*12*
Lois Lane stands in Clark Kent’s apartment and feels as if she has lived a lifetime here. She first burst in here when she was following Clark, thinking he would lead her to a scoop on the superhero she was so desperate to know anything and everything about. She’d followed him inside in a fury and then had to sneak out when they were both undercover at the Metro. She’d spent the night while waiting for Alan Morris to wake up, and shared tea with Clark on the balcony and a special moment with Superman in the living room. She’d spent the night again when Barbara Trevino threatened her and Clark offered a haven. She’d leaned against him on the couch while they watched movies, and kissed him while stars danced in her eyes and fairies flew through her heart. She’d broken his heart and destroyed him and watched him flee in pieces without calling him back or doing anything to alieve the destroyed look written over his being.
But there are other things, too. Other moments. Other lifetimes. Another night spent on his couch after a threatening phone call, his arm around her, his chin resting on her crown. Arriving to tell him she chose him and finding him standing amid the packed-up boxes of his life. Kissing him while he cooked. Sitting on the couch in a wedding dress. Enjoying a honeymoon on the ceiling (though she’s always blinked those type of flashes away, feeling like it’s an invasion of privacy; knowing there’s a limit to what she can endure seeing when she will never get to experience it herself). Endless evenings and early mornings and snatched moments, all with Clark. All a future she will never have.
And this is the last time she will ever be allowed to stand here, she knows. The look on Clark’s face…it makes her shudder just to think of it. The shock turning into anger turning into desolation, and then the worst: bleakness. So utterly, terribly bleak. As if all the light in his universe had gone out. As if there was no more hope in his world.
“He’ll be okay,” she whispers, but the apartment’s emptiness mocks her. Throws the words back at her with a hollow quality (because they will never, ever be consolation enough).
He will be Superman. The bright, good hero the world needs. He will lead the future into an ideal civilization. His legacy will never end. (And he will think fondly of her; he will speak well of her; though how she cannot imagine.)
But as wonderful as all that sounds (as empty as it seems, these past weeks), Lois knows that even the forgiving Clark will never be able to be her best friend again. They will never be able to go back to that easy partnership, the comfortable friendship. He will not invite her back into his life or ask her to drop by his place or offer her safety here in his own private home.
She looks around at the familiar surroundings. Later, she will probably wish she memorized absolutely everything, savored it one last time, but right now it doesn’t matter. Clark is not here, and he is always what made his apartment seem so much more welcoming than anywhere else. Now that he’s gone, there’s no point to being here.
Besides, she doesn’t want there to be even a chance of still being here when Clark comes back. Even her cruelty has its limits. She will not make him face her again.
She has taken only one step toward the door when her source strides through it as if he owns the place. He casts one appraising look at the apartment, then sniffs and dismisses it. Which makes it even more surprising when his gaze falls on her and he immediately breaks into a grin. He looks almost smug. Or maybe he doesn’t and it is only Lois’s resentment that makes her think he looks cocky and triumphant. Either way, her skin erupts in goosebumps and she feels the sudden urge to growl at him.
“Lois Lane!” he announces grandly. “I knew you could do it. If you want to break the Man of Steel’s heart, always go to the expert.”
“How can I be known as the expert if I wasn’t supposed to meet him?” she snaps. “And what are you doing here? Are you spying on me? On Clark?”
He cocks his head as he descends the steps into the living room. “Duh. I told you, Ms. Lane, you do always come through--but I felt it best to make sure you came through on the right side this time.”
“The right side?” Her eyes narrow dangerously. “I thought we were all on the same side, even if the most super-powered one of us doesn’t know it. And again, your use of the word ‘always’ about me doesn’t make any sense. If you’ve been telling the truth.”
Her source laughs as if they are not standing astride the shattered rubble of Clark’s heart (and hers, though hers has been trailing blood and regret for the past month). “You choose the best times to start asking questions, don’t you? Should I take you to Utopia again so you can see for yourself? This time, you can actually make it through all of the museum’s exhibits--see firsthand how Superman’s life will go. The way he rebuilds his life, but now with the right priorities. The time it takes him to realize the correct balance of Superman and Clark Kent. And then, after his parents’ deaths, the moment he finally ascends to his place in the grand orbit of the sky, visible to all as the true Man of Tomorrow, leading the world to truth, justice, and all that other good stuff. Would you like to see how long it takes him to move on from you--is that what this is really all about?”
“You keep saying he’ll be okay,” Lois mutters, “but I don’t know… I don’t see how this plan of yours makes sense. You say I’m making him be the hero he needs to be by breaking up with him, but you didn’t see his face. You didn’t hear the way he said… This is just breaking him. There’s nothing good about this. There’s nothing about this that should turn him into a hero.”
Her source reaches up and fiddles with the edge of his glasses, as if about to pull them off, before pushing them up more securely on the bridge of his nose. “Not for you or me or any regular person. But we can’t forget that Superman is not ‘regular.’ He’s different. Abnormal, some might say. We need him to be in the sky, Ms. Lane. Not on the ground.”
