***
Time blurs into a ceaseless montage of exhaustion and aches and breaths so heavy in his lungs he grows used to rubbing at his chest trying to break them up into small enough pieces he can cough them out. He never has enough time with Lois to make him feel rested or whole, and as the days blend together, he has fewer chances to visit her at all. It chafes at him, makes him snappish and distracted, but there’s no choice.
Nor’s here and causing trouble. Everywhere Clark goes, Nor has been there first, casting aspersions, seeding doubts, offering alternatives. Clark spends more time straightening out all the misinformation Nor leaves in his wake than he does actually moving his own plans forward. Zara takes to staying with the Council of Elders, trying to provide damage control for Nor’s own frequent visits. She starts looking strained, too, her mental walls fraying as Ching grows sterner and grimmer, but Clark doesn’t have time to help them.
The people need him. He can’t afford to sit down and talk with everyone he meets, like he used to do while traveling Earth, but even the few words he exchanges with the ones who are willing to do more than bow and agree with him are enough to make him long to help them.
They need him. They’ve lost everything but are trying to rebuild, and instead of helping them, the nobility are trapped in a succession war. Clark starts out listening to Zara and Ching, trying to focus on Nor and the long-term effects, but soon that all falls away. He can’t stop thinking about the eyes of the people he meets, gaunt and hollow and resigned. Afraid to hope but wanting desperately to have something to believe in. Hungry for change and looking for faith and convinced all along that grim survival is all that is left to them.
Clark throws himself into traveling farther, meeting more people, instigating more changes, small ones for now, but they will grow and snowball. Already, the first yields are coming in from his suggested harvests, a promising return that has bought him at least some time and faith.
“I’ll do what I can,” he says, over and over again, as little by little, more people begin to come to him with their needs.
It’s a meager promise, but it’s the only honest one he can give, and sleep falls away to make sure he keeps it, exhaustion settles in like an old friend, close and presumptive, and Clark ignores the aches and pains in this ordinary body he isn’t used to.
(He’s weak, so weak, when everyone here is fighting and trying and not stopping, so he powers on, inspired by their own example.)
It scares him, occasionally, when he stops long enough to realize just how long it’s been since he’s seen Lois, but inevitably, there will be another emergency, another meeting with Zara to discuss how much more support Nor has garnered, another distraction that will keep him on New Krypton longer.
The stars are bright, especially vivid in a dusky sky, and Clark often looks up at them and rubs at his chest (at the breaths walling up his throat and the ring hanging there beside a bit of Earthen soil) before he turns his eyes back to the ground and takes up his burden once more.
It’s a harsh existence, lonely and cold and so much longer than he thought it would be, but it sustains him. It gives him purpose.
(It keeps him too busy to realize just how alone he is now and how much he misses his old life, so far away it seems nothing more than a dream.)
***
“I worry about you,” Lois says once, her eyes on the papers in front of her, as if she’s trying not to let him know just how serious she is. “You look thin, Clark, and tired. What do Zara and Ching say about that cough of yours?”
“I’m not invulnerable anymore,” he tells her, careful to smile while he says it, so she’ll hear that he isn’t worried (he is, though; this cough hurts, but then, he’s not used to pain, so maybe it’s not really as bad as all that). “And even though they gave me some inoculations before we arrived, I was bound to get sick eventually.”
“You’ve been coughing for weeks,” she says before she looks up and gives him a smile (he hasn’t forgotten so much that he can’t tell it’s forced). “Anyway, if they say it’s fine, I guess… What has Nor done now?”
“More of the same.” He knows she wants to hear everything, is desperate for news and a way to help, but he spends his endless days doing nothing but worrying about Nor. Here, for just a little while, he wants to think about something else. “Lois,” he says, “do you remember any of Perry’s Elvis stories?”
Her brow wrinkles. “Some of them. Why?”
“I was just…trying to remember them. Jimmy even told one or two. I guess the Chief was rubbing off on him.”
“Lots of things on New Krypton remind you of the Rock and Roll King?” Lois asks, a glint of humor in her eyes.
“No.” He actually chuckles (it sounds dusty, makes him wonder just how long it’s been since he last laughed). “I just…I’m afraid I’ll forget it all.”
(Even now, he can’t quite remember the English words he’s looking for, as if he has to strain past Kryptonian nouns and verbs for the right syllables, the strange sentence order.)
“I wouldn’t mind forgetting a few of those Elvis stories,” Lois says dryly.
“I know.” Clark shrugs uncomfortably. Zara wasn’t able to get away to accompany him this time, and Ching went to retrieve some food for them, so it’s actually just him and Lois. If only he didn’t feel like the air was filled with unsaid things between them. If only he hadn’t promised Zara that he’d be faithful.
