*6*
“Clark, really?” Lois rolls her eyes at him and tries to keep her smile from being too obvious. “The dwarves were hard enough, but at least then I’d watched the movie before thanks to a younger sibling. But naming ten constellations? Who actually knows that stuff?”
“Lots of people know a whole lot more than just ten constellations.” Clark’s smile is more of a smirk, but she doesn’t mind too much because it suits him (and it’s nice to see him relaxed after a week of watching him stare off into space and scrutinize passersby and jump at things she couldn’t hear). His hand is warm and envelops hers completely, and he’s still not close enough, so she brings up her free hand to hold onto his elbow (and feels him lean, ever so slightly, into her).
“Including you?” she asks with an arched eyebrow. “Seriously, Clark, you know more useless trivia than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“And yet, I still don’t know as much about Elvis as Perry does,” he replies easily, and Lois laughs.
“Give him time, and eventually you will,” she says. She’s disappointed to realize that they’ve already reached her apartment building, that he’s loosening his grip on her hand so she can get out her keys, that he’s readying himself to say good night. She doesn’t want this night to be over. She doesn’t want to say good night and watch Clark walk away. She doesn’t want to be alone again (for headache-inducing flashes of another life to crowd her vision and for heart-wrenching stabs at her conscience to bleed her slowly dry).
It’s strange to think that a week ago she thought a magic show would be enough to tip the scales and help her finish this job quickly (to think that a couple of tickets and a few hours watching rabbits come out of prop hats would be adequate to serve as one of her last evenings with Clark Kent). It’s strange to realize that a chocolate rose and a twinkle sparkling behind glasses would be enough to make her succumb to her more selfish impulses to just enjoy these times with Clark (the last she will ever have, because there’s no way he will want to go back to being her friend after all is said and done). It’s strangest of all (and yet somehow completely natural) to realize that she doesn’t want to end this.
She wants to keep going to nice quiet restaurants or letting Clark cook for her, and walking along piers and through parks, and holding his hand and letting his fingers caress her cheek, and kissing him good night outside her door. She wants this (laughter and teasing and looks full of intensity and secrets that mean everything and nothing spilled out before each other without concern or regret), wants it all, and she’s known she didn’t want to lose Clark-her-friend and Superman-her-hero, but only lately has she begun to realize she doesn’t want to lose this chance for more (for us).
And yet…she will.
She’ll lose the sweet evenings together, so low-key and relaxed, so gentle and fun, where he picks her up to walk her through the park and stop for ice cream and let her choose whatever flavor she wants without mocking her for it. The nights he walks her up to her apartment door and looks at her with all that…affection…that devotion and that awe and that happiness (that will prove much, much too transient) and kisses her until she can hardly stand straight and leaves her with a soft good night and a promise to call.
She’ll lose him.
(The world will lose this him, too, this easy, relaxed version of him, and that hadn’t even occurred to her when she agreed to this, but now it is all she can think about when he is not there to distract her with his clean scent and warm hands and open smile.)
“So now I guess I owe you five more dollars,” she says when they reach her door. She dropped her keys back into her pocket as soon as they got in the building; it gives her an excuse to stand there longer now, to hold his hand tighter, to look up at him with a blatant invitation spelled out on her features. “How much does that make now?”
“I’d tell you, but I don’t want to show off more of that ‘useless trivia’ I know.” He laughs at the mock scowl she throws him, and steps just a bit closer to her. “But maybe there are other ways you could pay me.”
She gapes up at him, laughing despite herself. “Clark Kent! Did you just suggest that I use sexual favors to pay a debt!?”
His smile doesn’t waver, though his cheeks turn dark and his eyes narrow. “Hey, I’m not the one who jumped straight to ‘sexual favors.’ Maybe I just wanted some free help cleaning my apartment one day. I’m sure you can wield a broom as skillfully as you do a word processor.”
“Playing the innocent, hmm? You know, Clark, I have this feeling that you’re more mysterious than anyone would ever guess.” (Certainly more than she’d guessed, and so much has happened recently that she almost forgets, sometimes, just how much she resented him for his Secret when she first heard it.) But she does not let him shutter up the openness in his eyes, does not let him draw away from her. She steps forward, up on her toes, and slides her hands up his chest, one hooking around his neck, the other playing with the collar of his shirt.
He watches her, leans so that she doesn’t have to reach as far, rests his hands on her waist. So patient. So accepting. (And he is innocent. Innocent in every meaning of the word.)
