Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Ghost Of A Chance 19/20

*19*

Doomsday. Blood and agony and screaming exhaustion. The monster that will not let him be. A collision that shakes the world. White light explodes around him, transforming him into the pupil in a blinding, chaotic cornea. There is pain. There is a heaviness that attaches itself to him like a parasite. Then, gradually, abruptly, there is nothing.

*

He drowns in a vastness he can sense but not pinpoint. Afraid to move, he floats. It’s dark and yet he is not shadowed. It’s cool, but he’s unaffected. Bright, painful light threatens, but he resists. That way, he knows, lies pain and betrayal and terror.

Anchorless, he drifts.

*

When the light overtakes him, he does his best to avoid it. When it surrounds him, he refuses to acknowledge it. When it recedes, he feels something rend inside his chest.

Darkness apprehends the light.

He shudders and shakes and seizes, but in the end, there was never any question. The light is harder, so much more difficult, and oftentimes torturous, but it is his way, where he belongs.

It is right. It is good. It is his responsibility.

His calling.

The light screams for him, and Clark rises from the immersive ashes into agony.

*

There’s something over his face, smothering, constricting, a layer that separates him from the sunlight his body strains for. Panic threatens to send him reeling back into that void, but he swallows it down. Commands his hand to rise and push away whatever is trying to bury him. Forces himself to remove the flimsy obstruction.

There’s light bursting in his vision, making him blink and shut his eyes to clear the explosions. He can’t hear anything except a ringing in his ears. How long has it been? Where is he?

Where is Doomsday?

Where is Lois?

He blinks and blinks again, again because he thinks he sees Lois, but it is only the pale shadow of her. A lesser reflection.

“Lois,” he rasps.

She’s in danger. She was there, he remembers, there in the street while he faced Doomsday, and now there is only silence.

With a gasp, Clark leaps to his feet, staggers, nearly falls but catches himself. No shrieking--has the monster continued to follow his waning scent even though it left him beaten and broken here? No screaming--is everyone around him dead? How many people have died since he succumbed to weakness and fell to an early grave?

Lois.

He did see her. She’s there, a form, solid and real, amidst the sparks catapulting along the edges of his vision. A small shape in the corner of the room. Slumped over. Unmoving.

“NO!” The scream is ripped from him so savagely he feels his throat begin to bleed. “Lois!”

She’s dead. Doomsday was here for him, and Clark was afraid and let himself cower in dreams and Lois died, was murdered, his fault, why didn’t he hear her call for him, or did he, had he heard her scream and ignored her, let his anger and the kernel of hatred he promised he’d never feel for her stop him from listening and now she’s dead she’s dead she’s dead--

“Clark! Clark, honey! Oh, Clark, I can’t believe it!”

Hands are pulling at him, tugging and turning (warm, not cold, not Doomsday, and he narrowly stops himself from lashing out at them with lethal force), but Clark can only see Lois. Still unmoving. Unnaturally still. She’s never that quiet. That motionless. That small.

She’s dead she’s dead she’s dead--

“Clark! Clark, are you all right? Oh my boy. Clark, honey, you’re safe--”

“Doomsday,” he chokes (because you’re safe to him is nothing more than an indictment, an accusation, when that beast still roams free and who knows how many are dead). “I have to stop Doomsday. I have to face him--”

“You did! You did, Clark, son, you stopped him. We’re safe. You took care of him.”

Clark stills, falls, is borne up on trembling (familiar) arms.

Doomsday is dead. Gone. Clark took care of him.

Too late. Too late.

Lois is still dead.

Tempus has won.

*

Doomsday!

Clark shudders awake and tries to rise (he has to stop Doomsday, has to move and attack before someone else dies!) but cannot. His muscles are shivery under his skin, his limbs jerk spasmodically when he tries to move them, every breath delivers a piercing stab through his entire chest…and something is leaning on him.

A warm, limp weight with feathers that tickle his bare shoulder.

It can’t be Doomsday, he tells himself, and takes a very careful breath. It can’t be. It has hair and Doomsday did not. It is soft and Doomsday was not. It is warm and Doomsday was frigid.

(But it’s holding him down and Doomsday did that more times than his photographic mind can face.)

Gingerly, his heart tripping a rapid pace along his burning ribcage, Clark bends his neck and looks down.

Lois.

The pain that shoots through his heart makes all his other hurts seem as much a feathering as her hair tickling his arm. Lois. She’s dead, he wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to save her and she died, but here she is, right next to him. Who did this? Who would play such a sick joke on him as to place her body on the chair beside his bed and place her hand in his and lean her head against his shoulder?

Her warm body. Her twitching hand. Her stirring head.

She’s alive.

Lois is alive.

Clark’s universe shifts and whirls around him, too much for his overwhelmed body.

The light reclaims him (but his hand tightens over hers).

*

The next time he wakes, he’s covered in a cold sweat and shaking from terror, but he is finally coherent enough to remember that Doomsday is gone (dead; he killed it) and Lois is alive (he thinks, but it would not be the first time he has convinced himself of something that is not true). He even, he begins to realize, recognizes that his parents are here.

It was their voices, before, telling him he was safe. Hoarse, raw voices that sounded altogether too upset and shocked and disbelieving.

