The woman – Lois – stiffened. Hatred and anger flashed in her eyes. Clark had the impression of a thunderstorm rolling in, black clouds billowing and lightning cracking within, just waiting to be unleashed on the world. But her wrath was the least of his worries. The pain from the Kryptonite was unreal, especially since he was already stripped of his powers from the last exposure he’d suffered through, followed by two months without a single shaft of sunlight.
“Please!” he pleaded. “Stop!”
“Let him die,” Lois told Bruce in a hollow tone.
“I can explain!” Clark cried.
“This had better be good,” Bruce said after a moment. He touched the remote again, and the vents snapped shut.
Clark collapsed against the bars of the cage, his entire body sagging with relief. He coughed harshly, gasping for breath and panting with the effort of expanding his lungs to their full capacity. His neck muscles – which had been taut against the agony of the radioactive stone – slowly went slack. For half a minute, he didn’t move from his spot on the floor, his head hanging down – too heavy for him to look up just yet. Then, by degrees, he forced himself to look up, though his legs still felt like jelly and he didn’t want to chance trying to stand.
“Did that make you feel better?” he asked, locking his burning gaze on Bruce. “Did it make you feel like a big man, a hero, to cripple me with that rock? You’re just as sick as my employer. You’re not any better than him at all! And to think! I was foolish enough to hope you wouldn’t be.”
“The fact that he let you live is more than you deserve,” Lois hissed.
“I thought you didn’t believe in murder, Miss Lane,” Clark shot back, a light, but tired, veneer of sarcasm coating his words.
“That was before I knew you murdered my family,” she shot back venomously.
“That wasn’t my decision!”
“Yeah? Well, you sure as hell did it anyway!”
Clark flinched at the hatred in her voice, but he couldn’t blame her for her vehemence. He’d killed people she’d loved.
“I didn’t want to…I had no choice!” he tried to defend himself.
“There’s always a choice,” Bruce interrupted in a firm voice.
“I…not for me, there wasn’t. Never has been. Not really,” Clark replied wearily, wanting Lois to see how sincere he was being.
Bruce must have seen something in Clark’s features, or maybe it was in the way Clark was looking at Lois. He touched Lois’ shoulder briefly, drawing her attention to him, rather than Clark. She turned to him with a look at would wilt flowers and curdle milk.
“What?” she asked, clearly upset with his interruption, as though he’d stopped her from flaying Clark alive with her words.
“Why don’t you talk with him?” he suggested, his voice a whisper that Clark barely caught as he pulled himself up to stand.
“Why me?” she asked back, in a similar tone. “You’re the one with the remote.”
“He doesn’t trust me,” Bruce replied back. “But the way he’s looking at you…” He shrugged slightly.
“You think he…trusts me?” she asked, her eyes widening in surprise.
“No. I think our dear killer is quite taken with you,” Bruce corrected with a conspiratorial smile and a side glance at Clark.
Lois made a face as though she’d just caught of whiff of Bruce’s sweaty gym socks. “No thanks.”
“Come on, Lois. This is your chance. Call it…an interview,” he prodded her, while Clark acted like he was oblivious as to what was being said. “You need answers. So do I. But we won’t be getting them if I stay here. Let me go talk to Jimmy. And you talk to the assassin. He seems…eager, to let you know he didn’t want to kill your family. Listen to what he has to say. Find out whatever you can. You could be the one to help us take down whoever is ordering him to kill.”
Lois sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, then appeared to mull things over. “Okay, but give me the remote. If I don’t get answers…”
“No.” Bruce cut her off with one sharp word.
“Bruce…”
“Not a chance, Lois. He killed your family. I won’t give you easy access to the one thing we know could kill him,” Bruce explained quickly.
“You don’t trust me,” Lois accused.
“No, I don’t,” Bruce confirmed firmly. “We need him alive. I can’t risk your anger getting the better of you.”
Lois scowled. “Like you did, when he wouldn’t answer your question?”
“That was different. If I need to prod him into a more cooperative direction…”
“That’s all I’m asking for. A tool to motivate him to speak,” Lois interrupted with a casual wave of her hand.
“No. That’s my final decision,” Bruce said with finality. He stalked off before she could argue the point further.
For a moment, Lois watched him go, her face a mask of anger and disbelief that he’d shut her down so thoroughly. Clark studied her as she stood there, looking torn as to whether or not she should chase Bruce down and give him a piece of her mind. He smiled to himself. She was giving away so much about herself that it was almost laughable. Clark knew he wasn’t the wisest person out there – his near-imprisonment in Lex Tower with limited access to news events and the like left him stunted in a number of ways. But he was shrewd in reading other people. It was a natural gift of his, though he knew it wasn’t one of his powers. And, in that moment, he could read Lois like a book.
