyss all on his own, then surely she should be able to enter the elevator by herself (without Jonathan’s calming, permissive presence, or his reassuring smile, or his steady direction).
In the end, it is only the memory of Perry’s gruff praise, the twinkle in his eye as he winked at her, the way he’d sent her knowing it was exactly what she needed (the memory of him sitting locked alone in his office, as wounded and beaten and immobile as she), that makes her take the handful of steps to the elevator and press in the five-digit code. The ding of the doors opening sounds as accomplished as a victory song played by a full marching band.
She doesn’t like stepping in alone. She especially doesn’t like the way the car seems to close in on her, able to press in so much more closely without Jonathan’s sturdy frame keeping her from being squashed, squeezed dry and left as a withered husk. But the elevator ride is as nothing compared to her first sight of those long, seemingly endless rows of green spreading out before her (conjuring up memories that are so bittersweet they hurt). Not quite so green, on a closer look. Not quite as lush as they should be, and dry beneath her fingers. Not quite as encouraging or as easy without Jonathan’s wisdom and knowledge bearing her up.
It is too big. Too much. How could she possibly think that she could take care of this small farm all by herself?
“You’re Lois Lane,” she whispers to herself, but where once that might have spurred her into impulsive action, now it only reminds her of how easy it is to make a terrible mistake and how much damage can be caused by one rash decision.
“There’s no one else,” she finally says, and those ribbons of strength tighten around her and enable her to take her first step.
She spent three weeks under Jonathan’s patient tutelage, and though she is still not a gardener or a farmer by any means, at least she can water the plants. She can give them moisture and care, and she can spot the weeds Jonathan warned her about, can pull them out and dispose of them where their seeds will not fall into more of the planters. She can take as much time as the plants will need (there is nothing else to do, nowhere else for her to be), and give them whatever she has in her to give (not nearly as much as once there was, but so much more than she had before coming here and learning to move on). She is no replacement for Jonathan, but she can be his stand-in (and tired or sweaty as she gets, she knows this is so much more rewarding than that article she wrote and for which she is so venerated).
She can do this. And so she does.
Her knees ache, her hands are grimy and muddy, knuckle-deep in dirt, her hair is sticking to the back of her neck, and she is quietly humming to herself when Superman descends from the sky and Clark Kent alights in front of her. Half-uprooted weeds drop from her nerveless hands. She sits back, eyes intent on him (locked to him with no key to free her and no will to find it). But he is not looking at her at all. In fact, she almost wonders if he even remembers or knows that she is there.
His gaze moves from one planter to another. Flicks to the stains darkening the pathway where Lois spilt out water before figuring out the sprinklers. Rests briefly on the growing (but now, looking at it through his eyes, seemingly measly) pile of dying weeds. Moves again through the maze of growing things. His hands fondle the heads of the plants closest to him, straining up to receive his all but reverential touch.
He does not look at her, but Lois cannot look at anything but him. Clark Kent. Glasses, flannel shirt, jeans, tousled hair, and wide-eyed, awed expression. It feels like a vicious kick to her stomach. It feels like a hand has just astonishingly let go of its fatal grasp on her throat and let her take a huge, life-giving gasp of air. It feels like a dagger in her heart and an infusion to her soul. It is a reminder of all she’s done wrong and a sense of homecoming so overwhelming she feels lightheaded, dizzy, his image wavering between the sparks in her vision.
(And she cannot help but wonder, tentatively, if this--this view, this image, this realization of just how much Clark means to her--is what she missed on their trip to Smallville; if this is what she blindly overlooked in favor of becoming Trask’s captive in pursuit of a story she should never have gotten.)
He begins to move toward her (she wants to rise to her feet). His eyes finally fall, and rest, upon her (she cannot move). He smiles, slowly, shyly, wonderingly (her heart moves for her in a startling, dizzying leap toward her throat).
“Lois,” he whispers, and his eyes are so wide she feels as if he will draw all of her in (and she will not struggle).
He is not angry. He is not offended. He is not hurt, or disbelieving, or suspicious, or any of the other things she thought he might be (the envisioning of which made her pace and glare uselessly at the elevator for so very long). He seems, instead, to be…awed (and that is almost worse).
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out (because it is not right for him to think her better than she is). “I just…I didn’t--”
“Dad will be so happy,” Clark interrupts her, as if he did not hear her apology. There is a sheen in his eyes, a shaft of sunlight sparkling there (a tiny measure of tears hidden there beneath its brilliant camouflage). “He hates when he loses crops.”