He has put them through so much lately. Telling Lois his Secret, coming to them brokenhearted, leaving to hunt down a threat (with no idea, no comprehension at all, of how terrible this threat actually was), and then…then his silence. Then Doomsday.

Clark forces himself to take a breath, tries to calm the instinctive panic that surges at even thinking (remembering the sheer menace and power and unstoppable force) of Doomsday. It’s gone, he reminds himself. It’s gone and done and dead. (And he is alive, still here; he’s faced his monster, his doomsday, and has emerged the other side.)

Still, it takes every ounce of willpower he possesses to relax his muscles from their locked readiness.

Lois is asleep again at his side. She’s curled up in the chair, her hands tucked up against her raised knees this time, her head tilted at what looks to be a terribly uncomfortable angle. Across the room, on the couch they’ve apparently dragged into the doorway so they can see him, his parents doze, his mom leaning back against his dad’s limp form.

A smile curves Clark’s lips. It’s so startling (so painful, stretching bruises and opening gashes) that Clark actually raises a hand to trace the shape of his smile. Strange to realize how foreign such a simple gesture feels (to have a reaction that does not involve fear or anguish or desperation).

“Mom!” he calls, but his voice is so weak even he can barely hear it. Still, he says, “Dad,” too, just because he can, because he’s missed saying them. Because he is so grateful they are here.

His mouth is dry, his body is a mess of aches and pains, and he’s still not sure how exactly he came to be here, in his own apartment, but for the first time in what feels like weeks, Clark allows himself to really, truly relax.

Within seconds, sleep claims him.

*

They try to bandage his wounds. His dad lifts him up and wedges himself behind him as a warm, breathing pillow, and for the first time, Clark can finally relax. With the heat of a living body next to his and the earthy scents of his dad overpowering the stench of blood, he can finally convince himself that Doomsday is not just behind him, ready to leap out and grab him with hands stained with innocents.

His mom sits beside him and begins to unwind bandages he hadn’t really noticed covering him. His arms, and his hands, and his legs, and his stomach, and then the sheet tied around his chest. At first, Clark is watching his mom--the steadiness of her hands, the tears sliding down her cheeks, the clamped position of her lips, the pallor of her skin. But then his eyes track the movements of her hands, and look past the disappearing bandages, and catch on red muscle, purple vein, white bone…a mess of meat and skin and cartilage.

Clark’s skin goes clammy with fear-sweat and his stomach roils and spins. He jerks and seizes, feels his dad hold onto him, hears as if from a terrible distance him mutter soft words in his ear.

“Dad,” he whispers, or maybe he whimpers it, it’s hard to tell past the roaring in his ears.

He’s seen atrocities. He’s witnessed terrible things, found bodies in awful shapes and lifted them out of their grotesque positions, taken them and framed their limbs and rearranged their features to deliver them with some dignity to their waiting families. But this is…different…somehow, to look down at his own chest and see an open gaping wound where nothing has ever before been able to affect him.

To realize at once how utterly vulnerable he is…and how terrifyingly alien.

“Dad!” he calls, and his mom is crying and his dad keeps whispering in his ear and Clark shakes and shakes until he thinks Jonathan’s arms are the only thing holding him together.

“It’s all right, Clark, you’re all right. Shh, it’s okay, you’re here, you’re safe, we’ve got you. You’re all right. Oh my boy, I’ve got you and I’m not letting go.”

Clark closes his eyes against the image of his own corpse (still breathing, but how?), sinks deeper into his dad’s embrace, and shrinks his whole world to the sound of that husky voice promising him he is not alone.

“Don’t leave me,” he pleads, and his dad holds on even tighter.

“Never!” he says in a voice fiercer than Clark knew was capable of. “I’ve got you, son. I’ve got you.”

He wants to be strong and staunch the tears his mom is still weeping, salty and sharp and pervasive in his nostrils, but the darkness is still strong. The world shakes and swirls around him, and Clark feels himself drifting away, crushed back into passiveness.

Until he is unceremoniously yanked back to awful alertness. A scream is halfway out of his throat already, but he doesn’t know why, doesn’t know why he is suddenly painfully awake, why his dad’s grip on him is failing, why his bones are freezing in their joints and his heart is lagging behind in the cold.

“Clark, honey, calm down!” It’s only the fact that he has been trained his entire life to respond to that voice that Clark manages to obey his mom and still his spasms. She’s there instantly, bending over him, her hair tickling his face, her hands fluttering from place to place on his skin. “What is it, Clark? What’s wrong?”

There’s terror, there, he can see it up close as she examines him. She’s frightened, he recognizes, but not the reason for it, because she has never been afraid of him, even when he set the kitchen on fire with a careless blink. But then, his chest is in ruins and he should be dead (how is he not dead?) and maybe that is reason enough for the unreasoning panic she holds back with only the most tenuous of shields.

He wants to calm and reassure her, or at least try to answer her question, but he doesn’t know what’s wrong. Doomsday is gone, and Lois is alive (and she said Tempus was taken care of, too, he remembers with a rush of thankfulness), and that should mean everything’s fine now. But it doesn’t. Because his mom is terrified, and his dad is shaking behind him, and Clark is still holding back a scream for some reason he doesn’t even know.