“You know I don’t like mysteries,” she murmurs. “Which just means I’m going to have to figure you out.”
“Might take a while,” he whispers back, and a hot thrum of triumph pulses through her veins to hear the breathless catch to his voice.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m prepared to devote as much time as necessary to this.”
She’s not very good at this game. Never has been, really. Flirtation was always something her friends did (usually behind her back, with the very guys she herself was attracted to) while she worked on her studies or her investigations. She meant this to be fun and flirty, light and amusing, only there to lead up to a kiss that will keep him with her for a few more moments. Instead, despite the teasing in his tone and the warmth of his hands on her, she sees the wariness, the remorse, the guilt, all of it painted there on his face.
(He’s so easy to read now, and she can never quite decide if it’s because she knows his Secret, or because she sees him constantly now, an older him, one with a wedding ring on his finger and love unfurled so publicly across his being, lying in bed beside her and greeting her over morning breakfast, papering the walls of their new home, wracked with grief that he cannot give her children. She sees him, a him she has begun to think she is making up to keep her company when she eventually has to give up this present Clark. She sees him, and it makes reading this younger, more secretive, hurting version of him so immediate it is almost instinctive.)
So she lets her fingers glide from his shirt collar to his throat, traces the steady line of his pulse, watches him swallow against the delicate sensation. She meets his gaze and has to close her eyes against the potency of his stare. And she kisses him. It’s become so easy, so natural (but then, it’s always felt natural to kiss him, so natural and comforting that it always completely takes her by surprise), but she doesn’t think she could get tired of it. His hand comes up to span her cheek, his arm pulls her tighter against him, and Lois wishes she could stay like this forever.
He’s Clark. It’s not supposed to be like this.
He’s not hers (will never be hers). It’s not supposed to feel like this.
But Clark has never cared about rules or should-bes or supposed-tos. He’s always defied them all, from the first day he got the job at the Planet, when he laughed at her tirade and followed her so closely and gave back as good as he got. Now, opening his mouth against hers, pushing her back against her door, blanketing her with his heat and weight (and love), he breaks through all her walls. Makes her feel everything. Inspires her to long for things she never would have imagined wanting before.
And she pulls him closer against her, strokes her hand through his hair, kisses him deeply. Because this is wrong and it is painful and she will always regret it, but this is life. It’s real and it’s happening and there’s nothing she can do to change it, so she simply enjoys it. She lives it, and savors what little time she has with him. She gives him her all because she is going to take everything from him and he deserves it (and so much more).
He gasps when he finally breaks the kiss and leans his brow against hers, the hand he’s threaded through her hair keeping her from bringing her mouth back to his. His body shudders against hers, his hands shaky, and Lois wonders (not for the first time) just how many times he’s done this before. How many other women there have been (or if there have been any at all). Sometimes he shivers at the lightest touch, his eyes widen after a heated kiss, or his breaths will judder raggedly, and it makes her think that she might be his first. (But she does her best to shove this thought far, far away because this is already criminal enough; she cannot afford to think of ways it is even worse than she imagines.)
So she is gentle, careful, as she sinks back against the wood of the door, granting an inch of space between their bodies, and lets her hands drift back down to his chest, resting innocently there. “Good night, Clark,” she whispers.
He grants her a soft, sweet smile that lodges itself deep, deep inside her. “Good night, Lois.”
Eventually, slowly, they separate, and her keys are retrieved from her purse, and her door is opened. She smiles at him from across the threshold (blinks back a flash of the same door slamming between them), then closes the door, and their evening ends.
She has stars in her eyes and warmth in her heart and Clark’s smile on her mind, so of course it is ruined. Of course it is all yanked away from her, leaving her cold and disoriented and trapped once again. (Of course, and it is right, it is good, because why does she deserve to have any moments of happiness or hope when she is digging Clark’s grave deeper by the minute?)
“Well, things do look cozy, don’t they?” The man--her source; her handler; her nightmare--steps out from her bedroom, silhouetted by light that shines through his hair, turning it from white to silver. “From what I saw, it seems our job here is nearly done. I never doubted you, Ms. Lane.”
A shiver ripples down from her scalp to the arches of her feet, a shockwave of denial and guilt and fierce, almost instinctive protectiveness. “What are you doing here?” she snaps. “How did you get in here? What if Clark had heard you?”
