*23*
“My name is not Clark Kent.”
The first words Superman has spoken to the press in months, and they are a lie. It isn’t even an equivocation, or an evasion, or a half-truth. It is a flat-out, no-holds-barred lie.
Once, that would have enflamed Lois. Once, it would have made her narrow her eyes and feel her heart beat faster and busy her mind with questions and follow-up investigations and an endless desire to know the truth.
Now, it makes her weak and boneless with relief. It makes her jaw drop and her heart stop and her mind think of nothing but overpowering, overwhelming relief. Because maybe she has not ruined everything, and maybe there is a way to come back from this, and maybe Clark Kent can still live. Maybe he will not be a ghost forever, but a real live man, with beating heart and growing dreams and living reality.
Maybe she is not a murderer, after all.
It’s a simple story that Superman tells the world, standing on that podium with the hundreds of reporters and the dozens of microphones and the sea of lights in his face (a face that looks, somehow, off, different lines and shadows and angles to make it not quite familiar). He tells them that he knew Jason Trask and Bureau 39 would come after him, would stop at nothing to tear him down and destroy him, would keep coming until he was dead. He tells them that since they had Kryptonite (and this is where she feels a surge of anger, of irritation, that he reveals his weakness to all, as if it doesn’t matter or as if he is still invulnerable), he could not face them alone without risking being turned against humanity, without risking turning against the very people he has sworn himself to protect.
And then he spins a tale that paints Clark Kent as the hero (and in this ocean of lies, she is so glad there is a tiny island of truth amidst it). The brave friend who came to Superman and volunteered his life, his safety, his future on the gamble that he could draw out Bureau 39. A living, breathing Trojan horse, a target for the Kryptonite, because after all, Clark Kent is only human and what would it matter if he were to be hit with a radioactive rock from an alien world? So Clark Kent volunteered to pretend to be Superman, and Superman protested, and Clark insisted, and finally they hammered out a plan to make sure that Clark and his family would be protected, guarded at all times by Superman, who would remain silent so that, if Clark were to be forced to speak, no one would notice the differences in their voices.
It’s a fairy tale. A nice, warm little story of heroism and friendship and loyalty and a battle waged against all the odds, and a happy ending where the hero can go back to his safe little life and the god can return to his home in the skies and all the loose ends are tied up, all the villains dead or locked away, and the book can finally be closed with a satisfied thump.
When Superman finishes telling the story (in a voice that does sound deeper, slower, with inflections just ever so slightly off), he steps aside and lets Clark move forward. Clark doesn’t look at the cameras like Superman. He doesn’t stand there as if he owns the stage. He fidgets, and he looks down at notes in his hands, and he leans against the podium as if it is all that holds him up (a man who didn’t fully understand what he was getting into when he volunteered himself for such a dangerous mission but is now relieved down to the very depths of his being that he has come out of it safe and alive; a man who hates lying and is now having to tell a lie bigger than any he has before voiced, and all for what he would have once seen as selfish reasons, and Lois cannot figure out what magic James worked to convince him to take this wonderful, dangerous step).
“I’m just…so glad that Superman is safe and that I can finally go back to my life,” Clark Kent (who is not different in any way, but just as she remembers him in every line and angle of his face, every nuance of his voice) concludes.
It’s interesting, Lois thinks, standing alone amidst the mob of reporters glued to the television while this press conference (this storytelling session) unfolds. It’s interesting that Superman lies, and Clark Kent stands there and tells the truth (the equivocations, the evasions, the half-lies, in a voice that is infinitely familiar). He does not lie, and Superman does not sound like Clark, and maybe Clark (Clark Kent, Superman, the strange hybrid of them both, the man she has come to know and love and leave behind because there was no other choice) does not lie at all in this day’s proceedings. Maybe he is only an accomplice to the lie, standing there and letting his presence serve as proof for the lies this other…thing, this body double or hologram or robot or magical apparition…spills out all around him. He is keeping his hands clean even while he swims in a river of deceit, and Lois wants to weep (again, always, she does not think there will ever come a day where she does not want to weep for what her actions have wrought) because this is her fault, and more than anything, she wishes that she could have been there for him, to tell the lies and shine the reflective mirrors and provide the distractions so that he did not have to get so deep into the lies himself. So that he could remain innocent and clean and honest and good. She would have taken that role on herself, would have gladly swam though sewers and swamps and Hell itself for him.
But it is too late for that.