“I don’t know,” he stammers through chattering teeth. “It’s just…I’m so cold. It’s freezing.”

And there is something on his chest. A weight. A foot, leaching him of warmth. Holding him down so it can flay him alive, and he cannot breathe. He cannot move, reduced to nothing more than dead weight (except he’s alive, a ghost lingering past his due date).

“I’m sorry,” Martha says, and smooths a hand back through his hair, infinitely tender. “As soon as I get these wrapped back up, we’ll get you under some blankets, all right?”

He starts to nod but he’s interrupted by another involuntary scream as Martha sets a bandage across the gash over his lower ribcage.

“It’s the sunlight!” Jonathan exclaims. “He needs it, Martha. I don’t think we can cover him up at all.”

Martha yanks the bandage away. The sunlight settles itself over him again, warm and weightless. The scream dies in Clark’s throat. She moves to shove away the blankets bunched up around them, and with every inch of his skin the blankets reveal and the sunlight covers, Clark’s body relaxes more. Behind his eyelids, the darkness recedes, swallowed up by gentle light.

“Better,” he murmurs as the shivers abate. Without the immediacy of pain, though, it’s harder to stay awake.

“But…” Martha looks up at Jonathan. “We can’t even try to bind the wounds together?”

Jonathan tenses under Clark, and he shifts a bit in an effort to stay conscious. “It’s not like we could stitch them up anyway,” he says gruffly. His voice resonates through his chest, tickling Clark’s cheek. Clark smiles and can’t resist nuzzling closer to the pleasant vibration. “The sunlight will do better for him anyway.”

Martha’s hands trail a soft line over his face, erasing hints of pain. “Yes,” she whispers, and bends to place a kiss on his brow. He’s already falling into the vastness of healing light when he hears, “But what will we do when the sun sets?”

*

What will they do? It doesn’t take long to find out.

From the moment the sunset’s last crimson streaks fade from the skies, Clark begins to scream. Jonathan weeps silent tears and holds him down. Martha strokes his brow and croons soft nothings to him. The blankets are made of ice and the sunlamp lights they bathe over him are edged in shadows that stroke frostbite along his skin. Worst of all, though, are the weights that keep him constrained. That close in around him until he cannot breathe and he is afraid they will crush him completely. A claustrophobic grave that starts in his limbs and moves outward and brings back every nightmare he’s ever had about being buried alive.

Hours, eternities, later, Clark’s voice gives out and he shakes and stirs and turns from side to side (to remind himself he can; to prove that he is not shut up in cold, alien stone). He’s weak and trembling and his muscles feel like water bottled up inside loose constraints, but for all that, he still has his powers. For all his fragility, he can still punch a hole in the wall behind his bed and rain down brick-dust and plaster over his head (bringing back vivid, rampaging memories of being buried alive and choking on concrete and his own blood), so only half his drained strength is devoted to continuing to breathe. The other half is fixated on not hurting his dad. Not pushing too hard during a spasm or pulling too quickly when he starts awake from a half-lucid nightmare. Not killing his own father with a careless twitch.

His mom hums and sings and valiantly holds back sobs. His dad tries to share as much of his body heat with Clark as he can, combating the frost that has turned Clark blue and pale (but his arms are wrapped around Clark's torso and Clark feels just as trapped as he does loved). Clark holds himself as still as possible and dreams of monsters and green cages and claustrophobic graves.

Eventually, the sun rises.

Eventually, gradually, he remembers what it is to not be cold.

(But he still cannot breathe without feeling the pressure of a weight even Superman cannot lift.)

*

The soup is hot enough to remind his chilled body what warmth is. Its scent is familiar enough (conjuring up memories of days as a boy, nights curled up in blankets while blizzards howled outside the protection of his parents’ presence) to calm the panicked tremors that hit him at irregular intervals. Its taste soothes his emotions even if the salt burns against his raw throat. But for all that, it is the fact that it’s his mom holding the bowl for him, steadying his hand with the spoon even as she forces herself to let him pretend to be feeding himself, that makes him believe everything will be okay. His dad hovering in the background, blanketing them with his steadfast protection, helps him reclaim the sense of stability he didn’t realize he was craving until he has it back.

“Just a few more spoonfuls,” Martha says, and her smile is forced and genuine all at once as Clark strains to lift the spoon again, a feat that has become somehow more herculean than lifting a shuttle into space.

Clark swallows, drops his hand (relaxes it, rather, so his mom can guide it back to the bowl), and smiles at her. Gently. Mischievously. “I’ll bet you never thought you’d have to be convincing me to eat more.”

She is surprised into a chuckle, and he’s grateful when her eyes warm and the worry lines ease on her face. “Miracles do happen,” she agrees, and then bursts into tears. Again.

With a resigned sigh, Clark lets go of the spoon (his dad swoops in to rescue the bowl) and manages to lift his arms again, this time to hug his mom. It’s a weak embrace, but at least he’s participating this time. The first dozen or so times his parents hugged him, he couldn’t do anything but not flinch away from the sheer force of their desperate relief. He’s gotten better about being able to move with the right amount of speed and pressure, not so good about handling the amount of times his mom will break out in sobs or his dad will shudder and go still.