She looks around helplessly. It suddenly seems as if she hasn’t done nearly enough. “I don’t know how to do much,” she says. And then she looks back into Clark’s shining eyes, and feels, inexplicably, a swell of confidence fill her to overflowing. So she smiles at him, reassuringly, and finishes, “But it’s better than nothing. I’ve made sure only to do what he showed me. I think there are a few more different types of weeds, but I didn’t want to pull them up without knowing for sure.”
Clark’s smile grows. When he kneels next to her, warm and solid and so close, Lois thinks she will be the first person to actually spontaneously combust. “Here,” he says, still so softly, as if he does not want to break this spell, does not want to let the world know where they are (and he shouldn’t be here, out in the open where he can be so easily spotted and their sanctuary so carelessly destroyed, but Lois doesn’t care, because he should be able to stand out here in the sunlight).
Lois’s breaths come shallow and quick as he shows her which plants are weeds and which are food, which can be uprooted and which should be cared for. He is gentle, strong, confident, humble (power filling him to overflowing, but held back in a dark well he taps only sparingly and only at need), so at home in this task that Clark Kent can do so much better than Superman. It is hard to focus on the lessons he is teaching her when he is so near, but this is important for her to learn (and she is willing to do anything to keep that small smile lightening his features), so she focuses her newfound resolve on the task.
Gradually, eventually, she realizes he has stopped talking; his hands have fallen to sift through the weeds they’ve pulled (together, partners again, even if only in a small way). The silence is rich and golden, full and lush, but Lois is afraid it will let cries for help (for Superman rather than Clark) filter through to shatter the moment. So she summons up a smile (as soft as his, and just as awed) and says, “Thank you. I’ll…I’ll know what to do now.”
“Lois.” The odd, shifting note in his voice makes her look up and meet his intent gaze. His hand is warm, almost too hot except that it sends a cooling shiver through her, as he reaches out and places it over her dirt-stained fingers. “Thank you for this. I’m…I’m glad you’re here.”
Words abandon her. Thought flees. Coherence vanishes. All she can do is stare at him, feel the potent quality of his touch, hope this moment never ends (hope he doesn’t let her go and send her crashing back down to the ground he’s lifted her from so far below).
But then, as always, Superman is needed.
His head cocks, his attention shifts, and a wall slides down behind his eyes. Or maybe it is not a wall; maybe it is armor, a mask designed to shield him from the expectations of the world (a prison designed to keep all the wants and wishes and needs of Clark locked away inside). Regardless, it slides between them, destroying the moment, the rapport, the connection (the earnestness, the awe, the openness). It takes the impossibility of almost-partners, almost-friends, and restores them to the reality of superhero and reporter, victim and criminal (god and mortal).
But.
He pauses. Hesitates in a way he hasn’t since this new age of the world. Looks at her as if wanting to explain.
“You have to go,” she says so he will not have to. And she gives him an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to only pull up the ones you showed me.”
There’s an answering smile that wants to come out (strains past the bars of its armored prison), but Superman, even with the glasses and flannel, cannot allow it release (cannot give his own soul freedom when so many still depend on him). “I’ll see you later,” he says.
And then he’s gone. The whisper of his presence, though, still breezes its gentle way along her cheek, cooling her and stirring her hair.
Strangely, when she turns back to this job she has set herself (this penance that has coaxed a smile from him), she does not feel alone. She does not feel defeated. She feels strong, borne up by that glimpse of Clark. By his touch.
By his words.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Glad. That she is here. In his haven, his refuge, the closest thing he has to a home.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Glad. Happy. That is more than acceptance, or resignation, or forced concession. Most of all, it is more than (better than) contentment.
It is forgiveness. Pure, simple, unadorned forgiveness.
It is a new beginning.
She does not want to go in. Does not want to stop weeding and watering and wondering (about impossible things). Doesn’t want to move from this garden in case she can never get this feeling of hope back.
But finally, when dusk shadows turn green to ebony and muddy fingers grow stiff and chilled, Lois regretfully sets aside Jonathan’s tools and heads back inside. The door opens at her touch. The elevator does not refuse her entrance. The suite looks just as it did before, still there (not packed away and moved and hidden while her guard was dropped). It is still quiet, still too bright, but it is not so scary as she ducks into the bathroom and showers, emerging smelling just as she did in Metropolis but feeling (again, always, never again to revert back to the Lois Lane the world knows her as) like a completely new person.