“Can you believe it?” Perry asks her, when James steps forward and puts forward the paper proof (forged, she is sure, and wonders just how many people there are behind the scenes of this act) and reassures the people that the Superman Foundation will release a press statement with the full story and all the details (more lies Clark will not have to utter himself), and closes by saying he knows everyone will be glad to have their Superman back as he once was and how relieved Clark and his family will be that the terrible, worthwhile ordeal is over.
“Believe it?” Lois repeats numbly, because it is hard to shake herself free of a good story (because it is hard to come face to face, even so remotely, with Clark again, especially two of them, so very different and yet so much the same).
“Yeah,” Perry says, and he is looking straight at her, intently, compassionately. His hand is on her elbow, holding her upright and steady, and somehow they’re in his office where they are shielded from the rest of the bullpen (and she knows everyone will be thinking that she is being questioned about how much she knew of this affair). “Quite a story, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she says, and finally she can think again. Can think and move and talk, and everything in her boils down to one conclusion: Clark Kent is back. He is back, and he wants his life back, and a part of that life is the Daily Planet. “I guess we didn’t kill anyone after all, Perry.”
Perry meets her gaze, and his is so sad, so resigned, that her heart turns to ash in her chest. “Didn’t we?” he mutters, and he hugs her as if he knows what she has spent all morning writing. Hugs her as if he thinks he will never see her again. Hugs her as if he has finally realized that there is no more Lois Lane left.
*
She hands in her resignation the next morning (she didn’t have the heart to do it to Perry the same day, not after that hug and the tears he hadn’t been able to hide when he drew back). For a while, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’ll have to find something soon (her apartment will not pay for itself), but for now, she lets herself drift. She walks through the park and sits on benches and listens to people tell and retell the story of Superman and his mortal friend. It gets bigger and bigger, better, broader, until all the details have blurred and dulled, and that is when Lois knows that it has worked. They have accepted this story into their public consciousness, and maybe there will be people out there who know that Superman looks too similar to Clark, that their story doesn’t quite make sense, that it is just a bit too coincidental, but the general public, the people on the streets, the people that will look Clark Kent in the eye and shake his hand and invite him out to a ballgame--they will believe it. Because it is a good story and because it captures their imagination and because they do not want to go back to the world they had before Superman was silenced and Clark Kent was forced to skulk away into the shadows.
Sometimes she goes to see Perry, but never in the newsroom (she does not dare risk seeing anyone familiar there). They talk about this and that, and look at each other sadly, and she is glad that she still has him in her life, but it is not the same for all that they pretend it is.
Her parents call, and Lucy, and Lois talks to them, sparingly with her mom, awkwardly with her dad, tentatively with Lucy (because it would be nice to have someone she can talk to about everything, but she will not forget the sacred trust James extended to her and so there are secrets she will never tell even to her sister).
Eventually, three weeks after she left the Daily Planet for the last time (two weeks after Perry tells her, short and to the point before changing the subject entirely, that Clark Kent reapplied for a position in the Daily Planet newsroom), she gets a call from the Superman Foundation.
“We’ve been going over your work of the last few months, Ms. Lane,” the woman says, her voice polite and professional, “and you have quite a few pieces that interest us.”
“I do?” she asks, stupidly, because she does not remember writing anything outstanding for almost a year now.
“Yes. The pieces on the retirement home con and the adopted children being reunited with their birth parents are, specifically, the ones that caught our interest. We were wondering if you’d be interested in coming in for a job interview.”
Lois stares at the phone a moment before putting it back to her ear. This seems…surreal, even more so than Clark Kent and Superman standing right next to each other on a stage. “What?” she finally manages to say.
“The Superman Foundation is very much behind drawing attention to cases that need help. We like to raise public awareness of troubling situations and encourage ordinary people to help. But to do that, we need people--investigative writers--who can find those cases and bring them to light. Would you be interested in a position like that?”
“You do know who I am, right?” asks Lois (because this is the wrong number, or a prank, or a cruel joke; it cannot be real, cannot be for her). “I’m Lois Lane. I’m the woman who wrote the article that made Superman’s life more difficult than it had to be.”
The woman chuckles over the phone (as if she realizes how delicately Lois phrased that; as if she does not care what Clark and his family went through thanks to Lois Lane). “I assure you, Ms. Lane, we’ve done our research. We also know that you are no longer affiliated with the Daily Planet, and thought this might be the perfect time to extend an offer. Would you be interested in taking the interview?”
And she cannot, in that moment, think of a strong enough reason to make herself say no. So she says yes, and she writes down the date and time and floor number even though they are engraved into her skull with blazing hope and purpose and meaning. And as soon as she hangs the phone up, she wonders if she has made a mistake.