Apparently, they told him this morning, he died. More than once.

Apparently, he was dead for fifty-two hours before waking up and pulling a sheet off from over his face and panicking at the sight of an unconscious Lois Lane.

Apparently, he is immortal (though not invulnerable).

Truthfully, Clark’s having a better time handling his parents’ mini-breakdowns than he is at reconciling the fact that he can, apparently, rise from the dead. But then, the very fact that his parents cannot step away from him for more than a minute or two proves that they are having just as hard a time coming to terms with it as he is (or worse, really, since he’s mainly just avoiding thinking about it).

He pats his mom on the back, does his best not to recoil at the feel of his dad’s hand on his shoulder (his dad, not Doomsday), and lets out a choked laugh. “I’m all right, really.”

And that’s all they need. His touch, his laugh, his reassurance. Then they pull themselves together, and Martha wipes her eyes and Jonathan takes the bowl to the sink, and there might be ten minutes or an hour before another crying jag starts. So little, and they are happy again.

But it’s not enough for everyone.

Almost unwillingly (almost desperately), Clark’s eyes move across the room, to the seat beneath the windows lining his bedroom wall.

Lois is still sitting there. Unmoving. Watching him. She’s always watching him, every time he looks her way (which is often, because she is not the only one who thought the other was dead). She hasn’t said anything, though, not since he opened his eyes yesterday (after he saw her sleeping in the chair but before the nightfall proved to him just how frail he is) and saw her looking down at him. Not since she gasped and flung herself at him and said his name, once, like a prayer. Not since he couldn’t move to return the embrace (physically couldn’t…or wouldn’t…he’s not sure) and she stiffened and drew away and her eyes clouded over.

Then his parents were there, with hugs and sobs and garbled explanations, and Clark was struggling just to stay awake beneath the onslaught. And Lois retreated to the window-seat, and now she watches him. Ceaselessly. Silently. His parents don’t address her. Clark steals glances at her. When Perry was there, he hugged her and whispered to her before leaving to head to the paper (Damage control, he’d said by way of vague explanation).

And before, Clark might have told himself that he doesn’t know what she’s thinking. That she has walled herself away and she’s unreadable to him. That she has left him again and will not talk to him, just like before.

But Clark may not remember dying, and he might not be able to comprehend the fact that his heart actually stopped beating for almost three days, but he does remember waking up in his apartment to the smell of apple pie. He remembers the newsroom and Jimmy’s concealed warnings. He remembers Smallville and pieces of past conversations drifting back into his conscious mind.

He remembers the Lois from before he knew, and the Lois from after he knew (but not the Lois-in-between, because the truth is that there never was an in-between-Lois, just Lois Lane). He remembers that they’re the same, he and her, and she has always been walled away. She has always hidden behind defenses and pretended she is unreadable. And he has always been able to see past her mask and flimsy disguise. (He has always looked at Lois Lane and known that she is worth the effort, the trouble, the turmoil.)

So he does know what she’s thinking. He knows why she won’t come near him and why she will not speak and why she does not look away. He knows what she needs from him.

But he’s afraid.

(And the sun is on its downward journey to the west horizon.)

“You okay there, son?” his dad asks, coming back in from the kitchen and reclaiming his usual place on Clark’s right side, across from Martha.

“Yeah,” he says. He does not look at Lois. He can feel the weight of her unflinching stare. (He is not sure he is strong enough yet to face her.) “I’m feeling better. The sunlight’s definitely helping.” (He does not miss that Lois shrinks in on herself yet again, trying to make herself smaller so that her body blocks less of the window.) “But, uh, I am kind of tired.”

He is. He’s so tired it feels as if he’s been awake for days instead of just a couple of hours. As exhausted and worn as if he’s been on non-stop rescues rather than simply eating a bowl of soup and drinking a glass of water. Mortality is a heavy burden to bear, one he might feel grateful for in another situation but that now seems only another weight pressing him down (because his mortality is only temporary, and he cannot bear to think how that affects his future).

But tired or not, frightened or not, this moment can only be put off for so long (and he has only three more hours at best before the night reclaims him).

His parents all-too-easily believe that he’s ready for a nap, and with soft words and careful caresses, they make their way to the living room. There’s no door between them, only a partial brick wall and two open doorways, but it will have to do (and Clark thinks he might be grateful, anyway, to know there is an escape open to him and allies waiting should he need them).

Silence. He can hear Lois breathing (more melodic than any birdsong). He means to look over, to meet her gaze, but he’s frozen. Once he speaks to her, there will be no going back. Once he faces her, and sees her (not the stranger he feared, not the transition he imagined, not the partner he loved, but all of them together in one, all of them facets of one woman), he will never be able to go back to comforting himself with the memory of before and divorcing himself from the after. After this, he will have no excuses left.

His body shakes, a tremor that spikes his heart rate and makes him break out in a cold sweat. Remembered terror floods his system, fills his mind with strobe flashes of Doomsday and violence and agony (fills his heart with the aching feeling of déjà vu, because he’s lived this moment before, preparing to have a conversation that will change everything, and it did not end well).

