From Part 3:
She shook her head and focused her attention back to the men who had interrupted her quest. She would prove that she still had what it took to be a great reporter. She had been the best before Clark came along. True, their partnership had been the best year of her life and had made her feel stronger, but she wasn’t finished just because he wasn’t by her side any more.
She would prove to him – and herself – that she was still the best.
She rose to her knees and peered over the crate concealing her from the men’s sight. Damn it! Their faces were hidden in shadows, and their voices were still too muffled for her to hear what they were talking about. She could make out the shape of something that looked like a thick envelope. Frustration made her shift. The muted sound of her toes connecting to the crate in front of her was enough to silence the two men she’d been observing. She held back a yelp of pain and crouched back into the darkness. Too late. Their steps were getting closer now. They would find her...
*********
Part 4:
Home at last. Or what was left of it, Clark thought as the lights of Metropolis appeared on the horizon. He increased his speed, eager to get back to his apartment and get some sleep. He hadn’t taken the time to rest in over two days. Not that he could have found any sleep if he’d tried. Every time he closed his eyes, the image of Lois’s body lying beneath his was haunting his mind and filling him with remorse. The sound of her heartbeat racing against his chest made his head spin. Her heartbeat...
Oh god, he wasn’t imagining it. Her heartbeat was resounding in his ears, fast and furious. She was scared. She was in danger. Lois!
He dove towards the South Side and the dark waters of Hobb’s Bay. What in the world was she doing there in the middle of the night? It took only seconds for him to spot her shivering form hiding behind a crate. Two suspicious-looking men were tiptoeing towards her. They’d find her in no time, and who knew what they would do to her then. One quick X-ray of the goons’ pockets revealed guns tucked into their belts.
Without thinking, he burst through the wall of the warehouse and zipped around the room at superspeed. Less than a second later, the two men were tied and gagged, and Lois was out of danger.
She rose to her feet and... and glared at him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
He blinked, his gaze switching back and forth between the men he had just neutralised and the woman he had just saved. She was... angry? She was angry?
He kept his voice as low as possible. “Keeping you from getting yourself killed.”
“I was doing perfectly fine without you. I didn’t need your help!” She gestured towards the now impotent men lying on the floor a few feet away. “They wouldn’t have found me. And I could have got an interesting lead.”
His earlier panic gave way to irritation. Giving one last look behind him to make sure that the rope was solidly tied around the two men’s wrists and ankles and that they were in no position to make a run for freedom, he grabbed Lois and flew them outside.
“My job is not to ensure you get interesting leads!” he said before she could protest. “What I do is put criminals behind bars and prevent innocent people from getting hurt in the process!”
“I would have been fine!”
“Don’t you see you’re not immortal? That those guys had guns and could have used them? They could have shot you! You could have died.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when he realised he’d gone too far. Tears filled up her eyes. She wiped them away. “What do I care if I die? What does it matter?”
He walked up to her and seized her hands. “I care,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Lois, if anything happened to you... I don’t think I could ever forgive myself.”
He was standing close. So close that he could feel her breath on his lips. So close that it would be only too easy to lean in and steal a kiss. A kiss that, he knew, would quickly turn passionate. He wanted her so fiercely that it hurt.
“Don’t.” The word, softly spoken, jolted him out of his fantasy. Lois took a step back and raised her hands in warning. “Just because we... gave in the other night doesn’t give you the right to control my life. You can’t spend your time looking after me, Superman. You can’t prevent me from doing my job.”
No, he couldn't. She was right. There were so many things he couldn't do now. He couldn't work with her; couldn't spend time with her; couldn't protect her by being beside her as they worked together; couldn't spend evenings watching movies and laughing at silly TV shows with her.
And he couldn't have her. Couldn’t be with her. Couldn’t... love her.
He shook his head, whether in denial of her words or in regret at everything he'd lost he didn't know.
"Let me take you home, Lois." The words emerged more brusquely than he intended.
But she shook her head. "My car's parked just a couple of blocks away."
"Then let me take you there. It's not safe here, Lois. What were you doing here anyway?"