This was a woman who was unused to people standing in her way. She was someone who barreled over other people to get what she wanted, knocking down walls if she had to in order to reach her goal. She was a natural leader in her own right, and backing down to Bruce’s commands wasn’t something she was comfortable with. And yet, for all of her bravado and stony exterior, Clark sensed a vulnerability, deep within her. Perhaps it was because of how troubled her eyes looked. Maybe it was in the way her brow furrowed in what appeared to be worry. Whatever it was, it was there, and it was real. And Clark, for the first time in his life, found himself unsure of what to do with the knowledge of someone else’s weakness. He knew he didn’t want to exploit it. And yet, if he did, maybe he could use it to his advantage in order to break free of his tiny, underground prison.
Do you really deserve freedom? his mind whispered in the Devil’s voice. You’ve killed so many.
I had no choice, he replied with a mental sigh, guilt tugging at his heart. I had to kill, or be killed. It wasn’t an excuse, he knew, but for him, it had been the one guiding truth that he’d been forced to live by.
Lois turned her fiery gaze at him, and Clark found himself withering under her hatred. She stormed her way over to the cage and brazenly grabbed a fistful of Clark’s shirt. She yanked it forward and Clark smashed his forehead into the cell bars.
“I should strangle you where you stand,” she hissed.
“Go on then,” Clark replied, challenging her. Whatever he might feel about deserving punishment for his crimes, he refused to go down without a fight. “I’m right here. Vulnerable. Unprotected. No one is watching.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him what she chose to do. “Kill me. Take your revenge.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she growled in a deadly tone.
“It’s true, what they say. It gets easier after the first kill. Kill me. Then go and kill anyone else who’s wronged you,” he continued in a nearly gravelly tone of voice.
Lightning crackled in Lois’ eyes and, for a moment, Clark was sure she’d actually go and do it. He wondered if he’d gone too far in taunting her. But a second later, the lightning subsided and she let go of his shirt, shoving him in the chest and away from her. Clark stumbled back a step, then rubbed the spot where his head had contacted the bars of his cell.
“You deserve to die,” she announced harshly. “But I won’t be the one to do it.” It seemed she was speaking more for her benefit than his.
Clark gave her a lingering once-over with his eyes. “No, I suppose you won’t,” he decided. “We can’t all be strong enough to do what’s necessary.”
“Strong?” she scoffed. “Only cowards take lives.”
Clark knew she was baiting him, but he wasn’t going to play her game. Instead, he would make her play his game. “Is that why Bruce won’t give you the remote? He doesn’t trust you, you know. He probably knows you’ll be too tempted to hit that button. Maybe keep the vents open just a little too long. Hmm?” He raised his head a bit and jutted his chin out in defiance. “If I’m such a coward for taking lives, then what would that make you?”
Lois reached back through the bars to grab him again, but this time Clark was ready for her. He ducked back as she huffed angrily. “Why you little…”
“Temper, temper,” he chastised, wagging a finger at her like a disappointed parent or teacher. His tone was more condescending than was necessary, but he wasn’t going to hold back, not against his jailers, even if one of them did happen to be an attractive woman. He grabbed her wrist tightly, refusing to let go when she tried to tug herself free.
“Hey! Let go!” she shouted at him.
He grinned menacingly at her before pulling her in closely to whisper in her ear. “You’re no different than me. Don’t pretend that, if given the same choices and circumstances, you wouldn’t have done exactly what you needed to do in order to survive. It’s instinct – the drive to survive – and it’s inescapable.” He let go of her then, just as she gave her arm a particularly hard yank to try and break away from his grasp.
“Survival instincts are ingrained in all of us, Miss Lane. I’m sure you’ve been confronted with them before, chasing down stories in bad neighborhoods, tracking down criminals, busting drug dealers. The desire to stay alive…it can make a man do…well, just about anything.” He let his eyes rake over her in a way that made her squirm. “And,” he added with a smirk, “it can make a woman do things she’d never even thought of in her worst nightmares…until pushed.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about you smarmy, arrogant, self-centered, self-righteous…”
“Ah, ah, ah,” he warned her coldly. “There’s that temper again. I wonder…do you ever shut up? How Bruce puts up with you is beyond a mystery to me. Unless your mouth has other talents, other than issuing forth a constant stream of words.”
“How dare you!” she thundered.
“I know his type. Rich. Powerful. Famous. And I know they don’t typically go for members of the press unless there’s something in it for them. He waggled his eyebrows in a lecherous manner. “How many ‘exclusives’ did you let him give you, before he let you play with the big boys?”
She rolled her eyes. “Pig.”
Clark put his hands up in a gesture of pacification. “Okay, okay. We won’t discuss your…professional relationships.”