But he faced Doomsday--in real life and in his dreamworld, when all he wanted was to rest in dreams of brighter days. He faced it and he won and he is still alive, still here…still trying. Because he can’t give up (his birth parents didn’t, when they faced the destruction of their entire world and found a way to save him). He can’t turn away (his parents didn’t, when they saw a spaceship and found a baby and realized he had powers they would never be able to comprehend). He can’t just let go of people (Lois doesn’t, not once she realizes that they need something she can provide, not ever). Those are not things he does (not a legacy he will leave to the future world…if he ever can die), and it’s time he finally accepted that.

It takes every bit as much courage to turn and meet Lois’s gaze as it did to rise into the air to meet Doomsday, but he does it. He even somehow conjures up the ghost of a smile.

“Hey,” he says, and it’s a weak opening, but at least he made it.

She flinches.

Clark’s own flinch is reactive, an instinctive negation of this moment, when a mere word from him is enough to scare her. This is not what he wants, what he has ever (even in his darkest moments) wanted.

“I just needed to make sure you were okay,” she blurts out. Her voice is almost as hoarse as his; the bruises under her eyes nearly match those on his legs where Doomsday kept grabbing him and pulling him back into his claws (Clark shudders and tries to shake away the unwelcome memory; focuses on the here and now). He’s been unconscious or practically incoherent most of the time since waking up here, but he hasn’t seen her eat or drink anything at all. He wonders who is taking care of her while his parents tend to him.

When Clark doesn’t say anything (too busy trying to remember how many times Perry’s been there to bully Lois into looking after herself), Lois tenses. “I can go, if you really want me to. It’s just…you were dead, Clark. I watched you die and you just…you just stayed dead for so long, and…and now that you’re alive, I just wanted--no, I needed to see you be alive for a while. But…but I understand if you don’t want me--”

“Why would I want you to go?” Clark blinks at her in surprise. He steadfastly ignores all the references to his own death (human, he feels human, and he doesn’t want to face anything that will change that). “I wouldn’t have even been able to defeat Doomsday without you.”

She looks away, unusually small and frail. “You would have found a way,” she mutters. “I know you would have.”

“Maybe.” Clark swallows (forces away nightmare images that were all too real and still, at times, seem more real than the apartment around him). “But it would have been harder. And who knows?” He forces a smile. “I probably would have ended up dead a lot longer.”

Her glare is sharp and pointed. Apparently she doesn’t think it’s a joking matter (though really, Clark doesn’t know how else to treat it; humor is so much better than the alternatives…like terror, or veneration). “It’s my fault you even had to face Doomsday at all,” she spits out, and at this Clark has to bite back a real smile, because it’s good to see Lois Lane admitting fault with as much grace as she always has.

“Actually,” he points out, “Tempus said he took the Doomsday from our future, so if we can believe him, I would have had to face it eventually. This way, we got it over with early, and luckily for us, the death he kept threatening turned out to be a lot more temporary than one would expect.”

He doesn’t miss the way her eyes skate from his ruined chest to the sunset behind her. Just because he didn’t see her last night doesn’t mean she wasn’t there, listening to his screams. At the reminder, Clark looks away; he can’t explain why he feels so ashamed, but he does. Ironically, he wishes now that she weren’t here. The last thing he wants is for her to see him weak and broken.

“I’m sorry, Clark,” Lois says (and he relaxes when he remembers that she’s seen him far more broken than just screaming at mere physical wounds; she has seen him crushed and hopeless from emotional pains, and that is so much worse).

He doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Because this, here, her and him, is easy. It’s comfortable and simple to slip right back into bantering with her and teasing her. He likes it being easy with her, and he’s tired of being angry and hurt and bowed beneath the weight of heartbreak and lies. He’s tired of wondering if he really does hate her.

(He doesn’t.)

He wants to stop drifting in limbo, and move into the light.

“It’s all right,” he says softly. “We both had secrets, right? We both confessed them at the wrong times. We both believed Tempus when we shouldn’t have. We both broke each other’s hearts. That makes us even.”

Her stare is heavy and direct (weighted with the pain of all the hurts pressing up behind his succinct statements). “Don’t do that,” she says, so quietly he hears her only because even broken and bleeding, he is not human. “Don’t act like what happened is less than it was. Don’t underrate what I did to you. I lied about things that hurt you, and I manipulated your feelings, and I--”

“I lied too,” he interrupts her, because he knows what she did, has struggled and fought and avoided it and now wants to face it and pass it and get over it. He wants to move on. “I lied about who I was and made you think I was two different people, which was a lot more manipulative than I ever cared to think about. You did it for the fate of the future, and I did it for my loved ones and for myself. Not so different, in the end.”

“I didn’t do it for the future.”

He starts, then, jerked up from his perusal of his hands, twitching in his lap. “What?” he asks dumbly.

She looks away, to the sunlight dropping out of sight, sluggishly withdrawing its rosy hues from the sky. “I didn’t do it for the future, Clark, or for the greater good. I mean, that’s how it started, but…but after our first date, when we just walked together and you asked me to describe you…when you didn’t think I would be able to… I did it for you. I know that sounds stupid, but…you deserve everything good in this world, Clark.”