“What is it?” Lois asks, moving to sit beside him on the bed.
“All my powers are gone,” he whispers to his hands. “I just…I don’t know if my photographic memory was part of that or not. What if I start forgetting everything, Lois? What if I--”
“I’ll remind you,” she says. When she hugs him, he falls forward into her, soaking in her warmth and hoping it will calm the cold chills that have become near-constant. “I won’t let you forget, Clark.”
“Remind me how we met,” he says into her neck, his lips playing against her skin (her shiver reverberates across his entire frame).
“Well, I was on the trail of a story, eager to get somewhere, and Perry interrupted to introduce me to some guy he was interviewing. How was I to know that guy would get a job there? Or last so long? Or,” her voice drops low, a murmur into his ear, “come to mean so much to me? Because you do, Clark--you mean everything to me. So don’t worry about me here, okay? Just do what you have to.”
“And then maybe you’ll actually take the time to shake my hand?” he teases, still caught up in his memory of that first time he saw her, felt the magnetic pull of her certainty and her intensity.
“Oh, I’ll do a lot more than shake your hand,” she says, and it’s a good thing Ching comes back, then, or Clark would have broken his promise.
But over dinner, Lois tells him more stories, her voice weaving a cocoon around him, a haven he takes back with him so that even when he is tired and beleaguered and out of his depth, he can hear her voice reminding him of everything he has to fight for.
***
When Nor finally makes his move, Clark is actually relieved. He’s tired and his bones ache and it’s gotten so hard to breathe. More, the problems of his people keep piling up so high that he feels as if they will crush him. It’s easier, in a way, to face Nor and finally have their long-delayed confrontation than to continue picking away at seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
“You’re under arrest,” Nor tells him, so gleeful that Clark can feel a bit of giddiness himself, tainted with Nor’s cruelty and pricking against his mental walls.
“On what charges?” Zara demands, all poise and power--until she, too, is taken into custody.
“For treason,” Nor says.
Clark sees Ching slipping away, disappearing to safety, and he’s relieved. (Lois will be taken care of; surely Ching will see to that, if nothing else.)
“The Council of Elders will--”
“Will what?” Jenn Mai steps out from Nor’s shadow, smirking and satisfied. Clark is buffeted by the strength of Zara’s outrage, her betrayal, but it doesn’t matter.
The grip on his arms tighten, and Clark lets himself sink a bit into their hold. He’s done what he can, after all. Made his suggestions and altered the bit they allowed him to, spoke to people and offered them even the hint of another way. Now, all that’s left is to stop Nor, and with Nor himself forcing the confrontation, this is it.
One way or another, this will all end.
(One way or another, he will not be forced to stay here for much longer.)
***
The trial is a blur. Because Zara is complicit in his crimes, Clark does his best to refute the charges and make a stand that can bear up against the power Nor and his bullied allies are giving to the trial. But he won’t lie (can’t lie, when there are so many lies already).
He is loyal to Earth. He does want to change things about the Kryptonian society. He would rather be gone from this place.
It’s not treason that he’s committed, he knows, but it’s close enough. Close enough that Nor doesn’t need much more than witnesses scared into testifying that Lord Kal-El has spoken of Earth, referred to Earth, compared New Krypton to Earth; a few Elders affirming that Kal-El was indeed hidden away on Earth and only retrieved recently; and Zara’s own unwilling testimony that Clark almost didn’t accompany her back to their world.
Nor is terrifying. He’s brutal. He’s self-serving. But when it comes right down to it, he’s Kryptonian, and familiar, and an evil they know. If there is one thing Clark knows about people, it’s that they will always choose the familiar over the strange.
“Guilty,” Jenn Mai proclaims.
“Guilty,” the other Elders agree.
Tre sighs and shakes his head, something almost disillusioned in his eyes. “Guilty,” he says.
And it’s done.
Zara will be married to Nor (a terrible fate for her, he’d wish better, but she’s strong and smart and has allies of her own, has built up quiet support in these past months, and Clark thinks he would bet on her over Nor in the long run).
Clark will be put to death, his atoms scattered across the universe.
(And Lois, unmentioned, still secret and hidden, will be safe. Ching is with her; maybe he will be able to take her back to Earth.)
It’s not as much as he wanted to accomplish. It’s not the end he dreamed of.
(But it’s an end, and he’s so tired, he cannot bring himself to care too much.)
Maybe he finally can let go, for real this time.
***
When they take him up to the ship, Clark begins to care a lot. He feels, at once, more awake, more aware, than he has in months. Why are they coming here? What could they want here? His mind is filled with possibilities, with images of Nor gleefully revealing that he knew about Lois all along, that before Clark is put to death, he must watch Lois killed too.