She glared at him. "Working. It's what I do, remember? What pays the bills? Though I guess you wouldn't know about that."
He flinched at her sarcasm, wishing he understood just why she seemed to hate him so much now. Was it all because of what he'd done the other night? But he refused to take all of the blame for that. It had been mutual. And she'd made the first move.
Deciding the best course of action was to ignore her comment, he said, "You have two choices. Either I take you to your car now, or you call the police to come and pick up those two and I wait with you until they come. Yes, I'm playing the macho super-hero here, but you might consider that I don't really want to lose two people that I care about in the same week."
Low blow, Clark, he told himself. But he had to get the message across to her somehow that she had to take better care of herself now that she didn't have Clark to help her do it.
And, as he'd expected, she blanched. She turned away from him, and when she spoke her voice was shaky. "You can take me to my car if you insist. But then I want you to leave me alone."
Clark nodded, then scooped her up without speaking. Putting up with her anger, even her hatred, was better than seeing her hurt.
**********
When Lois finally pulled up outside her apartment building, she realised that her hands were shaking. What was worse was that she could remember nothing of her drive home.
All she could think of was Superman leaning in as if to kiss her, and his harsh reminder that Clark had been killed. No, worse: he'd been talking about her carelessness, her risk-taking; and it was because of her carelessness that Clark was dead.
Her actions had got Clark killed. And what had she done? Slept with the man she knew he'd been jealous of. He'd hated to hear her hero-worshipping Superman. He'd got better at hiding it, but she'd known it anyway. And it was hardly surprising, now that she knew he'd been in love with her.
And Superman... oh, he was a hero, but he had feet of clay. He hadn't been there to save Clark. He'd slept with her knowing that she was grieving and in no fit state to make that kind of decision. He'd arrogantly decided that he could tell her what to do. And he'd assumed, tonight, that she'd be willing to kiss him again, and maybe more.
Her conscience pointed out that, as Superman had reminded her, Clark had been his friend too. He had been upset - she'd seen the grief, and the guilt that he hadn't been there to save their friend. The expression in his eyes... she would never have imagined Superman looking like that. Not ever.
No. The real reason she didn't want to be anywhere around Superman wasn't any of the things she'd been pretending. It wasn't anything he'd done, or not done. It was, she admitted to herself at last, because Superman reminded her of what she'd lost. And of how she'd behaved on the night when she'd lost the best thing she'd ever had.
He reminded her that, on the night her very best friend, the man she'd been stupid enough not to realise that she loved, had died, she'd had sex on her living-room floor with another man. A man she wasn't in love with. A man she had no intention of building a relationship with.
A man who wasn't Clark.
**********
He was going to have to do something about his apartment, Clark thought as he padded into his bedroom. It would look very odd if anyone noticed that someone was apparently living in a dead person's apartment. He'd have some difficult explanations to make if the police were called. Besides, he wouldn't have a salary coming in any more, so he couldn't keep up the rent payments.
He'd have to ask his parents to come and clear the place out. But that was no bad thing; it would force him to make the decision he'd been putting off and which the confrontation with his parents had made him think about again. He had to decide where he would go; where he would live; what he would do.
Ghana. Or Nigeria. Or Uganda. Maybe Rwanda, even. He'd almost decided on somewhere in Africa during the flight back from Smallville. It was far away from anyone who had ever known him as Clark Kent. And, while he would stand out as a white man, an ethnic minority, white people and Americans weren't so unusual that he would attract undue attention. And they were all countries where a little discreet Super help would be useful. More than useful, in the case of Rwanda. In fact, he'd thought, he could sign up as a volunteer aid worker.
But that had been before Lois had landed herself in trouble once again.
She could have been killed tonight. That was the thought which wouldn't leave Clark's mind. She could have been killed. If he'd been just two seconds later on the scene - or if he hadn't heard her heartbeat at all - she would have been killed. He would have arrived to find her cold, lifeless body. Or he would have heard the news report tomorrow.
If he'd been in Rwanda, he would never have known that she was in danger. Never have known that she needed him.