And that’s what it always comes down to, isn’t it. Every single one of these conversations (arguments; confrontations; plea bargains) with her source always leads back to this: Superman over Clark Kent. The hero over the man. Alien over human. Aloof demigod over warm inspiration.
It was enough when her source first came to her and told her the truth. It was enough when she was clinging to the fact that Clark would be okay, in any form, to get her through the first dates. It was even enough to get her to come to his apartment tonight and stab him with a knife sharper than even Kryptonite. But now? Now that it is over and she doesn’t have to shield herself (doesn’t have the luxury of protecting herself with these half-truths), she knows that it’s wrong.
“He’s only a hero because he’s Clark Kent,” she says. It’s a quiet statement, slow because she is turning it over in her own head as she speaks it, and it seems to take a minute for her source to process it. “He needs to be on the ground to know what to do in the sky. He’s not an emergency response system--he’s a man, and that’s what makes him the shining beacon that people will follow.”
Her source is silent a moment. (She thinks that she has, for the first time, actually taken him aback.)
But the moment passes, and he shakes his head slightly. “I’m sorry you don’t agree with our conclusions. Regardless, the correction’s already taken place. Utopia is safe, no matter what…private qualms you might have.”
“I could tell him.”
It’s the first time she’s even let herself think it, and it staggers her just how freeing it is to consider it. Just going to Clark and telling him. Letting him know everything that’s going on. Explaining why she had to do it. And then he’d…he’d…
“You’d tell him?” Her source is, somehow, behind her, though she didn’t see him move. His voice is soft, sonorous, weaving his words around her as if pulling them straight from her mind. “And what will you say? Will you tell him that you asked him out just to break his heart? That you did it all on the word of a man who claimed to be a time-traveler? That you led Clark on and gave him just enough of yourself to ensure he’d love you forever, and then…” He leans closer, over her shoulder, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up stiff and bristling. “Then you used all his fears against him…and destroyed him. That’s what you think you’ve done, isn’t it? Broken him? And what do you think he will do then?”
“Clark would believe me,” she manages, a heaving gasp of defiance against the flood of images rolling through her imagination--his anger and disbelief and scorn. And hurt. So much hurt. Hurt enough to crush her. (The images are all too clear; she just saw them played out in front of her, after all, horrible enough to haunt her for the rest of her life.)
“But would he forgive you?” he asks. “Would he ever let you into his life again? Would he ever believe you if you were to try to tell him you love him?”
“I…” She whirls to face him, not incidentally putting about a foot of distance between them. “I don’t…who said that I…he’s just--”
His silver hair gleams as he gives her an almost condescending smile. “Exactly. And with such eloquence as that, how could he not take you back with open arms?” He straightens, fiddles with his glasses again. “No, the job is done, Ms. Lane. You made the right choice, and now everything is on the right track. Be happy! We’ve saved the future! Oh, and of course…” His smile turns smaller, harder, colder. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
*
Somehow, she makes it back to her place. She doesn’t know how. Everything is a haze around her. She opens her journal long enough to jot down the new flashes she saw in Clark’s apartment, then she puts it away.
In a strange form of penance, she does not let herself give into the flashes hovering at the edges of her vision. Clark is somewhere alone, right now, hurting and lonely and heartbroken. He does not have the luxury of vicariously living a better life, so why should she get any reprieve either?
Instead, she crawls into bed, wraps the covers around herself in a cocoon (wishes she could come out as something better; something worth a superhero’s heart), and gives herself permission to cry.
Only…she can’t. There are no more tears left inside her.
She wonders if she will ever feel anything again.
*
The next morning, she heads into the Planet. She doesn’t want to hurt Clark anymore (and seeing her will hurt him, she knows that unequivocally), but she doesn’t know what else to do with herself. He was right, in a way--the Planet is her life. (Except when Clark was with her. Except when he pulled her away and taught her how to have fun and laugh and make something besides work a priority.)
But Clark isn’t there. He doesn’t show up all day. She’s worried that he has left his Clark Kent life already (worried that her obliteration of him is more thorough than she ever could have imagined), but Perry tells her he hasn’t heard from him, and surely Clark wouldn’t leave without letting Perry know he is quitting. Surely. Hopefully.
There is no mention in the news of Superman all day.
*
Clark doesn’t show up the next day (Superman doesn’t either, a strange absence no one is commenting on yet), and Lois sits at her desk, staring at a blank screen while she runs through all the same things that kept her up all night (and the night before that, and will for nights to come, ad infinitum).
Her source’s promises.
The bits of Utopia she saw.
The bleakness on Clark’s face two nights ago.
The way Clark got her to play games in the honeymoon suite at the Lexor.
The smugness on her source’s face when he strolled into Clark’s apartment.
Clark crying out that she didn’t know him if she thought he wanted to lie his entire life.