Zara wriggles closer until she can set her bound wrist against his. “Kal-El,” she whispers, “guard your mind or you’ll give away the very thing you seek to protect.”
With a great effort, Clark forces up mental walls, crams his thoughts back behind their wavering defense, calms his frantic heartbeat. His lungs have seized up and he begins coughing, almost retching in his attempt to breath in some air. Even here aboard the ship, where usually his breathing is a bit easier, he struggles for long minutes while Tre stares at him with what looks to be genuine worry.
“Weak,” Nor sneers. “And this is what you thought could lead our people, Zara? I thought you a bit brighter than that.”
“When you’re the alternative, anything would look good,” Zara says with cool composure. “But, yes, I do believe that he is an impressive leader. It’s a shame your arrogance and selfishness will deprive New Krypton of its future.”
“Does he let you talk all the time?” Nor came close enough to casually slap her across the cheek. Ignoring Tre’s outburst and the gasps from the other Elders, oblivious to the lead in Clark’s surging blood as he fights his captors, Nor smiles down at Zara. “I think a gag will look very appealing on you.”
“Lor Nor, I must insist you show some respect!” Tre demands. “Lady Zara is--”
“To be my wife,” Nor says. “And I am your ruler now, so you should consider showing some of that respect you care so much about.”
Despite the vote Tre cast against him, Clark feels bad for the Elder. The familiar evil is sometimes worse than the strange one.
“Nor,” he says, drawing the man’s attention. “You’re not actually ruler until I’m dead. Why are we up here?”
“I thought it fitting.” Nor cocks his head, diverted by this opportunity to gloat. “We could have torn your being to pieces and splatted them across the cosmos from the surface, too, but why give you the chance to become a martyr to the people watching? And why not use this ship you seem so strangely connected to as the means of destroying you?”
Tre fades away, safe for the moment, and Nor is once more intent on Clark, not on searching the ship or asking why it’s so important to him. Once more, Clark lets himself relax. He closes his eyes against the pounding in his head, bolsters his mental walls, and lets himself think (in these, his final moments) of Lois.
This will hurt her. It will wound her deeply. Convincing her to go back to Earth without destroying Nor will be hard. But eventually, back with his parents and Perry and Jimmy and the Daily Planet and the people who need her clarion truths…she will heal. She will survive. She’ll live.
Please, he thinks, imagining the plea as a bird winging out from his mind toward Ching, wherever he is. Please take Lois home. Keep her safe. Help her live.
They lead him to a room he’s never seen before, a room he doesn’t remember Lois mentioning when she talked about her wandering walks. There’s a man-shaped cage in the middle of the room. The Elders and guards spread out to face that cage while Nor pulls Zara up beside him. Clark is escorted to the cage. He remembers another cage, bigger but scarier, green and searing, keeping him from saving Lois from a fate worse than death. He catches a glimpse of Zara, bound for a similar fate with another monster, and wonders if maybe this was always his fate--to stand removed, caged and isolated, while the people he cares for are claimed by others more genetically suited but morally depraved.
I’m sorry, he tries to tell Zara. This isn’t what she wanted, what she left her people for, traveling through space on a wild goose chase on the whisper of a rumor of a lost El son. This isn’t what made her able to close her mind to Ching’s love and devotion as she bound herself to a man she knew would never love her. I’m sorry.
For an instant, her eyes tighter. There’s moisture there, pooling in a refraction of the room’s bright lights. He thinks she probably returns his apology to him, but he doesn’t need it. She loves her people. She wants the best for them. How could she not have found him and asked him to return with her?
Maybe, in another world, another lifetime, he could have stood at her side and been the ruler-partner she and New Krypton need. (Maybe, but he doesn’t think so; he is not suited for this position. His soul is not shaped to be in love with anyone but the oh-so-human Lois Lane.)
They close the bars around him with a clang that rings like dynamite in his ears, resounds through his pounding head, reverberates through his aching bones. The guards are expressionless. Nor is triumphant. The Elders are wary, uncertain, betraying the beginnings of regret.
Too late.
There’s so much he should have told Lois. So many things he should have said, so many more stories he wanted to hear, so many moments they could have shared. He wasted so much time on being exhausted, on staying below when he should have been seeing her.
In an instant, Clark sees an entire lifetime laid out before him. A lifetime as Lois’s husband, at her side, investigating and writing and helping, buoyed up by her truth and her certainty and her love, and maybe they were from alien worlds, maybe there would never have been children, maybe there would have been sorrows he can’t fathom now, but they would have been together. Should have been together.