She wonders if she is being selfish again.
She wonders if Clark knows that his company is calling her and offering her a new life on a silver platter.
But more than that, she wonders how they knew she was about to go crazy sitting in her apartment, wandering aimlessly through city streets, doing nothing, having nowhere to go and no one to see and no reason to get up in the mornings. She wonders how they knew that she is down to her last dollars and her last thread of sanity and her last ounce of courage.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, just in case Clark ever listens for her voice. But she cannot be strong and noble and selfless anymore, not until she at least attends the interview. She cannot keep living a half-life forever in penance for a crime that has been mitigated.
So she will be brave and selfish and greedy, and she will go to this interview. Maybe she will be more selfless tomorrow. Maybe she will be able to say no. Maybe she will be able to see the dark catch to this bright opportunity to help people in a way that will not harm Clark.
Maybe. Or maybe she will finally be able to find a new place for herself.
Maybe she will be able to spin her own fairy tale story too.
*
The woman from the lobby of the Superman Foundation escorts her to the fifteenth floor, leads her down a maze of hallways, past closed doors and purposeful people striding along with files in their hands. She smiles when she stops before a door, pushes it open for her, and says, “Good luck.”
Lois smiles back stiffly (wonders why all these people working in a place emblazoned with his symbol are so nice and polite and kind to her), and enters the office. She has no time to notice more than the basic facts that it is small and cramped and doesn’t have much of a view, before the man behind the desk stands to greet her with a familiar (but oh so strange, so incomprehensible) smile.
“Hello, Lois,” James says.
She has been sleeping again, has finally managed to move past her nightmares, and it has been weeks since she has felt the blurring between reality and dream, but she finds herself wondering, once again, if she is asleep and dreaming this. Because he is well (he is alive) and he is here and she did not think she would ever see him again.
“James!” she exclaims (the name comes easily now, after cells and torture and Trask looming over them and James trying to help her). She has a dozen questions, but she has lost the knack of asking them, and so they spill out of her in a jumbled mess. “But…why are you--did I come to the right--what are you doing here?”
He grins his old Jimmy grin, the one she hasn’t seen in so long. The one she turned into an older, wiser, more cynical version. The one that shouldn’t be here, in this room, after how they parted and everything that has happened in the interim. “Yes, it’s me,” he says dryly, coming around the desk. His suit jacket is draped over the back of his chair, and his tie is nearly completely undone, but he still looks completely grown up. “This is my office, you did come to the right place, and I’m here to give you your interview. I think that’s all of them.”
“My interview?” She feels, suddenly, a hot rush of guilt flood her system, as if she’s done something wrong. And embarrassed, as if she was trying to pull something over on him, trying to sneak in and take something not for her before anyone could stop her. “I didn’t come here to try to get back into your lives, or to ruin anything,” she blurts out. “They…they called me about a job, and--”
“Yes, I know,” he interrupts, calm and collected and so healthy that she wants to hug him. “I told them to.”
She gapes at him. “You…told them to. But…why?”
“You left the Daily Planet.”
It is not an answer, merely an observation, but she is tired of making a fool of herself (tired of having it pounded in over and over again just how far behind she’s been left and how out of the loop she is), so she closes her mouth over all the anxious questions. James smiles, and offers her a seat--not at the desk, but at a tiny table squeezed into the corner beside a counter with a fridge and a coffee-maker and some basic cups and condiments.
“Tea?” he asks, and she nods dumbly. When he sets a glass of iced tea in front of her--when he sits down across from her with a steaming cup of coffee--she is hit with a burst of déjà vu so strong it feels like a literal attack.
He is doing this on purpose. Recreating their meeting at the diner all those months ago, before broken silence and gardens and earthquakes. Before board games and almost kisses and confusing rooftop conversations. He is letting her redo this meeting.
He is giving her another chance.
Lois is abruptly and completely petrified. The last time she did this, she was motivated by all the wrong reasons and sick with the strain and the tension of lying to herself, confused and lost and afraid to look in the mirror. She is better now (content, she thinks with a bitter hint of irony), but she still sees a woman she doesn’t know when she looks into her reflection and she is not lying to herself, but she still wants to. And she does not know, anymore, if her motives are the right ones.
But now, knowing how tenuous this opportunity is (knowing just how much James’s respect matters), she wants this. Wants it so fiercely, so completely, that it burns inside her, a crackling, roaring fire filling her with lightning and lava, steel and titanium.