The man steps away from her bedroom door, turning from a limned silhouette to a man, old and stooped with age but bright-eyed and limber enough, white-haired and staring at her (so closely; so unnervingly) from behind the lenses of round glasses. He looks harmless. He looks defenseless. He looks normal. And all of those things are a lie (his own façade, she thinks, is so much thicker than Clark’s).
“Every one of these old buildings has a fire escape,” he replies easily, carelessly. “And you don’t seem to keep your window locked.”
A flash of guilt strikes her at the same time a vision sparks across her eyes, temporarily blinding her to the familiar surroundings. Clark (Superman, but it’s become harder, almost impossible really, to keep the distinction in mind these past weeks) appearing behind her with a comment about her Kerth Awards. Herself spinning to face him, for some reason feeling ashamed, as if she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Frank Sinatra singing in the background, Clark’s hand warm in hers, the floor falling away beneath her feet as they spin slowly, her elation as he dips her, his nervousness melting into confidence as she does not see through him.
It’s there and gone in an instant; Lois has become so accustomed to the visions that she manages not to react at all. When she blinks it away, her source is still in front of her, prowling along the edges of her living room, watching her (always watching her) out of the corner of his eye.
“And if Clark heard you?” she manages to ask, mostly just to keep him from getting suspicious. He knows her, in ways she can’t explain or understand; he seems to be able, at times, to read her mind, and at others, the twitch of his lips or the flash of his eyes will stop her more surely than any amount of words or weapons could.
He scares her. He always has, since the first night when she opened the door to his knock and saw him standing there in the hallway, smiling so benignly, one hand already raised to stop her immediate urge to slam the door. It had taken him only seconds to ensure her attention, only minutes to make her think he’s crazy, and three whole days to make her believe him. And now here they are, her frozen and terrified and defiant, standing as if she is on trial; him pacing around her, here in her apartment, calm and sure, telling her that it is time to end it (time to say goodbye to Clark forever).
“I know Superman better than anyone,” he tells her. “I have contingencies for everything. Trust me, I won’t give up the game. Not now, when we’re so close.”
“Close?” The word is dust in her mouth. As soon as she says it, she wants to take it back. She’d rather pretend to ignorance, play the fool, the incompetent, anything just so long as she gets more time with Clark (just so long as she doesn’t have to see his delight and affection transform into heartbroken dejection).
“You’ve done an excellent job!” he exclaims. “I heard enough to know that you’ve played your part admirably. He loves you, Ms. Lane--thoroughly and completely.”
“You said he already loved me.”
“And so he did. But now he loves you in a way that is easier to manipulate. And we must manipulate it. You know the consequences if we don’t.”
She’s been trying so hard--to pretend. To play a part. To lie. She’s lied when she’s alone (she is not in love with him; it will not harm her irreparably to sever him from her life). She’s lied when she’s with Clark (she is falling in love with him; she will give him a fair and honest chance; she will do her best to be gentle with the heart he gives her so willingly, so trustingly). She wants to lie to her source, too, but she can’t. She’s so tired, and she’s so afraid, and she’s so horrified (that she ever thought this was a good idea, or that she ever thought she could go through with it, or maybe just at herself for being able to take it this far), and her masks all crack and fall and shatter at her feet with the muted sound of a breaking heart.
“Please,” she whispers. (A part of her, drowning beneath visions of another life and memories of what her source showed her, is disgusted at the tears slipping free to run down her cheeks.) “I don’t want to do this. There has to be another way. We can find something else, something that won’t--”
“Now, Ms. Lane, I thought you wanted to save the world--to save Superman?” He stares at her, motionless, his dark eyes so intent on her, narrow and questioning (and she feels their intensity, their disappointment, so poignantly it is almost physical).
“I do.” She has to look down, has to break his stare, has to wrap her arms around herself to keep from fragmenting apart beneath the weight of his expectation and her lies. “But…but who will save Clark Kent?”
His laugh is so condescending that Lois’s tears instantly dry up and her spine stiffens, borne up by her immediate and bone-deep urge to wipe that smirk off his mouth. “Oh, really, Lois, I thought we already went over this. Clark is Superman. It’s him being Clark that will lead to the decay of our world. It is only when he takes on the mantle of Superman wholly that we can work for the bright, shining future we both want. And the only way to get him to devote himself fully to his role as champion is to make him realize that there is no point to all these...mundane...distractions.”
She flinches (the concept had sounded so much simpler, so much nobler, when she was still reeling from the realization of just how much Clark and Superman had lied to her, when she still thought Superman was more important than Clark; now it just sounds demeaning and simplistic and…and stupid).