He doesn’t think he could have chosen differently. Doesn’t think that once he heard of New Krypton, he ever could have decided not to come and do all he could for them. But oh, he wishes he had never heard of them. Wishes he’d had the chance to live that lifetime with Lois Lane.
Lois. Lois. Lois.
The beloved heartbeat resounds. He can’t hear it, not really, not anymore, but he imagines that he can. Closes his eyes on the aliens before him and strains for the heart that made everything worthwhile.
“I love you, Lois,” he whispers under his breath, a secret revealed and covered up by the sound of Nor’s gloating.
And then there’s no more time at all.
His dry skin evaporates. His leaden blood is seared to nothing. His weak muscles disintegrate. His aching bones dissolve.
Scattered across the universe, belonging to nothing and no one, an eternal wanderer, an orphan doomed to never be found (by two kindly farmers, by a gruff editor with a heart of gold and a photographer with more loyalty than money, by a woman who accepted him without question and devoted herself to him without wavering).
Finally, for maybe the first time in his life, he has no choice but to let go. And even so, he cannot let go of everything. Not quite.
Lois…
***
Then his bones are remade, his muscles stretched back over them, his veins once more filled with life-giving liquid, his skin encapsulating pain and hope in equal measures.
He’s alive.
He’s still here.
Ching is standing in front of Lord Nor, Tre backing him up, Zara watching with a look of pride there on her features for anyone who knows how to read it. There’s noise, so much noise that it overwhelms him, but he can’t care about that.
Because in front of everything, just in front of him, barely waiting for the guards to open his cage, dressed in Kryptonian clothes, is Lois.
Lois Lane. Always the first to be where she shouldn’t, never able to turn away from anyone who needs her, and always, always able to find another way.
“Clark,” her lips mouth, though she carefully doesn’t say it out loud. (The sight of that name brings him to life in a way the rebuilding of his body didn’t.)
Then the doors are open and he’s falling forward, sagging into her. She catches him, bears him up, holds him upright with strength abundant.
Clark lets himself lean into her. Lets himself breathe deep of her scent and her presence. Lets himself savor the feel of her and the warmth of her.
He’s been destroyed and remade, but he won’t feel complete until it can be him and Lois again, like it used to be, like it should be.
“Lois,” he murmurs into her hair.
“Shh.” Her hand is a soft caress against the nape of his neck. “It’s okay, Clark. It’s okay, I’m going to save you.”
“You already did,” he tells her (and wishes she knew the truth of this statement, made true again and again and again).
Her arms tighten around him. For the first time in ages, he feels glad to be alive.
Clark closes his eyes, and lets everything else fall away.
***
“A fight.” His voice sounds dull as he repeats the words. “To the death.”
“You can do it,” Lois says immediately. “Ching says you can do it.”
Ching doesn’t look quite as certain as Lois implies, but he nonetheless nods. “You can, Kal-El. You’ve mastered the many moves of the drei. If you can bring yourself to absolute focus and make the ultimate move, then you can beat Nor.”
“The ultimate move.” Clark lets his heavy head sag down, too tired to lift it. “You mean the killing move. Because that’s how this ends: a death.”
“Yes,” Zara said succinctly. “There is no other way, Kal-El.”
“No. That’s not me. I’m not doing that.”
Zara moves to stand straight in front of him, so resolute and imposing that he has no choice to but to look up and meet her gaze. “Kal-El, this is how you save my people. I know you can do this. You must do this.”
“Zara.” Clark forces himself to his feet, makes his shoulders remain unbowed, ensures his eyes don’t leave hers. “I have given up so much for you and your people. My parents, my friends, my job. I’ve given up Superman and I’ve given up Clark. I’ve become Kal-El for you, and I don’t regret that choice. I would make that sacrifice for you and your people again. But this, this is the one thing that I cannot give up. I won’t kill him.”
“Then he will kill you,” she says steadily. “And he will marry me, and he will subjugate our people until there is nothing left. And then, since he knows about Earth and since he does not know how to fix the problems here, he will turn his eye to the Humans. Your insistence on his life…will cost billions.”
“Zara!” Lois snaps. Her hand is warm around his elbow. “What do you think you’re--”
“She’s right,” Ching says. “Nor cannot be stopped by any more political moves or held by mere walls. He will keep destroying everything in his sight until he is destroyed himself.”
“And if you will not fight him,” Zara says, “then you will be put to death and he will rule uncontested.”
“Give us a minute,” Lois says, and stares them down until they retreat to their side of the room (hard to think of it as the bridal chambers anymore, Clark thinks, when so much has happened).
“I can’t, Lois,” he says. “I’ve already lost so much of myself here, I can’t lose this too.”