(But wanting something and getting it are two entirely different things.)
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she finally says, when he does not speak (waits for her, this time, to give the cues and choose the script). “I was worried about you. Both your arms are okay?”
He nods and stretches them out in front of him to demonstrate. “Still a few weeks of physical therapy left, but mostly good as new.”
“Well,” she says lamely when he adds nothing more, going back to his coffee as if that is all that needs to be said. “I’m glad.”
The silence builds. Builds. Builds, until Lois feels thin streams of annoyance whisper through those flames inside her. She is trying, is doing everything she can, but James only sits there and sips his coffee and watches her. Waiting. Studying. Looking for something she cannot figure out (because surely there is nothing left in her worth seeing).
“You didn’t tell Clark I was here, did you?” she asks, fear feathering the edges of her voice.
His expression is level over the rim of his plain coffee mug. “Do you not want him to know?”
Lois sighs. “You have the disturbing tendency of answering questions with a question.”
He smirks at her, as if he can’t quite help himself (as if the part is slipping to reveal a bit of the man beneath). “I’m a curious man.”
“You’re a secretive man,” she corrects (almost sadly; very proudly).
“Comes with the territory.”
Pain, needle thin and blade sharp, strikes through her, damping the urgency of those flames, turning them into a captured, steadily burning beacon, keeping her warm but tamped down to her own desires. Because he is still at Clark’s side, still trusted, and she is still on the outside looking in--but it is for the best, she reminds herself. It is for the best, and this time, at least, it was partially her own decision (and this decision was made for the right reasons).
She has nothing to say in reply to that, but she cannot stand the silence, so she changes the subject (or maybe she doesn’t; maybe she only dances around the subject, outlining it, profiling it so that she does not betray anything). “I saw the press conference,” she says, cautiously. “I’m…I’m glad everything’s been cleared up.”
James nods. He is back to studying her closely. She does not understand the tiny smile playing along the edges of his mouth. “Why did you leave the Daily Planet?” he asks, taking her aback.
Right. The interview. The job. The real reason they are here. Apparently, he is done playing his game with her. (She wonders if that means she’s already disappointed him.)
Struggling to claw her way back to the familiar territory of job interviews (except it is not familiar; she has never had to have one since college when she started interning at the Planet), she stammers, “It…it wasn’t the right fit for me anymore.”
He only stares at her, waiting (for a more she doesn’t know she has in her to give).
“Because I’m not that person--that reporter--anymore. I can’t--no, I won’t--write exposés or big news stories anymore.” She exhales, trying to put into words what she has not even allowed herself to face yet. “I want to help people, quietly but with long-lasting effects, and this position here seems like a good way of doing that. The Daily Planet wasn’t.”
“Hm.” James looks down at his coffee, flicks his gaze back up to her. She feels like a bug under a microscope (she feels like a game show contestant one question away from the jackpot that will change her life forever). “You know Clark is working there again?”
Her throat is clogged, her mouth dry, but she manages a jerky nod. (She will have to get used to having his name brought up unexpectedly, without any warning, without a chance to brace herself against the onslaught of regret and sorrow and loss.) “Yes. Perry told me.”
Strangely, he smiles, as if pleased with her answer.
“So,” he asks, as if he never changed the subject, “what can you offer the Superman Foundation that another candidate couldn’t?”
“Passion,” she says hoarsely, “and experience, and a willingness to make this work. I want to make a difference, but not like I have before. In a different way. A better way. Instead of destroying people, I want to build them up. Here, I can use what skills I do have to do that. To give people a voice instead of taking it away.”
It’s not a good answer. It’s not a professional answer. It’s the only answer she has.
James purses his lips a moment, for the first time seeming to be unsure of himself, choosing his words carefully. “The Superman Foundation has a lot of detractors. If asked about it, if confronted, what would you say to them?”
She can’t help but frown, because this seems like an odd question. But she does not have to think to know what to say in answer.
“I would say that the Foundation is only here to help people. To protect ideals. To make a better world. I’d stand by it, until the very end.”
It’s strange, how James is waiting so silently for her answers. It’s strange, how she knows, knows, that what she says now matters more than anything else she has ever said (matters even more than those thousand words of a Pulitzer Prize-winning article). And she cannot (does not dare) let herself think on why he is interviewing her like this, or why she picks her words so carefully (so honestly), but she trusts her instincts (and it is liberating, to realize that she can, again). So she keeps her eyes on James, and she tells the truth, and she doesn’t think of anything but this moment. The iced tea she cannot sip. The small but uncracked table laying between them (like a bridge instead of a wall). The different script they are using. The chance he is giving her.
