Just a Little Too Far -
TOCClark handed the guard his ID and then stood back for a pat down by another guard. The metal detector / body scanner was broken. When he was deemed weapon-free, Clark returned to the window. The first guard handed him back his ID, had him sign the log, and then allowed Clark to pass through to the next checkpoint. He was supposed to cool his heels for five minutes while the prisoner was brought up from the bowels, but he had too much nervous energy. He spent that time pacing.
Finally, another guard took him into a barebones room with a metal table bolted to the floor, a couple of chairs, and bars on both of the windows. It was impossible to forget one was at the prison. But at least this was better than the alternative – the cubicles with Plexiglas windows and the telephone handsets.
The door opened and Lois was led inside. She looked tired and defeated, like the prison had already stolen her drive. It had stolen her hair. Gone was her pretty pixie. She was down to a buzz cut.
As soon as the guard left Clark rushed to hug her, but she held up her hand. “Don’t.”
He nodded and backed away. They both knew he could return within a fraction of a second.
Lois spoke first. “I heard you had returned.”
“I would have been here sooner, but…” Clark started to apologize.
“I know,” she interrupted. “I heard that Nor and the New Kryptonians took over Smallville. You needed to save your parents. I understand.”
“I went to your apartment first, but you never came home,” he told her. She had to know that she had been his first priority.
“This is my home now,” she replied, resigned. He could still hear the defeat in her voice. She sat down at the table.
Clark sat down opposite her and took her hands in his. “I’ve joined your defense team. We’ll get you out of this…”
Lois looked up from their joined hands and into his eyes. Her eyes seemed dead. “I pled guilty, Clark. The trial’s over.”
“What?!” he gasped. Why would she do such a thing? “Lois, no!”
Her voice was eerily calm. “Why not? I am guilty. I did kill him.”
Clark tried to hide the horror from his expression, but he guessed a little must have seeped through from what he saw reflected in her eyes. Lois pulled her hands away from his and sighed. Clark realized he had stopped holding her hands. His hands had become dead weights on hers.
“I have a confession to make, Clark,” Lois told him. “While you were gone I told two people…” She stopped speaking.
“It’s okay, Lois. As I told you, I’m on your defense team. Anything we say to each other falls under the realm of attorney/client privilege since I work for your lawyer. They aren’t allowed to record us. You told two people… what?” he coaxed her on.
She looked around the room again. She seemed to have picked up that nervous energy he had been plagued with before she had come into the room. She lowered her voice. “Could you double check?”
He smiled indulgently. “If it would make you feel better…”
“It would,” she admitted.
Clark scanned the room with his x-ray and telescopic vision, but he found no bugs. The guard stood outside the door, but if they spoke softly he wouldn’t hear them. “It’s clean, Lois. Now speak freely. You know you can say anything to me. What really happened?”
Lois flipped up her hand, brushing aside his question. “Clark, I have to tell you… let you know. I told both Jimmy and Perry that you’re Superman.”
He gulped, jumping out of his chair and starting to pace. “Why? Does this have something to do with…?”
She came to him and rested her hands on his arms. “I
had to, Clark. Jimmy needed to know. And then I told Perry, when I confessed all to him…” She crumpled to the floor at his feet as her tears choked her. “I finally found the one thing that would stop the Chief from standing by me.”
Clark pulled Lois off the floor and held her in his arms. “I’ll stand by you, Lois. I still love you and I want us to be married.”
Lois made a sobbing noise against his chest. “No. No. No. Clark, you of all people cannot be married to a convicted murderer.” She grabbed tightly onto his shirt and he could feel her tears seeping through to his skin. “You’re too good for me.”
He ran his fingers over what was left of her hair. It felt fuzzy against his palm. How he had missed her embrace. This was not the reunion for which he had hoped. “Lois, good or bad, it doesn’t matter. I am not going to let you raise that baby in here. Marry me and at least let me care for our child until we can get you out of here. Then we’ll discuss the future after that.”
“You don’t understand!” Lois screamed at him, pushing herself out of his arms. “There is no baby, Clark. There never was!”
Clark’s jaw dropped. He could not speak, only to stare at her.
“It was all a big joke,” she said, throwing up her arms.