He’s Superman, the man from the future had said, over and over again, in every imaginable way. But nothing about Clark. Never one single thing about Clark Kent. Only Superman.
You found out I was Clark instead of the perfect hero you made up, Clark had said, so bitterly, so defeated.
And she knows about being only one thing all the time, doesn’t she? Didn’t she just realize how much Clark added to her life outside the Daily Planet? Doesn’t she know how much better she felt--how much happier--she was when she could do something besides her job?
Superman’s not a person, she thinks, so suddenly her heart seizes up inside her. He’s just a job.
Clark is a person.
And I just killed him.
*
Twenty minutes later, she’s left the Planet without a word and is bursting into her apartment, stumbling across the room to pull out her journal. She flips through it frantically, a hodge-podge mess of images, flickers, scenes, dreams--all out of order, haphazard, sloppy, often written through the pounding pain of a migraine, with unsteady hands, while her eyes blurred with tears.
She’s avoided thinking about these flashes as anything more than a refuge from the hell her life has become. It was easier to just accept them than to have to question them. Aside from taking the headache pills she was prescribed, she hasn’t done anything to try to stop them either. She’d written them off as desperation mixed with imagination (because she was afraid of being crazy), but there are too many coincidences. And there to prove it, in the back of the journal, is her list, written one morning when she’d been feeling strong and confident--things that are in the flashes that have proven true, like the strawberry shortcake a flicker of a vision had told her was his favorite dessert. Like where he keeps saucepans in his apartment. Like the way Clark looks when something has reached past his invulnerable skin to rend and tear at his oh-so-vulnerable heart.
These are real. Somehow, someway, these images she’s been seeing are true. But how? They are so different from her life now, from Clark’s life, as to be almost unbelievable. But she has to believe. She has to take a chance. She has to hope (because Clark isn’t, anymore, so someone has to for him).
If she can find out how these images are true--how they all happened--then maybe she can find a way to…
To what?
Her hands freeze, the journal trembling over the floor. What does she think this will accomplish? What can she possibly do to fix things? She can never take away the pain that shadowed Clark’s eyes when she told him she didn’t love him. It can never erase the way he flinched away from her harsh words. It can never make him look at her the way he did just a few days ago, when he woke up with her in his arms and smiled at her as if she were everything good in his world.
“But maybe I can save him,” she whispers, taking a steadier grip on the journal. It’s what she’s been trying to do all this time, the reason she took his dreams and shredded them in front of him.
Or almost. She was trying to save Superman, then. Now, she wants to save Clark. Needs to save Clark. (And she thinks, is almost sure, that saving Clark will be the same thing as saving Superman.)
So, first, she has to find the earliest memory-flash. The first one that diverges from reality. If she can figure out why things are different, maybe she can also figure out a way to make her-Clark as confident and whole and happy as the memory-flash-Clark.
It’s a long shot. But then, what else does she have to do?
*
The sun is rising through her sheer curtains by the time she finally steps back from the jigsaw puzzle she’s made of her cut-up journal. A timeline spreads out over her living room rug, the couches shoved aside to make room for the life she will never get to have.
The changes don’t start from her entrance into Perry’s office during Clark’s interview. They don’t include her meeting with Samuel Platt. In fact, there is not one single memory-flash from before her own memories. Maybe that means nothing, but she thinks it means everything.
She thinks it means her source has lied to her.
(She thinks it means she is the villain to this story rather than the unsung hero.)
It’s not her introduction to Clark that ruined everything.
It’s her wedding to Lex. She was supposed to say yes to that two-faced criminal. She was supposed to drive alongside an angry Clark while he spit bitter words at her. She was supposed to stand in front of a mirror and pair her name with Clark’s. He was supposed to hug her in trembling arms and watch Lex fall to his death.
They were supposed to be friends. Partners. He was supposed to ask her out, and she was supposed to say yes (not because she was willing to do him a favor by giving him a chance; not because she wanted to save the world and a superhero; because she wanted to). They were supposed to be happy. Engaged. Married. Partners in everything in life.
And for all the drama and the conflict and the mistakes she glimpses in these memory-flashes of a life where Clark Kent is just as dominant a presence as Superman, there is one thing she doesn’t see--a Superman too distracted and paranoid to be the superhero the world needs.
She sees cold dinners and lonely nights and interrupted dates. She sees a few arguments and some lonely moments. She sees forgiveness and acceptance and a balanced life. She sees welcomed returns and teasing laughter and strength found in partnership.
But no ruined Superman. No fading Clark Kent. No jealous Lois Lane-Kent.
All she sees, then (as she looks down at these warnings she’s been treating as mere fantasies), are the lies her source told her.
Let Superman be who he’s always meant to be, her source said.
“All right, I will,” Lois says. She straightens up from the blueprint of a happy life. Ignores the headache pulsing like roiling lava behind her eyes. And she begins to plan.
*