“I know.” Lois swallows, soft and intent as she takes his hands. “But…if there really is no other way…maybe…”
“I can’t,” he says again, but this time, he hears the desperation in his own voice. Stripped naked and exposed in front of her.
He’s afraid (afraid that he can kill Nor, that he will kill Nor, that he wants Nor dead; that he is, after all, just another Lex Luthor waiting to happen).
“Oh, Clark.” Lois frames his face in her hands. “You’ll stop him. I know you will. And if anyone can find a way to do it without killing him…it’s you. I believe in you. I trust you.”
(He wants to tell her she shouldn’t. He wants to tell her that he feels lost and disillusioned and helpless.)
(He says nothing, because why should she be disillusioned too?)
***
Training is a nightmare. They have two days to prepare for the duel, to be held at the foot of that imposing fortress on the surface, and Ching and Zara are intent on Clark using every minute to train with the drei. Already guilty at how he has repaid Lois and Ching’s desperate bid to save him, Clark does his best.
It’s not good enough.
The drei is heavy and awkward in his hands (transformed from a piece of his heritage to a murder weapon). His limbs are weighted and uncoordinated (the limbs of a brute, a savage, an executioner). And he can’t breathe. The physical struggle, the exertion, it makes the air catch in his chest and build up into a solid mass that won’t break up into smaller pieces. For every few moments of training, Clark spends an equal amount of time bent over wheezing, coughing, straining for breath.
“What’s wrong with him?” Lois demands as her hands massage his chest. “I thought this was just supposed to be some kind of Kryptonian cold. It was supposed to go away.”
“I don’t know,” Zara says, perplexed and worried. “I thought his immune system was simply adjusting to our bacteria. But this…it’s something different.”
“He’s been sick with a Kryptonian virus before,” Lois says as Ching heaves Clark up into a sitting position against the bulkhead. “Some criminals scraped it off the ship he came to Earth in and infected him with it. He almost died. My d--we had to use Kryptonite to weaken him to the point of death just to kill the virus. You don’t think this is the same thing, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Zara says.
“What kind of virus was it?” Ching asks abruptly. “Did he cough?”
“A little, in the beginning. It seemed like a regular fever until he collapsed. He…he started burning up and…eventually we couldn’t wake him up.”
“Was his skin tinged yellowish?”
“I think so.”
“Zara,” Ching says, “you remember when Jor-El and Lara were working on their space travel experiments? The fire fever that infected the eastern cities?”
There’s a sudden snap of tension above his head, probably Zara’s mental sign of understanding. “Surely not,” she says. “That fever died out.”
“The cold of space can preserve--”
“What are you talking about?” Lois demands.
Zara lets out a long, slow sigh. “If Clark was infected with the fire fever…if he did survive it…he might be experiencing a relapse. One of the inoculations we gave him could have reacted with the latent antibodies in his bloodstream and…mutated them.”
“But…last time, it didn’t take long at all for the fever to leave him unconscious. He’s had this for months.”
“His body’s better equipped to fight it this time.”
“But…he’ll get better, right? I mean, it might take a while, but eventually he’ll be okay. Right?”
The silence is so long Clark thinks he’d drift off if each breath didn’t feel like it came though a needle of fire in the center of his chest.
“I don’t know,” Zara finally says. “We never actually cured the fire fever. We contained it, we developed some basic antibiotics, and then…”
“And then what?” Lois says shrilly.
“And then Krypton was destroyed. When no one exhibited signs on New Krypton, we assumed the fever had died with our world.”
How ironic, Clark thinks, that it should have survived along with him, another refugee from a burning world, stowed away on his vessel and waiting for the right time to come back. To be saved from extinction.
“How is he going to fight Nor?” Ching finally asks. “The first time he has to stop to cough, Nor will destroy him.”
More silence.
Clark feels so bad for them. They went to Earth and retrieved a puppet with strings that tangled and twisted. They returned to New Krypton with a pawn who’s cracked and broken. And Lois…she wants a fiancé, a husband, a partner. Instead, she has only a dead man walking.
With an effort just to hide his groans, Clark rolls himself to his feet.
“I’m still here,” he tells them all. “And I’m alive. Now, Ching, ready for another go?”
It takes a long time for Ching to raise his drei again, but he does.
Unfortunately, it takes much less time for Clark to lose the match. But he keeps trying. Keeps fighting. Keeps learning.
There’s nothing else he can do.
***
The morning of their duel dawns. Tre arrives with a doctor at his heels. They inject Clark with something that’s supposed to keep him from coughing. Clark watches the needle puncture his skin with almost absurd fascination. He knows his powers are gone and that’s he’s normal now, he wakes up feeling mortal and sick every day, but somehow, just the sight of this tiny needle breaking through the skin that’s repelled bullets and bombs hammers it in anew.