“And you thought that was a nice statue instead of you?” He winces as soon as the words are out of his mouth. He doesn’t want to be bitter (is doing everything he can to be understanding and forgiving), but that came a bit closer than he meant it to.

Her shrug is small, defeated, weary. She won’t look at him (he’s almost grateful for that consideration). “I’m not that much of a prize, Clark, not really. Especially not compared to what John Doe was offering you.”

“Stop saying that!” he exclaims with a violent wave of his arm, and then has to hold himself together until the spasm of blinding pain passes. When he can see again, can move carefully and adjust himself back to a better position, she’s there, standing over him, helping him up. Her hands are warm and tender, absurdly cautious as she props the pillow up behind him and settles him back against it. Unwillingly, instinctively, his breath catches in his throat at her proximity. He can smell her, worn and tired and wearing clothes his mom found for her in one of his drawers, but her, the undefinable, ineffable scent that makes him think (even still; always) of home.

He catches her hand before she can retreat back to her hiding place. “Stop saying that,” he says again. He’s weak, so tired that his voice sounds faded and husky, but she stills. She’s listening. Right here, right now, she is here beside him, pulled into his space, and she is meeting his gaze and listening and this might be his only chance to say this in a way she will accept.

“You’re my partner, Lois. Before anything else, before we were friends, even, we were partners. I’ve never had that before, someone who watched my back and stood at my side and did what I couldn’t and depended on me for everything else. I love being your friend, and of course I dreamed of more, but none of that would have been possible without our partnership first. That--having someone I can depend on, someone to help me and hold me up; someone who’s there when I look over--that is so much more important than any kind of future. And that’s what I want back. Please, Lois, no matter what else we’ve lost, please don’t stop being my partner.”

She’s crying. He can feel her tears dripping onto his skin; the salt fizzles against his wounds, an almost-pain that keeps him clinging to consciousness even though every cell in his body is crying out for rest. When she reaches up and places her hand on his cheek, he almost breaks down himself.

“Lane and Kent,” she whispers. “The hottest team in town.”

Relief sweeps through him in such a powerful surge he actually feels his heart skip a few beats. Her fingers entwine through his. The sweep of her fingers against his cheekbone dazzles him. It’s not perfect. It’s not everything he ever dreamed of.

But it’s enough.

(For now.)

“Thank you,” he murmurs. He wants to say more (wants to say good night and hear her say it back), but his body fails him.

Exhaustion drowns him and he slips away. But even in his nightmares, trapped and suffocating in the cold, he can still feel her hand pressed against his.

*

Darkness falls. He’s pulled into alertness by the lightning-surge of agony in his chest, along the gashes in his arms and the bruises in his legs and the fractures in his bones. Chills wrack his body until he can’t take a full breath in past the chattering of his teeth. For the first time, he wishes he had died (or…stayed dead, and he will never get used to that, he decides; it’s impossible to fully comprehend that he died and just…got…better?). He’s not strong enough for this, not equipped to handle this kind of searing pain; he hasn’t built up any kind of tolerance for it, and his pain threshold is far too low. If he could think clearly long enough to have a coherent thought, he would admire humanity all the more for being able to be wounded and in pain and still endure it.

He doesn’t think he can.

His dad is holding onto him, his mom is soothing him, and it isn’t enough. There is a gulf between them, a chasm that separates him from their care. He is drowning in dirt and stone and pressure, and they are safe above him, and as lonely as he feels, he cannot bear to even wish they were beside him.

Then, as if from a distance, he feels her hand in his.

“Clark,” she whispers, and it’s her voice. Lois’s voice. His partner. She’s there, beside him, bearing him up, supporting him, holding his hand, and her scent chases the stench of blood from his nostrils.

Yet he is still constrained, frozen solid. His bones are made of lead and magnetized to the earth beneath him. He can feel her hand, but he cannot lift it.

“Lois,” he chokes out. “Lois!”

“Shh,” she soothes. There’s a shuffling around him. His dad loosens his grip on him (Clark bites back a protest), then slides to the side. His mom is there, but her quiet humming comes from just beside his dad now. And there, holding his right hand, slipping underneath the blanket covering him, she’s there.

He’s held her before. She’s fallen asleep on his couch, leaned up against him. He held her over his body and did what he could to mitigate her migraine. But this…this is different. He can’t see past the sparks of pain clouding his vision. He can’t hear over the rushing of blood through his ears and the chaos of all the noises around him. He can’t move without setting off explosions in his nerve endings. He is alone, pinned down in a sea of isolation and torment.

But she’s there. Somehow, in some way he can’t explain, she bridges the gulf and floats at his side. And with her, she brings warmth. She stretches out alongside him, and her arm is draped over his stomach and her hair is feathering along his arm and her breath is warm against his throat, and Clark is finally able to take a breath.

Vaguely, he is aware of memories flitting around his mind like fireflies, never still, leaving phosphorescent trails in their wake. One alights, briefly, just long enough for him to spread its wings and relive all the moments when he felt entirely too light and unconnected, as if he might simply drift away up into the sky and never find his way back down again. Moments when Lois tugging him forward by his wrist or looping her arm through his or draping herself over his back gave him the tether he needed. Grounded him, anchored him, the fixed compass point he could not lose.