“So, Lois,” James says, and she thinks he leans forward, almost imperceptibly, almost tensely. “Why do you want to be here?”
She’s lost for a moment (because her answer is too simple) before she says, “There’s nowhere else for me.”
He gives the hint of a nod. “Here at the Foundation, we have a strict non-disclosure policy. Could you sign it, knowing you might never be able to talk about the details of your work with anyone?”
“I would sign it,” she says evenly, more sure of this question and answer than any of the others, “but I don’t need a piece of paper or a single signature to make me keep quiet. I know the value of secrets, and some things are worth lying about.”
That earns her a slightly wider smile before he sobers and sets his coffee mug down. She can’t help but tense at this change in his posture and approach. James meets her gaze, his expression almost…compassionate? No, it must be something else. A part of the script she didn’t study. “You have a dubious track record, Lois,” he says, quietly. “Why should we trust you?”
“Because,” she says through burning eyes (as fire laces itself through her voice), “I admit that I made mistakes--colossal mistakes--but I learned from them.”
Such a simple statement to encapsulate everything she’s discovered in the past months--in her search for James, and her invitation back into the Kents’ lives, and everything that happened afterward. So simple, but she knows it is true. She knows that now, if she were to be presented with a secret, a truth, worth protecting, she would do things differently.
She would not write an article.
She would give her life up in exchange for it. She would sacrifice her future for it. She would walk away from any chance of happiness for it.
She would make the right choice.
But James does not smile or give any other sign that he recognizes the immensity of her admission (her revelation). Just nods and stands up. “All right. I think we’re done.”
She’s choked by crushing, suffocating disappointment. By a loss so painful it rivals the one she felt walking out of a hospital behind Clark’s back. By the rising, growing sense of injustice at it all, that she could learn so much and come so far and still not be enough (and she is still getting 98 percent on her tests, still falling short of that vaunted 100 mark).
He liked her answers, she knows he did (can read James well enough now to know the differences between him and Jimmy), but it all comes down to the past and what she did. She’s known it would, known that there is no getting over some things, but…but she had dared to hope anyway.
To no avail.
She sets her iced tea down, unspilled, unbroken, no more maps of new truths and universal secrets. She stands. She tries to paste on a professional, or at least neutral, mask. “Of course,” she says. “Thank you for giving me a chance, anyway.”
Not much of one, but he’d tried. And she did too, and it still doesn’t matter.
“You’re welcome,” he says politely, going to the door and opening it for her. “And I’ll see you on Monday at 7:30 for your orientation and official paper-signing and whatnot. Or rather, I won’t see you since I don’t handle that stuff, but you know what I mean. Just ask the front desk when you get here, and they’ll direct you on where to go.”
Lois can’t believe it. It’s not dreamlike or surreal or hazy; it is just unbelievable.
She goes out the door he’s holding open on autopilot, but turns to look at him (to make sure he’s not playing some twisted practical joke). “I don’t understand.”
And it’s definitely compassion, this time, shining out from his face through the crack of his smile and the tiny wrinkles at the edges of his eyes and the light glowing in russet brown to match the embers within her own breast. “It’s yours, Lois.” He reaches out and hugs her, and for an instant, Lois lets herself lean into him. She feels the wiry strength beneath his dress shirt, senses the vast stores of loyalty and potential beating there in his heart beneath the armor of his breastbone and tie, and hopes (lets herself, finally, hope) that she can get to know him better. That she can be his friend again, and work to earn back everything she once took for granted.
“You mean…” Her voice is small and lost and uncertain (afire and blazing and hopeful). “I got the job?”
When he pulls away and looks down at her, he is smiling a smile she has never seen before, real but enigmatic and somehow wistful. “Truthfully, Lois,” he says, so quietly she almost cannot hear him, “I don’t think anyone but you could fill this position.”
She has the feeling he is not talking about staff writer for the Superman Foundation.
(She has the feeling he is talking about something so much more permanent and meaningful and wondrous.)
But he smiles again and closes the door between them, and Lois is left alone in the hallway to find her way out of this maze and back out into the open sunlight.
He believes in her, he is giving her a second chance, and so she is not daunted. She is Lois Lane (again, always, her own true identity hidden behind the shroud of her alter ego, but now exposed once more, alive and unhidden and real), and so she can face this maze and this position…and whatever it was James was really interviewing her for.
*