Lois holds his other hand and stays quiet.
“It’ll be okay, Lois,” he tells her when Zara ushers everyone from the room to give him and Lois a last moment alone (a request granted for the man walking to his death).
“How do you feel?” she asks as if she didn’t hear him.
“Okay,” he says. It’s the truth, or at least a version of it. He can breathe, at least, even if the air sits like a miasma in his lungs. He’s coherent and more together than he’s felt in a while. It’s an improvement (or so he wants them both to believe).
“Clark.” Lois looks up at him, earnest and vibrant and achingly sincere. “I love you, all right? I love you no matter what. And I trust you more than anyone in the entire universe. So no matter what happens today, I know that you made the right decision. I don’t regret any of it and I don’t blame you. I love you ‘til the end of time.”
“And I love you,” he says (because how else do you respond to such a blatant carte blanche?). “I’ve loved you from the beginning and I’ll never stop loving you.”
“Then come back to me,” she pleads, and he thinks she probably told herself she wouldn’t say these words because they burst from her like prisoners at the first sign of freedom. “Don’t leave me, Clark.”
“I won’t leave you alone,” he promises (and trembles, because now he has no choice but to throw his all into this duel. Zara and Ching wanted a puppet, but they chose the wrong one because he’s already Lois’s, has been from their first meeting back in Perry’s office). “Lois,” he says, “tell me a story.”
Her face begins to crumple before she exerts her tremendous strength of will and smooths it out. “Do you want to know the first time I knew I loved you?” she asks. “The first day I looked at you with your glasses and your crazy tie and I thought, ‘I can’t live without Clark Kent.’”
“Yes,” he murmurs, leaning down into her, wrapping his trembling arms around her shaking form, relearning the contours of her body pressed against his. “Tell me that story.”
“It was the day we went to Smallville, and we danced, do you remember, Clark? We investigated, and I saw bits of who you really were, and then we danced and laughed and played games. And then you were in a lake, and Trask was holding a gun, and there was a gunshot. And I thought you were going to die right in front of me. But you didn’t. You were okay. Still there, making sure your glasses were straight, and that’s when I knew that I loved you.”
“All the way back then?”
Her breath staggers against his cheek. “The day I knew I couldn’t live without you…that was when I’d come to your apartment to tell you I wanted to take the next step with you. Do you remember that? And then you came over for breakfast and I think you wanted to tell me your Secret, right, because you were talking to a picture of me? But your parents were in trouble, and when I realized that you were in trouble, that you were willing to protect me even if it cost you your parents…that’s when I knew that I would do anything for you. You’re the most important person in the universe to me, and maybe that’s selfish, but I don’t care. I’m human, I’m allowed to be selfish.”
“Not selfish.” He holds her tighter, hoping her words will be branded into his skin, imbuing him with strength so much greater than the fake health given him by that injection. “Or if it is, then I’m selfish too.”
“And the day I knew that nothing could ever tear us apart…” Lois rises on her tiptoes to hug him closer, burying her nose in his neck. “Do you remember the day when all my memories returned to me? When you took me back to the skies and were Clark even while a cape hung around your shoulders? That’s the day, when I remembered everything, and I looked at you, I knew that we would last forever. We’re forever, Clark. No matter what happens, our love is stronger.”
“Here.” Clark reaches for the chain hanging from his neck, pulls it free of the blue collar, the red cape (Lois handed him the Suit this morning, and he didn’t ask her where she got it or if it was a good idea; just took it and let it remind him of home as he pulled it on), and unthreads the tiny vial of earth. “You keep this,” he tells Lois. “It’s a little bit of Smallville to remind you that I loved you that day when Trask tried to kill us. A little bit of home to remind you that you’re my home, you and my parents. A little bit of Earth, to remind you of that sliver of sky where we kissed beneath the stars.”
Lois closes her hand over the soil, then tips her head back and leans up.
Clark made a promise, but he’s died and been remade a new man (and Zara left them alone just for this moment).
He bends and cups her cheek in a cold hand and kisses her. Melts against her. Imprints her on every cell of his body so that if he is scattered across the universe, each cell will bear a tiny bit of her, the memory of this woman he would give up everything for.
She kisses him back, fiercely, desperately, a kiss filled with everything but goodbye.
(She let him go once; she isn’t letting him go this time.)
Clark holds onto her until he can’t anymore.
(For all that he doesn’t know how to let go, he is far too used to the feeling of the things he most loves being ripped away from him.)
***
Nor is cold and confident. The onlookers are silent and guarded.