It’s late enough, and she’s tired enough, that after eating a few bites of toast, she thinks she should probably go to bed. But she is not ready for this day to be over (for a new bright, silent day to begin as if this one never was), so instead she turns off most of the lights, sits on the couch in the living area, and sets her eyes to the dark crack at the bottom of Clark’s locked door.
Because she forgot to pass along James’s message. Because she wants Clark to realize there are reasons to come back. Because he said he’d see her later, and no matter how much the rest of the world needs him (how much his parents might wish to receive a visit from him), she hopes he meant tonight.
She’s dozing when she feels something warm draped over her. Instinctively, she burrows into it, before her half-opened eyes see the form standing over her, the red cape backlit by the starlight behind him, and she sits upright, his name spilling from her lips.
Clark’s immediate smile at the sound of his name (Clark, the name of something extinct and mythical and lovely) is white and bright in the darkness, but it doesn’t last nearly long enough. “You should be in bed,” he says. “Isn’t your room comfortable enough?”
“Yes.” She almost blushes before remembering that she does have a reason (an excuse) for waiting up for him. “James wanted me to tell you something, but I forgot. He said he’d talk to the lawyers in Metropolis and you don’t have to worry about it.”
The diffused city lights from the windows half circling the room aren’t much for illumination, but they’re more than enough to showcase the tension suddenly crowding out any memory of that earlier bright smile. He sinks to the couch beside her, warming her with his proximity, his brow furrowed as he studies her. “Did…is that all he said?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t…you didn’t ask him what the lawyers were for?”
Lois frowns at him, not sure whether to reiterate her promise that she is not here to investigate him or ask him, now, what is behind this (apparently secretive) message. “I assumed he meant the Foundation’s lawyers. Why?”
Clark’s sigh is so deep it seems to come up from the very depths of his being. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, Lois. I’m sure you’ve seen the news about Luthor?”
“Yes,” she says slowly, wondering at the cold note in his voice that appears on Lex Luthor’s name and then fades away just as quickly.
He peers more closely at her, as if puzzled by her reaction, and when he speaks, he sounds like a man she thought she’d killed irrevocably. “Well, I’m the source for their investigation. I know you…that there was something between you two, but he isn’t what you thought. But I don’t want you to feel bad. I mean, as Superman, I knew things about Luthor no one else would--”
“Clark,” she interrupts him, and (boldly) places a hand on his arm. Only for an instant, but it cuts off his voice as easily as she did once before with an article (not a comparison she likes, and she shivers and tries to unthink it). “It sounds like Lex Luthor is a terrible criminal, maybe even a monster. If you knew that, then of course you had to stop him. I have no idea how you’ve found the time with everything else you do, of course, but I’m still glad that you did it. Glad,” she adds in a softer voice, looking away, “that you have not abandoned Metropolis entirely.”
“Why would I?” he asks, and he tilts his head to look at her. Curiously, he seems almost relieved, almost happy, as he gives her the suggestion of a smile. “Metropolis was the first to accept me, the first to make me realize that being an alien did not mean I would be hunted and locked away and dissected.”
Lois stares at him, gaping and trying not to show it. Even after Trask, even after Smallville, even after Jonathan’s rising and falling voice in her ear, she has never realized (perhaps never let herself realize) just what fears a young Clark might have grown up with.
“And,” he says, almost casually, “I had time for it because I made time. For a while, there wasn’t much that I thought more important than taking Luthor down. He had some plans involving…someone I know. Plans I could not bear to see carried out.”
And now she smiles, because how can he think he is only Superman when there is so much Clark concern and protectiveness in his voice? “And now they are safe, thanks to you. I’m a little sorry I never got the story on Luthor that I wanted, but not nearly sorry enough to regret being here.”
In return for that (daring) admission, she gets another hint of his smile. “I’m a little sorry not to be writing the story of his downfall too.”
A searing pang of guilt hits low and hard and fast, and to distract them both from it (to make sure he does not remember who he is sitting with and smiling at), Lois reaches out and touches him again (because she cannot quite help herself, and because she thinks he needs a hint of human contact).
“How are your parents doing?” she asks when the mood eases, dispersed by the sound of the air conditioner cycling back on.