Finally, he found his voice. “You’re not pregnant?”
“
No!” she yelled at him.
He fell into his chair. It felt like the room was tipping. “You and Lex never…” he stammered.
The guard knocked on the door, then stuck his head inside, reminding them of what little privacy they had. “Everything all right in here?”
“Yes, fine. Sorry,” Lois admitted, backing away from the door and the table where Clark sat at the same time.
The guard nodded and shut the door again.
Lois ran her shaking hands over her head. “I don’t know, Clark,” she continued their conversation as if it hadn’t been interrupted. Her voice was calmer, not so loud. “That whole time I was with Lex as Wanda Detroit is a blur. I’m not sure what happened. I have all my memories back except for those. He might have been drugging me for all I know.”
“But the blood test? From the hospital?” Clark asked, his eyes wide with disbelief. “It was proof positive that you were pregnant. Why did you lie to me about that? Was it a ploy to stop me from going to New Krypton?” His heart ached at the thought that Lois would deceive him so.
She stopped pacing. “I never lied to you, Clark.
They lied to
me!”
He gulped. “
Who? Who would do that to you?”
Lois starting pacing again. “It was all a joke. A TV show where they scare people for other people’s entertainment.”
Clark’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood. “A TV show?”
“Isn’t it funny? Ha-ha. They aren’t laughing, now,” she scoffed.
He wrapped his arms around her. “Lois, what are you saying?”
“Jimmy set it up. I told him once that nothing scared me and he was trying to prove me wrong. He told them what had happened to me – the kidnapping, the clone, Wanda Detroit, and the amnesia and the producers came up with this brilliant idea.”
“Oh, Lois,” he sympathized. It sounded along the lines of the type of joke Jimmy would pull.
“They didn’t know that I had missed a period due to all the stress. That I’d fall for it… hook, line, and sinker.” Lois scoffed again. “Jimmy even said, he thought it would be the catalyst that would finally get us to the altar.”
Clark winced as he pulled her tighter. “Jimmy knew I would never abandon you.”
“That’s why I
had to tell him, Clark. After you left with Zara and Ching. I had to tell him that you were Superman and that you might never return.”
“Lois, did you doubt me?” The words killed him. She didn’t trust in him, in his love?
She tried to push her way out of his embrace, but he would not let her go. “You thought I was carrying the devil’s spawn, Clark. Of course, I would have understood if you consummated your marriage to Zara and never looked back.”
“I made a promise to you, Lois. And I won’t back out of it, even now,” he told her. “I love you.”
Lois sighed. “You didn’t see your face when I told you I was pregnant with Lex’s child, Clark. I could see it was a promise you no longer wanted to keep.”
“Maybe for a second, Lois. But then I knew that I would love that child as my own because it was a part of you. That’s why I told you that I would still come back for you.” Clark pulled the chain with her wedding ring on it out from around his neck. “Why I still wear this close to my heart.”
“I love you, too, Clark. But I can’t hold you to your promise. Not now. Not after what I’ve done. You need to move on with your life.” He could hear the catch in her voice. “Forget about me.”
“That’s not going to happen, Lois. We’ll be together again, someday. Until then, we’ll get married. At least that will get us conjugal visits.”
Lois slapped his arm with a chortle. “Still trying to get in my pants, Kent?”
“I can wait,” he lied. “I’ve waited this long. What’s another five…” He groaned again; only this time he could not hide it. “… or ten years?” He placed a weak smile on his lips.
“It isn’t fair to you. I did the crime. You don’t deserve to serve my sentence with me.”
He caressed her cheek. “There is no other place I’d rather be.”
Lois melted into his palm. “There will be no Utopia if you marry me. Superman and his convict bride won’t change the world for the better.”
“Frankly, I don’t care about Utopia,” he told her. “That ship has sailed, anyway. Wells will be disappointed and Tempus will be thrilled. Maybe it will mean that we won’t be plagued by them again.”
“Ah. A bright spot in our dismal future.” She sighed and pulled out of his arms, far enough to look him in the eye. “Are you sure you can forgive me, Clark? If you can’t, you should be honest and tell me now. I don’t want any false hopes.”