How could he possibly leave Metropolis?
It was out of the question. He couldn't go - not now. It had never really been an option. If he left, he'd be abandoning Lois to whatever fate might happen to her. He knew what she was like - headstrong, unafraid of danger, always jumping in feet first. And then there was her attitude to the danger she'd been in tonight.
She'd scared him rigid with her words. Those few words which showed him that, now, she placed no value at all on her own life. Who would care if she died? She'd asked him that. And he'd told her: he would. He did.
But if he left...
That was stupid, he told himself angrily. Lots of people would care. And Lois knew that. She'd remember it, too, when she was less upset. Perry. Jimmy. Her sister, Lucy. Her parents. His parents, come to that. And, he was sure, lots of other people.
Surely Lois wasn't so lacking in self-worth that she thought no-one would care?
No, not lacking in self-worth, he told himself, and wondered why he didn't feel more pleasure at the knowledge of what was really behind Lois's depression. She missed him. Clark. And that, he felt sure, was why she'd reacted the way she had.
The irony was painful. When he'd been around her every day, she'd barely noticed he was there, or later just seen him as her best friend. And now, now that he was officially dead, when it was too late to matter, she realised that he'd meant more to her.
Life was full of ironies, he told himself, trying to swallow the bitterness in his throat. What mattered now was making sure that Lois stayed alive. And the only way he was going to be able to do that was by staying in, or at least very close to, Metropolis. And, in order to do that, he was going to have to be Superman full-time.
Okay. So now he had to work out where he could stay. There had to be somewhere private, away from prying eyes, that he could use as a base.
**********
Lois had never feared a summons to Perry’s office. Usually her boss’s request meant that a hot story was going to fall right on her lap and he wanted her to handle it for the Daily Planet. That was always a good sign.
She watched him close the door behind her, excitement bubbling in her mind. The gesture probably meant that at last he had stopped treating her as if she were a grieving widow. At last she was going to get back to what had always saved her before. Her job. Her life.
Or what was left of it.
She quashed the depressing thought. She would not let herself be brought down by another fit of tears over Clark’s death. Not now. Not here. Here in the Daily Planet newsroom, she was back to her old self, barking at anyone approaching or – God forbid – requested something from her. In the Daily Planet newsroom, she was Mad Dog Lane. She knew the old nickname had reappeared over the last couple of days. She didn’t care. Now that Clark was gone, she had no reason to fight against a reputation that actually protected her pretty well. At least it ensured that no man ever dared approach her again... that no man could hurt or abandon her again.
She sat in the chair across from Perry’s desk and waited, a well-practiced smile on her lips.
“Lois, I know things’ve been rough for you over the past week,” Perry started awkwardly, “but you seem to be better now... Maybe I’m wrong. If you’re not ready just let me know and we can sort that out later, but - ”
“Perry, I’m all right! Really, I am,” she added when he didn’t look entirely convinced. “Yes, Clark’s death hit me badly. But he and I knew that our job is dangerous and that we’re always taking risks. We’d accepted that part of the deal.”
Even as she spoke those words with strength she was crumbling inside. She had always known that she was flirting with death. She had never truly minded. Somehow she had thought that there would always be a way out of the mess she got herself into. What she had never imagined was that she would put someone else’s life at risk – worse, the life of a man she loved. Clark’s life.
Accepting that part of the deal. Ha! What a joke of a deal that was! Clark had never wanted to put his life at risk. No, that was wrong. Clark had never wanted to put her life at risk. He had proved it yet again in Georgie Hairdo’s gambling club, when he’d stepped in front of her to meet a certain death... to protect her.
She bit her lip to keep her stubbornly proud and expressionless facade intact. “I’ll be fine,” she said once again.
“All right, then,” Perry said, still not looking convinced. “I need you to get down to the harbour and find out what’s going on.”
“Chief, three teenage girls mugged on their way out of a seedy nightclub is Metropolis’s daily diet. It’s sad but it’s no biggie.”