It’s the right question to ask. It makes him relax and allows another white smile to flash through the darkness. “Mom’s going to be able to be discharged in not too long, I think. She’ll need physical therapy, but she’s already working out her own regimen. I think she’s determined to be able to do everything for Dad that…” His voice goes hoarse and trails off before he shakes his head and forces himself to finish. “That he might not be able to do.”
“And how is Jonathan doing?” she manages to ask, because he’s smiling and even though he’s tired, he’s not wrecked, so she’s fairly certain the answer won’t be a bad one (won’t be a catastrophe on top of everything else).
He sobers slightly, but does not lose the shimmer to his eyes. “He still can’t stay awake for longer than a half hour or so at a time, but the doctors say he’s stabilizing. They mentioned maybe being able to move him out of intensive care in a few days--nothing definite, but it’s more hope than they’ve let themselves show me before. I think…I think he might actually pull through this.”
“He will,” Lois says encouragingly.
Clark nods, still somber. His shoulders are slumped, his eyes shadowed; she sees his silhouette straighten, resettling his burden. He gives her a slight smile, though it doesn’t shine white in the darkness, shadow on shadows. “What about you, Lois? Aside from picking up farming, how many award-winning articles have you written today?”
Lois freezes, statue-still (and if it were anyone but Clark, she would think he was trying to hurt her; trying, and succeeding). “Clark,” she says, softly. Mournfully (because she thought they were past this, thought he was giving her the benefit of the doubt and she was doing her best to live up to that). “I promised--I’m not writing any stories on you. I’m only here--”
“I know,” he says. Promises. His own reminder for them both, spoken through another shadowed smile. “But the best investigative reporter in the world doesn’t take vacations. In fact, if I recall correctly, she didn’t even take weekends.”
He’s teasing her. His tone is light and free. His eyes are sparkling with reflected light. His mouth is tilted in the suggestion of a smile. He’s teasing (accepting her just as his family did in the park on that ill-fated day), and she wishes she could reply in kind, but the hurt is too real, the wound too deep. He’s been bleeding out since she first saw him again; this is the first time she realizes she’s been bleeding out too, only she’s hid her wound better than he has.
“Clark,” she says. But then trails off, because it’s one thing to think that his Secret was outed by the best reporter in the world--quite another to realize he’d been discovered and unmasked and destroyed by a has-been nobody whose career ended before she turned thirty.
“I’m sorry,” Clark says, and unbelievably, he sounds apologetic, misreading her numb silence. “I did keep up with the Daily Planet for a while--I had it delivered by mail. But we were tracked down twice that way, so I had to stop getting it, and I’m afraid that I haven’t…I haven’t had a chance to stop by anywhere and pick up a copy in quite a while.”
Lois stares at him. It’s hard to breathe. “You…you don’t have to keep reading the Daily Planet. Not after…not now.”
“I know.” He looks away. Quiet. Grave. Wistful. “But…sometimes I miss reading your articles. Miss getting to edit them over your shoulder.”
“Yeah, well.” Lois swallows hard and wishes the darkness were deeper so she could sink into it. “You don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“They can’t fire me,” she says. It’s her turn to avoid his focused, curious gaze. “So it doesn’t really matter, but…I haven’t written for a long time.”
He’s silent, but he’s listening (just like he always did, to complaints about traffic and coffee or family secrets spilled out like it didn’t matter), and so Lois feels the words pulled out of her. “I turn in articles, but they’re…they’re not real stories, not anywhere near Kerth-worthy, or even Daily Planet-worthy. I think…” She wipes away the tears wetting her eyelashes, making her eyes heavy, hard to keep open. “I think I lost whatever I used to have. Lost the ability when…”
But she can’t finish that. They both know the end of that sentence anyway, both know what happened (and who was to blame) to make her a has-been and him a caricature. But she hopes that only she knows about the nightmares, the dreams that wake her shuddering and sweating and hyperventilating in the night. Dreams of lives destroyed with no more than a keystroke, real people’s names erased as soon as she writes them down. Dreams of people turned into ghosts on the newspaper page and the life drained from her as she gathers trophies for her destructive articles, all stacked up in her apartment and gathering dust.
“Oh, Lois,” Clark says, and he sounds truly compassionate (as if he understands what it is to lose something so fundamental, and once more peppermint chokes her as she realizes just how fully he can understand). His hand is warm and heavy on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
Lois turns her face into the side of the couch and shrinks down into the blanket he draped over her, pretending she can hide her tears from him. “I wish you would stop doing that.”