Clark feels the drei in his hand and feels sick.
The clash, when they come together, is so powerful that for an instant he thinks they have powers and this battle will take them soaring and tumbling through the streets of Metropolis, beneath towering skyscrapers and between huddled crowds of vulnerable people.
But no, this is New Krypton with its frigid shade and deadening atmosphere.
Their dreis tangle and part, meet and scrape against one another, clip and dodge and avert. Clark falls into the rhythm of these moves Ching has drilled him in endlessly for…how long has it been? He’s lost track of the days, somehow, forgotten just how many weeks have passed since he was hugged by his parents and forgiven by the people of Earth for leaving them.
Not that it matters. All that matters is Lois, above him, watching the duel on a viewscreen set up for her by Ching. And the people, too, surrounding them and watching their fate be decided before them--not by intellect or reason or what’s best for them, but by brute force. By the ability to kill before being killed.
What a strange universe they live in, he thinks.
“Only one of us is walking away from here,” Nor taunts, “and it won’t be you.”
Clark remains silent, conserving his strength. Or that’s what he tells himself anyway.
But he knows the truth, doesn’t he?
He’s not sizing up his opponent. Not focusing on the fight. Not strategizing his next move or anything else he tells himself to make himself feel better.
He’s just trying to decide, caught between moments.
To die?
Or to kill?
But his cape swirls around his ankles, bright and garish against the dark stones, a reminder of better things. Of hope and ideals and a world not determined by blood.
He’s Superman. Superman doesn’t kill. Superman doesn’t save people by slaughtering others. There’s a time to take a life to save others, he knows that, has worked side by side with soldiers and police, but he’s Superman, a figure and an icon and a symbol of better ways.
He’s Clark Kent. Clark talks and empathizes and investigates. He tries to make sure the guilty parties are delivered to justice, but he doesn’t enforce that justice himself.
He’s Kal-El. A lord, yes, ruler and leader and maybe even savior for a few here and there, but he’s a diplomat above all, not a killer.
All this time, he thought he lost himself, but he hasn’t. Clark or Superman or Kal-El, he’s still the same man (the man Lois loves).
I believe in you, Lois said. I trust you. I love you.
I need you.
Clark wields the drei in his hand as surely as he once did a pen. Superman presses forward, herding Nor against a boulder just as he’s done to other villains countless times. Kal-El knocks aside Nor’s drei and holds his own pressed against the man’s throat, ready to dispense justice.
“Yield,” he says. “Yield now, and I’ll let you live.”
Nor’s eyes narrow and tighten. “You really don’t know our ways. This is a duel to the death, Kal-El, and there’s only one way out of here.”
“No, there isn’t.” Clark presses the drei tighter against Nor’s throat. “New Krypton has options, possibilities, ones that don’t include death or starvation or oppression.” He raises his voice, dares to look away from Nor to the people watching. “You have a new world here, a planet full of new possibilities. You can be anything you want to be here, do anything you can dream--all you have to do is decide that you want it. You don’t have to be trapped in the confines of the past. You can make your own choices, decide your own fate.”
And Clark drops his drei. Steps back. Holds out his hands.
“Nor’s right. I’m not from here. I wasn’t raised as a Kryptonian. I have another people, another world, that I love. But I am Kryptonian, with blood just the same as yours. It’s not royal or noble or destined for rule. But it’s red and warm and I have a heart that beats for justice. For hope. For truth. If you want to serve Nor, to bow before his dictatorship and remain steeped in the ways that have led you here to a fate that has so little hope…then that’s your choice. But you have others. You can choose to be more, to be different, to be better.”
He meets Zara’s eyes, Ching’s, Tre’s, people he knows scattered throughout the crowd.
“I can kill Nor, but that won’t change anything. Nor can kill me, but that won’t change much for you. The only thing that offers you something different, something better, is if you decide, right here and now, to reach for a better future. A brighter hope. A fate that lets you be the deciders of your own--”
Nor lunges for him. Clark folds beneath his weight, something dark and bitter cracking from the miasma inside him, something lodging itself in his throat so that he’s choking, gasping, suffocating. There’s pain locked inside him, sharper pain on his jaw, his ribs, his legs. Nor’s there, he’s aware of him peripherally, but more immediately, more pressing, is the earthquake shaking his lungs and heart and throat until he’s dizzy and his sight is bursting with bright sparks.
Then there’s a sudden explosion, a concussion of pressure and force that sends Nor tumbling away, the center of his chest glowing. Ching stands over Clark, a drei in his hand, his face expressionless, his stance unwavering.
“Kal-El.” Tre’s there with a hand out to help ease him up a bit. And Zara, standing behind him, at Ching’s side, daring anyone to attack him in retribution.