“It was an accident, right?” he asked her, knowing it was the only answer.
Lois looked down. “No.”
“No?” Clark’s heart was beating fast now. “No?” he repeated. That couldn’t be the correct answer.
“I was really mad,” she admitted. “You were gone. And in my heart-of-hearts I knew it was forever. I had just given you a get-out-of-jail-free card – no pun intended – and each day you were gone was a day closer to the realization that you were never coming back to be a father to Lex’s child. And that’s when Jimmy confessed about the TV show thing. I saw red and I slugged him. He fell and crashed into my glass coffee table.”
Clark’s brow furrowed. “I thought he fell from your living room window.”
“The coffee table didn’t
kill him kill him. But it was the fatal blow. Jimmy got up and called for you.” She looked away from him. Clark knew Lois didn’t want to think about the events that landed her in jail, but she knew he deserved the truth – if they were ever going to move past this.
“Superman?” he whispered.
“No, Clark. He had asked that we both meet with him. You and I. After I told him you weren’t there, that you weren’t coming back, he staggered to my windows threw them open and called, ‘Help, Superman!’”
Clark winced. His friend’s final words had been a plea for him to help. When he was no longer around.
“That’s when I told him you were Superman and that you weren’t coming back because you thought I had been knocked up by Lex. That you had gone off with the New Kryptonians and married Zara.” Lois closed her eyes painfully as if she was picturing the moment again. “Then he called to Superman again and did a swan dive out the window.”
Clark’s jaw fell open once more.
“So you see, Clark, I killed him. I might not have given him that final push out the window, but I might as well have. I wanted to. I was tempted to. But I did the crime, so now I’m doing the time.”
“Lois, there is a lot of wiggle room there. Maybe Jimmy committed suicide with the guilt,” Clark suggested, not believing one word of it.
“He had a concussion. He was not responsible for his actions, Clark. I’m still guilty.”
“It was accidental, Lois. You did not mean to kill him!” he argued.
“Not like that, no. I was trying to kill him with my fist. But if he had continued to stand there by the open window, I probably would have pushed him out. I was that angry.”
“
Lo-is!”
“What? You want me to lie to you, Smallville? Tell you I wasn’t distraught with grief over your leaving to New Krypton with another woman and the fact I had inadvertently cheated on you with Lex? And that if you ever did come back, you’d feel pressured into marrying me because of your promise? So, yes, I did want to kill him in that instant that he confessed about lying about the baby and the show. He’s dead and I did it. I’m not going to change my plea.”
“And I’m not going to change my promise, Lois. I loved you then. And I still love you now. I only wish…” Clark gulped. A pipe dream. “I wish I had been man enough to stay and marry you then instead of going off with them. I shouldn’t have left you with any doubts about me… about us.”
“This isn’t about what you did or didn’t do, Clark. It’s about what I did.” Lois had tears dotting her eyelashes. He knew she was going to try and break his heart. For his own good. “I can’t marry you, Clark.”
He knew what she was doing because he had done it to her too many times. “Because you’re too small?” he asked.
“Huh?”
He had accomplished in throwing her off-course. “Or is it because I’m a jinx.”
“Clark.”
He thought she might be catching on. “Or is it because I might be hurt by association? People will come after me because of you?”
“Clark,” her warning voice seemed harsher now.
“You might never forgive yourself for what you did to Jimmy, Honey. But I know,
I know, you didn’t really mean to kill him. And even if you refuse to marry me today or tomorrow or next week or next year, I will still be here for you because I love you and I’m not going anywhere.”
Lois pulled his face to hers and rested her head against his. “Oh, Clark. What am I going to do with you?”
“Personally, I’d prefer some conjugal visits, but if you want to wait until you’ve served your time…” He swallowed. “I understand. Just remember, we both know you’re not getting time off for good behavior.”
“I can be good,” she tried to debate him. But they both knew the truth. Mad Dog Lane would do whatever it took to survive her time in prison and that would have nothing to do with being good.
***
Author's Note: I wrote two different endings to this story. I like the second one, but my Beta insisted on the first. You decide.
If you need a Happily Ever After ending, click here:
Part 2A If you can handle Grim Reality, click here:
Part 2B