He draws his hand away as if burned; she doesn’t need to open her eyes to see the hurt, stilted look on his face. “I--”
She reaches out blindly and grabs hold of his hand. “Stop being sorry for things that should make you happy, or at least vengefully satisfied,” she clarifies. “Stop forgiving me instead of hating me.”
“Oh,” he says, and out of every reaction he could have given, she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised to hear a laugh in his voice as he squeezes her hand lightly. He can squeeze coal hard enough to turn it into diamonds, she finds herself thinking, but he holds her hand with just enough pressure to make her feel warmed all the way through. Or maybe there isn’t a difference (maybe he’s gradually turning her into something worthwhile and valuable and beautiful with no more than slight hints of pressure).
“I’m sorry,” Clark says again, but this time, he’s teasing her. “I’ll try to be more vindictive from now on.”
“Do that,” Lois agrees. She’s smiling (her lashes are still wet, but no longer heavy), and that almost makes her want to cry even harder (at how he can turn something so hurtful and damaging into a reason to smile). “I’d appreciate it.”
“Then I’ll work on it.”
Her lips twitch again, and she relaxes back into the couch, suddenly aware of how tired and sore she is from her unaccustomed physical labor. She doesn’t want to look at him (in case he looks into her eyes and remembers, or learns, how to be vindictive after all), so she keeps her eyes shut. “Liar,” she whispers, and is glad she did when the sound of his chuckle resonates through the room.
“Here.” Before she realizes what he means to do, Clark stands and bends and scoops her into his arms, cradles her closely to him as if he’s never carried so precious a burden. She is not quite sure how, cannot really explain it, but he makes her feel as if she is appreciated, valued, respected. Cherished. He makes her feel as if he can think of nothing better to do with his superhuman strength than to use it to carry her gently into her bedroom (hers, no one else’s, not ever again, because she has no plans to leave him). Lois cannot explain him--she wrote an article claiming she could, claiming that she had stripped him of all falsehoods and evasions to reveal the naked truth.
But she’d lied. (The biggest article of her career, with a Pulitzer Prize to serve as a landmark for it, and it is all wrong).
He’s inexplicable. He’s incomprehensible. He’s unknowable. Soot-stained, salt-marked, blood-touched, but still smelling of sky and wind and rain, as if he is composed of the elements themselves. Wounded and worried and weary, but still emanating only strength and compassion and gentleness. Man of steel, but when her fingertips wrap around the curve of his neck (when she nuzzles her nose closer into him), he shivers, a sound soft and delicate and unbelievably invigorating.
She cannot understand him, but she doesn’t need to understand him to love him.
(And a deep foreboding hums through her like distant cannon fire, like heavy drums, at the confession, the admission, the realization that this, after all, is why she came all this way to find him.)
“This isn’t exactly being vindictive,” she tells him, and she means her tone to come out chiding, but instead it sounds entirely too awed.
Clarks lays her down on her bed, and he can fly halfway around the world in seconds, but he is infinitely slow setting her down, his touch lingering. “Of course it is,” he whispers, somehow able to keep the teasing mood. “Banishing Lois Lane from her self-appointed vigil to get some sleep? That’s about as vindictive as it gets.”
“You’re right. This means war, Kent,” she says, but it’s not a threat.
“Bring it on,” he replies, and then he pauses. Another hesitation. Another meaning-laden gaze. She cannot see him except as a silhouette, but she knows he can see her, and she wonders suddenly (with a burning longing to know instead of just fear) what he sees when he looks at her. What he thinks of her. What future he would want with her if he were not trapped on every side by the life she’s left to him.
She thinks he swallows. Thinks his hands fist at her side. And then he leans forward, large and looming and not frightening at all, and he kisses her cheek. “Good night,” he breathes, a caress of air that has her eyes sliding closed to hide whatever he might see that no one else can.
“Good night, Clark,” she replies, soundlessly except that he can hear even her heartbeat (galloping and elated and tripping around her ribcage).
Her hand rises as if to stop him when he stands and takes a step back. But he does not take that pause to look back at her (as if he cannot stand to be here any longer; as if he fears her reaction; as if he already regrets this night). He slips away and Lois is left behind. Alone in the quiet. Only…Clark’s presence still lingers in the room (a ghost come to haunt her every waking moment, never to fade away or leave her), and so she does not feel alone at all.
*