“No.” It comes as little more than a dry breath, and when her source tilts his head toward her, she clears her throat, lifts her chin, (thinks of Clark, smiling down at her with that soft, sweet smile, whispering good night in that vulnerable voice), and states firmly, “This can’t be right. I know what you said, what I saw, but… He’s happy, all right? He’s happy, and he’s still Superman, and this…this doesn’t have to end this way. I can--”
“You can what?” The man’s thick white eyebrows draw down over black, shadowed eyes. Light reflects off the glasses in a flare that blinds her to whatever his expression might give away. “Tell him that he should just leave you alone at home for weeks at a time to be Superman? Tell him that it’s all right if he’s always busy, always being called away, when you’re waiting for him to return? Promise him that you will never feel lonely or abandoned, that you won’t ever make him feel bad, even inadvertently, for what he’s doing? Reorder the world so that there are two of them and one gets to do what he wants while the other does what he was born to do?”
When her mouth tightens into a thin line, he stops to take a deep breath. His own eyes flicker closed, just for an instant (but it is the first sign of weariness, of remorse, of hesitation, that she has ever seen him betray). “You must have noticed,” he says, softly. “The way he looks around for threats that aren’t there. The times he tenses at nothing, turns to stare at things you can’t see. The times he hears a call but doesn’t go to answer it because he’s with you. As long as he is with you, Lois, he cannot fully be Superman. He will always fear for your life, will always make protecting you his first priority, and will always, always be distracted. And when you are a superhero, you cannot afford distractions.”
She turns her back on him (stupid, when he makes her skin crawl, but necessary, so that she doesn’t bleed out from the razor-sharp wounds each of his words inflicts on her heart). “I don’t… There has to be something.”
“There is.” And now his voice is soft, almost pitying. He steps closer, stops behind her, his shadow cast across hers, swallowing it up. “And you know what that is. We’ve been through this. I’m sorry. Really, I am, I know it’s painful. And it will hurt. But we both know there’s no other way. Superman must endure. He must be the symbol the world needs. And he can’t do that when he’s tied down.”
Somewhere inside her, there is a small, lost girl hunched in on herself, huddled in a corner while her mom tells her that her father has important work that needs to be done and that Lois will just have to have her birthday party (her Christmases, her graduations, her award ceremonies) without him there. Somewhere inside her, that small girl breaks again, because this time there is not even the discovery of cyborg parts or grand dreams or criminal dealings to vindicate her resentment; this time, there really is more important work, and how can she even think to pretend to be just as valuable as the world itself?
When an age-spotted hand drops onto her shoulder, Lois doesn’t even react (not to shrink away or to break). There’s no point. She does know that this is the only way. She already agreed to it and there is no backing out now. All that is left to her are her visions (and even if they are mark of insanity, she decides to cling to them with everything she is, savor them as she wishes she could a lifetime with Clark).
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “But he’s Superman.”
He is. And he’s important. He’s necessary. He’s good. (He deserves so much better than her.)
But he’s also Clark. And Clark is wonderful and earnest and so very, very good. (He wants her, even when he shouldn’t, even when she can’t figure out why.)
So she turns to the old man in front of her, looks up to meet his eyes (even with his stooped shoulders, he is taller than her), and nods. “You’re right. I won’t forget again. But…but I don’t think he is quite ready. Not yet. He doesn’t trust this, not since I went to him right after Lex’s proposal. Give me another week, maybe two, and he won’t have even a shred of doubt left.”
Her source studies her for a long moment before he shrugs, stepping aside and letting his hand fall away from her. “Very well. When in doubt, go with the expert, right? No one knows how to break Clark Kent’s heart better than Lois Lane.”
She frowns at him. “What does that mean?”
He looks surprised (as if, for the first time, he did not anticipate this reaction, but she doesn’t know if she can trust that). “Why, Lois, I’m sure you remember that day in the park when you shrugged aside his love as if it meant nothing. I really thought that would be enough to do the trick all on its own, but Superman is nothing if not resilient.”
Long minutes later, Lois is vaguely aware that he is gone. Hours later, she is distantly aware that her feet ache and she is too hot with her coat still on. But all she can do is continue to stand there as ice envelops her heart and her mind teeters between visions of a future she will never live and nightmares of a past she is only now beginning to see clearly.
She should have known that Clark Kent’s heart wouldn’t be the only one that ended up broken.
She should have known her own was fated to be collateral damage.
(She had known. She just hadn’t expected it to hurt quite this much.)
*