Now, it is different. Now he remembers lying in a grave and breathing his last, terrified gasps, and Lois standing there, bringing with her light and space and air. He was torn, then, between wanting to stretch out to the ends of space or to fold himself around her (undecided, so he’d done nothing at all, and that’s just the story of his life--and death--isn’t it?). But now he knows better. Now he knows that the only way to truly find freedom and impetus is to fall into her and damn the consequences.

So he hurts, but he does not care; he does not let it stop him. He stretches his feet to the end of the bed and elongates his spine and extends his arms, lets her rearrange herself over him, pressed all along his side, small but so much more than he can comprehend (and it is not so hard, after all, to know why he came back, how he came back, from the dead; not when he has her to hold onto, holding onto him in turn, fixing him in place in this life, this world, this moment). She is trembling in echo to his own chills, but she feels warm against him, as blazingly brilliant as the sun. She is there and the weight is gone and he is free and the absence of sunlight seems, suddenly, like only a temporary setback.

She is here, of her own free will, with no ulterior motives or secret agendas. She is here with him. She is here.

“Don’t leave me,” Lois whispers against his neck, words that are little more than sighs of air, heated and desperate. She slides her hand into his. “Stay here, Clark. Stay with me.”

He tightens his grip on her hand (gently, carefully, because he mustn’t forget how strong he still is), and he holds on.

With his parents on one side and Lois on the other, Clark remembers why he lived. He remembers what he still has to live for.

He remembers to move toward the light even if (especially if) it is hard.

And he endures.

*

The bruises fade. The gashes close and scar and disappear. The wound in his chest shrinks; the white of bone is hidden; the muscles knit back together. Clark stands to his feet after the third hellish night and totters on unsteady feet to the bathroom to clean himself. His dad has to help him finish but it's progress all the same.

He finishes a whole bowl of soup without dropping the spoon once.

He dresses and does not curl into a shivering ball of agony when the clothes veil his skin from the sun.

His parents stop crying so much, and he learns anew how to make them smile.

Lois holds his hand when he feels himself drifting away, and does not offer to leave again.

Perry comes and sits at his bedside and tells him not to worry. “I won’t give your secret away,” he says gruffly, as if it doesn’t need saying but he’ll say it anyway.

Clark nods, solemnly, accepting this as the vow it is. “Thank you.”

“Well, you’re doing more good than anyone else we write articles about. No need to spread around what it is you do in your spare time, right?” He cracks a smile, then, startling and comforting all at once. “Especially when that’s bringing in some front page stories for the Planet. Why give up a real newsman just when I had you all broken in?”

Something tight and frayed eases inside of Clark (because this is normal, and he’s always been afraid he’d never be able to feel that once anyone knew his Secret). “I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “That I disappeared on you before all this. I should have called, or let you know I’d be--”

“Now, just hold on a minute, Clark,” Perry interrupts him. “In the future, for the record, I’d definitely appreciate a head’s up, but…but I think we both know you had reason.”

Clark stills, breathless. Perry grins and glances meaningfully at Lois, asleep curled up on the window-seat, limned in gold and bronze, her hair a dark halo.

“I-I…” Clark stammers, and Perry laughs.

“Don’t worry. Your parents called for you. I’ve had Eduardo covering the Luthor case while you were out. If you keep mending like you have been, you might even be back in time to hear the verdict.”

“I’ll do my best.” Clark smiles at him (and for the first time since long before Doomsday, it does not seem a foreign motion). “Thanks, chief.”

“Uh, don’t thank me yet.” Perry pauses, tenses, shifts in his seat. Clark can hear his heart rate pick up a bit, can see his throat work before he speaks. “I got you out of the rubble as quickly as possible, but the media were all around that place, buzzing like groupies around Elvis, and a few of them have been claiming they saw someone making off with Superman’s body. They don’t have any definitive footage, but the going theory right now is that Superman is dead. I’ve been telling everyone that Clark was hurt when you got a bit too close to the action for the story, but…but those wounds of yours are pretty awful. Jimmy’s been wanting to come visit you—the kid’s been worried sick, to tell you the truth--but I don’t know what to tell him about why you aren’t at the hospital.”

The intrusion of the outside world is jarring. Clark actually has to brace himself against the headboard and turn his face to the sun for a minute before he can reply. The sight of Lois there, silhouetted against the daylight, is enough to remind him that he has to find a way back to the life he was so careless with before. She promised him partners, and he has to do his bit to meet her halfway.

“I’ll heal,” he finally says with an attempt at a smile. “Let Jimmy come visit. I can cover up the wounds, and I miss him.”

“And Superman?” Perry’s eyes are sharp, intent on him. “Do you want the Daily Planet to run a story for you?”

Clark stares. His breath is caught in his throat and his vision is hazing, but it has nothing to do with his wounds and everything to do with the enormity of Perry’s gesture. Since almost the moment he met Perry, Clark has admired his integrity and his devotion to the truth; this offer, to use his paper as Clark’s platform, is beyond anything he would have ever expected.

