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Contact: Jimmy Olsen
***

One minute everything was fine, the next he’d lost everything, with no more than a heartbeat as transition.

Jimmy liked flying, particularly in the helicopter where he could feel the world streaming past, excitement and opportunity and motion all combined. Lois and Clark were bouncing ideas and questions behind him, Perry hadn’t even hesitated before letting him come along, and his camera was warm in his hands. All was right in his world.

Then Jimmy looked back and Lois was gone. Dropping. Falling. About to die.

Jimmy’s heart lodged in his throat, but it was fine, everything would be okay. Lois almost died all the time and Superman always saved her. The sky was the hero’s turf, even, so this would be a cinch for him. Everything was going to turn out great--maybe he’d even get some award-worthy pictures out of it. Maybe Perry would smile and clap him on the shoulder and tell him he’d done good.

It’d be fine. She was going to be okay. Superman would be there.

Except there was no time. Jimmy had barely processed the fact that Lois was gone before Clark called her name--

--and jumped.

He jumped!

“CK!” Jimmy screamed. An eternity too late. Clark was already gone and this time the fear could not be so easily controlled.

Because CK couldn’t fly.

Because Jimmy couldn’t remember a single time when Superman had come to save Clark--it was always Clark’s own facility with knots or Lois and Jimmy himself who came through for CK or a science method that brought him back after irreparable damage had already been done.

Because CK had died once before, and if he could die once with no warning at all, then who was to say it couldn’t happen again. In a second. In a heartbeat. In the time it took Clark to yell Lois’s name and leap out of a helicopter after her.

Jimmy was screaming at the pilot, though he wasn’t sure what. The helicopter was banking. Jimmy was trying--and trying and trying--to catch a glimpse of Lois or Clark or, most importantly of all, Superman.

With no luck. No red and blue. No cape. No hope.

But it’d be fine. Of course it would. It’d all turn out right, he knew it, which was why he could stop thinking about how much he really couldn’t go through a funeral for CK and start realizing that he should have known. The instant he saw Lois slip out of the helicopter’s side, he should have known CK would dive after her.

That was what Clark did, after all. It was what he always did.

It was why he had died last time, too.

And Jimmy wished he could be mad. He wished he could rage and scream and even punch Clark--the living, breathing Clark who couldn’t be dead, not again--and make him realize that there were other people who cared whether he lived or died. Other people who’d be broken and hurt and damaged beyond repair if Clark were to die.

But he couldn’t. Because CK cared. CK loved. And CK never weighed the balances or measured the costs, and how could Jimmy hate him for that?

He couldn’t, but he hoped Superman arrived like he always did--for Lois. Because if CK died, Jimmy was really afraid he’d never be able to care again, and he didn’t need Clark to tell him that that’s not what he would want as his legacy.

There was a flash of red on the tarmac--so bright that Jimmy blinked away tears. So hopeful that he could make himself stop shouting at the pilot and eke out a bit of patience for what he’d find on the ground.

But as the helicopter came down for a landing, Jimmy realized something else. As much as he had always envied the bond between Lois and Clark, he hoped that he never loved so deeply.

So dangerously.

So selfishly.

***