Talking. Words spiraling around him until he thinks he can see them as streamers of colors and noise. Tre’s talking fast, Zara’s calm and speaking to the crowds, Ching stalwart as ever at her side.
Clark looks past them all, up toward the slate-gray sky and the stars above that. To the ship hanging there in perpetual orbit, peeling past the bulkheads and searing through the airlocks to reach the room where Lois stands, probably looking back at him in the viewscreen.
“Lois,” he whispers out through gasps.
He promised he wouldn’t leave her.
(Sometimes, even Superman lies.)
***
Later, Lois will tell him that Zara ordered him taken to the ship with the excuse that lighter gravity would help him breathe. She’ll tell him how Tre refused to leave his side and insisted on the best doctors coming to look him over. She’ll say that the old man was completely swayed by Clark’s words.
Later, Clark will learn that Ching killed Nor for him (a death, but Clark doesn’t care, because Ching is Kryptonian and a bodyguard, a soldier, someone there to protect and save life; he’s a Kryptonian who made his own choice for a better future; and maybe there’s some element of relief in Clark’s acquiescence, but either way, he’s not exactly sorry that Nor’s gone). That Zara stood to defend Ching’s choice. That the people made their own choice then, one backing Zara and Ching, the first noble and commoner partnership on their new world.
Later, Lois will speak of people praying for Lord Kal-El’s health and recovery. He will learn that Zara let Tre bring doctor after doctor until they convinced the Elder there was nothing to be done for him. Then she sent Tre back to New Krypton and she sent the ship back to Earth.
“We only had one chance,” Lois will tell him (face stiff with affected strength, with concealed fear). “Last time, the Kryptonite killed the virus. This time, only your superpowers could make you strong enough to combat the fever.”
Later, she will tell him stories of their travels through space while far behind them, Zara told the people of New Krypton that Lord Kal-El had died (the last gift she had to give him, the dissolution of their marriage and the return to Earth and this shield of his death to prevent anyone from ever seeking him out again). She will tell him stories of worlds they passed and nebulae they parted and all of it meaningless because her attention was solely on him. She will tell him that there were whole minutes he didn’t breathe at all and hours where all he did was cough (she will tell him, and her whole body shakes with the memory until Clark wraps her close to him and lets his even breaths steady her frame).
She will tell him that when they entered the solar system, when they opened the bulkheads to let in the sunlight, he finally started breathing again. She will describe the way he gradually grew stronger and healthier until he woke up and looked at her and said her name. Later, she will tell him that that’s the moment when she knew everything was going to be okay.
Later.
There is a later now. A future. A future he wants.
A marriage to look forward to. A reunion with his parents and his friends. A world that’s warm and bright and has (for all its darkness and its Lex Luthors and its disasters) so much potential.
“Tell me a story,” he asks Lois when the globe-ship deposits them into the air far above the spreading quilt of Earth beneath them. He’s wearing Clark’s suit, Superman hidden beneath, ready and waiting to be needed.
“What story?” she asks as the yellow sun bathes them in its rays. His powers surge within him, reborn and radiant and so familiar that it almost breaks him (he thought he would never feel this again, flight and strength and Lois in his arms with her own draped around his neck).
“Any story,” he says. “Every story. Tell me what our life is going to be like.”
“Good,” she replies. “It will be so good, Clark, just like you.”
“And beautiful, like you.”
“And happy, like us.”
“And forever.”
“Tell me a story, Clark,” she says now as her mouth draws nearer and nearer his. As his arms tighten and bring her closer. As the vial of earth slips from her fingers to fall back to the soil where it belongs. “Tell me about how we’ll be married and win a Pulitzer.”
“Maybe instead of telling you the story, I’ll show it to you.” With one arm wrapped around her waist, Clark uses the other to draw the chain over his neck and pull out the ring he’s clung to so tightly and so long. To the hope of it while he wandered the world alone. To the dream of it while he fell deeper and deeper in love with Lois Lane. To the reality of it as she was stolen away and forgot it. To the form of it as she remained a step away, forever out of reach while a world rested on his shoulders.
And now, finally, here in the light of a yellow sun, above the reaches of a farm where his parents are waiting for his return, Clark lets go (lets the ring rest on her finger and the hope reside in his heart).
Lois wraps her arms around him in return (she lets go when he cannot; he lets go when she needs him to; they are a team, partners in every sense of the word) and trusts herself to his loose, enduring hold. Her heartbeat is loud and strong and enduring in his ears.
“Our story,” she says.
“Forever,” he says again.
And kisses her.
(And this time, he knows, there will always be another kiss.)
The End