And this is what he almost gave up. This man, this job, this place in this city. He almost packed everything up and ran away from it, abandoned it in favor of an aimless, drifting life. He could have thrown it all away and only realized far too late what treasure he was missing.

“Perry,” he says, then stops (because the editor would far prefer pretending the gesture means nothing than to have it called out). “Thank you,” he finally says. “I…can I think about it for a bit before I let you know?”

“Sure, sure.” Perry coughs and scrubs his hands down his legs before standing. Clark smiles at the familiarity of the mannerisms. “And, Clark…” He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t take you to the hospital. At the time, I just…I didn’t think they could do anything for you. It kind of went beyond the normal when I saw a rock shatter beneath your hand while we were carrying you to the car. But…but maybe they could have saved you. They might have been able to keep you from dying--”

“No.” Clark shakes his head (hides a shudder at the thought of doctors hanging over him, peering down at him under a microscope, exclaiming over his resurrection and trumpeting the news of his alienness to the whole world). “My parents couldn’t have come to the hospital for Superman. No one I care about could have. I’d rather be here, believe me. You did the right thing.”

Perry studies him for a long moment before clasping a hand over Clark’s shoulder (and he counts it a victory when it doesn’t make him think of Doomsday at all). “So did you, son. We’d all be a lot worse off if it weren’t for you.” He straightens then, the moment too heavy for him, and squares his shoulders. “Now I’d better get back down to the Planet before the whole thing falls apart. Jimmy’s probably letting everyone there get away with slacking off.”

Clark doesn’t miss the considering look Perry gives Lois before he apparently decides he’s gone far enough outside of his comfort zone for one day. He clasps Clark’s shoulder one last time, stops to exchange a few words with Jonathan and Martha in the kitchen, and then he’s gone.

In the silence his departure brings, Clark stares at the closet--the wood and brick concealing his Superman Suits.

Superman is dead. To the world, at least, the superhero is gone, a sacrifice made for the greater good. A noble death, Clark thinks, and is struck by the sudden, urgent temptation to let him go. Just let the superhero die. This could be a deserving end for a grand experiment, the tragic conclusion to Superman’s story. No more lies. No more pressure. No more time-travelers painting targets on his back and sending Kryptonian beasts after him. No more ideal whose legacy is more important than Clark Kent’s happiness.

Perry knows his Secret, and he accepts it. Lois knows, and she…well, she’s still his partner. He could be Clark Kent, and still help people in the shadows, all without risking his life here.

He could. But Clark tilts his face toward the sun, and soaks in its radiance, and he knows that he won’t.

It would be easier to give up and live a quieter, simpler life. But he’s already realized that it’s not worth it to hide in shadows and cower in fear. Better by far to step into the light and strive for a better tomorrow.

And if that tomorrow includes a statue of him in the future…well, not everything’s perfect.

*

“Are you scared?” Lois asks. She rests her head against his shoulder, her eyes locked on the window and the purple streaks painting the sky in dark shades. Her hand is in his, her fingers threaded through his, her body pressed alongside his. On his other side, his parents are spread out across the couch they’ve moved even closer now, ready to leap up and help should he start screaming again. He knows they heard Lois’s question, but they say nothing, their attempt at giving him and Lois some privacy.

Clark looks down at Lois, and smiles. “No,” he says. “Night doesn’t last forever.”

Her mouth is tight when she looks away. “It lasts long enough,” she mutters.

He can’t stop himself: he reaches out his free hand and cups her cheek in his palm. Turns her face up toward his. Wills her to believe him. “It’s worth it, Lois. Everything we’ve gone through…it’s all worth it. Doomsday is dead, we’re all here, neither of us have to lie anymore, and you’re safe from John Doe. Although,” he sighs as the world outside this apartment with his family once more intrudes, “I suppose we’ll still have to do something about him. I know you said he was taken care of, but the police will surely need some kind of explanation for him, and we'll have to get rid of the Kryptonite cage.”

Her body goes rigid, her hand suddenly cold in his.

“Lois?” His brow furrows as he tries to duck his head to meet her gaze. The movement jars his chest and sends a spasm of white-hot pain through him, and by the time it fades back to its usual embers, Lois is fine again, her face free of any tension, her hand on his face as if they have traded places.

She’s still worried, though, so afraid as she watches him.

“It’s all right,” he says gently, as the stars take their place in the skies. “I’m okay, and I’m not going anywhere.”

All he wanted, all those months ago when she came to his apartment, was to know for sure how she felt about him. He wanted her to love him, to accept him, but most of all, just to know him. Not Clark-him and Superman-him, but him.

She does know him now, just as much as he knows her. And he knows how she feels about him--it is written across every line of her being, every molecule of her body, every layer of her soul. It shines out clearly through her eyes as she watches him, ready to hold him and soothe his every hurt and hold him together. I love you, she told him, and he did not think he could believe her, but he has always seen past her masks, and he was right, that night on his couch before all the darkest parts of their story: she proves it in quiet, subtler ways that cannot lie.

“It’s okay,” he promises her, and then, because he wants to say it (because he wants to hear her say it back), he adds, “Good night.”

Her smile is faint, but genuine. “Good night,” she replies.

(And it is.)

*