“We won’t be discussing me at all,” Lois countered harshly. Then she stopped, her features softening a bit as she appeared to contemplate something. Perhaps she was remembering Bruce’s words to her. Perhaps she was switching to a different tried-and-true reporting technique. He wasn’t sure which it was, but the change in her face was astounding. He’d recognized that she was attractive while she’d been busy yelling at him. But this softer look made her look radiant, almost like a benevolent angel. “After all, I’m at the disadvantage here.”
“Oh really?” Clark said, biting back a laugh. He spread his arms wide to gesture to the bars around him. “I’m stuck in a cage, in case your powers of observation are a bit duller than I’d expect from a reporter.”
Lois’ eyes gleamed with some inner amusement. “Perhaps. But you know my name. And you’ve yet to offer yours.” She almost purred the statements, and Clark felt his heart skip a beat, though he knew it was simply her way of trying to entice information out of him.
He swallowed hard. “I’m no one.”
“Right,” she said sarcastically, drawing the word out longer than was necessary. “Try again.”
He shook his head. “What does it matter? Are you going to engrave it on a tombstone for me?” He shook his head again. “No, it doesn’t matter. It never did. It never will.” He paused for the span of five heartbeats. “Tell me, Miss Lane, if you hadn’t so eagerly given up your name earlier, and I had asked for it, would you have told me?”
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” she responded guardedly, putting her hands on her hips. “What’s your excuse?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Clark said, trying to deflect the spotlight off of himself.
“I don’t need to. I’m not the prisoner here,” she threw back in defiance, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her left ear. “So start talking.”
“I…I’m no one. My name means nothing. It’s…a label I was slapped with, nothing more,” he said bitterly, looking down at the tile floor.
Lois rolled her eyes in a way that was supposed to get her irritation across but which Clark found somehow endearing. “Cut the crap, you psychopath. Bruce may not have given me his remote, but I know where he keeps the piece of space rock that brought you to your knees with that night on the balcony. And I have ways to get it.”
Her voice was so devoid of emotion that he found himself believing every word of what she was saying. He took a deep breath, then sighed nosily.
“You want the truth?”
“No, I want you to make up some happy little fairytale,” she retorted, gesturing broadly.
There was something about the way she was looking at him that went straight to his heart. There was so much fire in her. But not in the same way that Lex had always seemed to be a volcano, laying dormant, just waiting to erupt at the slightest provocation. Instead, Lois’ fire was made up of passion, of wanting to get to the truth, of wanting to pursue justice. True, he could see that she was furious with him as well, but he couldn’t blame her for that. Still, her ire put fear into his heart. He wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t as bad a person as he appeared to be. He didn’t want her to hate him, though she had every right to be. For the first time in his life, it mattered to him what someone thought of him. With Lex, he’d long ago given up caring what the billionaire felt toward him, so long as he wasn’t angry enough to use the Kryptonite collar. But with Lois…
Her opinion matters, he realized as his heart skipped a beat.
But trust wasn’t something he was accustomed to simply just dole out. He couldn’t afford to let down his guard.
Would it kill me, really, to give her a tiny morsel of information? he wondered while she looked expectantly at him.
Take a leap of faith, he tried to encourage himself.
Okay, but just a small piece of information, he decided.
“The truth is…I don’t even know who I am anymore. I…the name that was given to me, the identity I’ve assumed for the past twenty-plus years…I’m not sure if I’m that man or the one I used to be or if I’ve ever had a true identity.”
“Stop talking in circles,” she commanded. “What did your master call you?”
He took another deep breath before taking the plunge. “Clark. Clark Kent.”
“And before then?” Lois demanded.
“My name was Kal,” he confessed in a small voice.
“Kal Kent?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Kal what then?” She took a threatening step forward.
“I…can’t. If he found out I told you…” he protested in sudden terror.
“Who? Bruce?” she snapped.
He shook his head again, this time mutely.
“Who?” she demanded again, her anger rising like a volcano about to erupt.
“I can’t! He’ll kill me and all of you too, if he knows I revealed who I am!” he couldn’t stop the fear from ripping through his words like a tornado. He once again gripped the bars of his cell. “Please, don’t make me say it.”
Lois’ frown deepened and ice settled into her eyes. “And Bruce can kill you if you don’t reveal who you are.”
“Please,” he pleaded softly. “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t gone by my old name in decades. It doesn’t matter. Who I was…he’s long dead and buried. I’ll never be him again.”
“Fine, have it your way. Bruce will get it out of you, one way or another,” she threatened as she turned to storm away.
“Wait!” Clark reached out toward her, as if he could halt her footsteps somehow. “There’s one thing…”
“What? What could you possibly have to say to me?” she asked over her shoulder.
Clark sighed heavily. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your family.” He looked away, ashamed of his actions.
But Lois didn’t respond. She simply kept walking, ignoring his words as if they were the buzzing of a bothersome fly. And once again, Clark was left all alone.
To Be Continued…