“Three teenage girls mugged, raped and strangled, Lois. And all three of them in the space of one week. So I want you to go down there undercover, find that guy and bring him down. Take Rogers with you.”
“Perry!”
Perry raised his hand in warning, pre-empting her protest. “Don’t ‘Perry’ me, Lois. This is too dangerous for you to handle alone.”
“I’ve always handled that kind of thing alone.”
“No.” His voice lowered and his face got sombre. “You handled them with Clark.”
Lois squirmed in her seat and lowered her head. She really didn’t need the reminder that she’d spent the past year and a half doing her job with Clark as a partner. “I don’t want another partner,” she said stubbornly.
“It will just be temporary.”
“I know what temporary is to you, chief. You said that for Clark as well.”
“And you didn’t mind.”
“But it was Clark!” She abruptly rose from her seat and started pacing the room. “I don’t want anyone else. I don’t want you to try to replace him.” She wiped at the tears that were freely falling down her cheeks. “You’re getting on with it like nothing happened. You had Jimmy clear off his desk and soon enough someone else is gonna be sitting there, using his computer and everything! And then... then it’s gonna be what, ‘Lane and Rogers, the hottest team in town’? I think not.”
“Lois, I don’t want to replace Clark,” Perry said calmly. “No-one’s trying to do that. He’ll always be remembered fondly and - ”
“His body hasn’t even been found and you’re already moving on!”
Perry got up and walked around the desk to stand before her. He put his hands on her shoulders to stop her mad pacing. “Sweetheart, you know what Henderson said.”
“That they may never find a body? What do you want me to do if they don’t? Just assume that Clark’s dead and get on with my life? I won’t even have anywhere to go if I want to talk to him. God, I’m starting to talk like a silly old woman who’s just lost her husband. Clark and I weren’t even - ”
“He would be just as devastated if he’d lost you. That boy was... well, I don’t know if I should tell you this, but - ”
“I know, Perry. He told me. Before he died. His last words.” She shook her head. “Oh God, I can’t believe I was so blind!”
Perry drew her into a hug, and she let his arms envelop her as she fought the tears that kept spilling from her eyes. She refused to sob in front of him. He was her editor in chief. He respected her. He thought highly of her - or so she hoped. The only man in front of whom she’d ever let herself cry freely was dead. Gone forever. She would be strong. She would not let anyone else see how weak she was. She would not let anyone else under her skin.
**********
Clark looked about the room with a critical eye. Well, this was about as good as he would get: a small cabin hidden in the woods covering the hills to the north of Metropolis. Close enough to fly down in an emergency. Close enough to hear... her... if she needed him.
And far enough to be sure that no-one would follow him up here.
He could see why the place had been abandoned. A large chunk of the rocks on which the forest grew had collapsed, and the old path had become impassable. It was just what he had been looking for. And now that he’d repaired the roof and brought furniture from his parents’ farm, it would be okay as a refuge.
A fortress of solitude.
He sighed and sunk onto the battered couch facing the old stone fireplace. He was certainly not going to feel stifled or crowded up here. When he had first moved to Metropolis, he had told his father that the only stars one could see were travelling in limousines. Well, at least here the night sky resembled much more what he had known in Smallville. No city lights or noise would be troubling his sleep... or his long, lonely evenings.
He looked out through the small window. The rosy and orange shades of dusk were colouring the sky over the trees surrounding the cabin. The single naked bulb wouldn’t provide much light once the sun set, but it would do. It couldn’t be worse than his first accommodation in Metropolis - if you could call the Apollo Hotel accommodation.
And he had books. Lots of books he had been meaning to read for months but hadn’t found the time to. Juggling two jobs had left him too little free time. On the other hand, he’d already spent most of the day flying around and doing minor rescues around the city, so maybe he wouldn’t spend much more than a few hours here. At least his life as Superman was useful to the city, and now that Clark was dead, he could patrol a lot more and make sure Metropolis’s crime rate decreased substantially.
His hearing picked the sound of a high-pitched scream. He jumped to his feet and less than a second later, a sonic boom could be heard over the northern hills.
*********
tbc...
