from last time...
~~~~~~
She started to walk away when she heard Henderson call her name again. She turned quickly to face him, her serious expression revealing the depths of her emotions and the determination within her for the mission that lie ahead.
“Luthor’s being taken to a different hospital,” he finally said.
The mention of Lex’s name made Lois’s blood run cold, until she realized what Henderson was saying. He was protecting Superman… Clark. Protecting him from Lex, realizing that in the same hospital, he would most certainly make sure that Clark had no chance of survival, if he could. Lois smiled a small, appreciative smile at Henderson, and turned to get into Perry’s car, which had just pulled up and would take her to her car, which would then take her to Clark’s apartment where she hoped her answers were.
~~~~~~~~~~
HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME
Part 5
“Hello, Kal El,” a deep, resonating voice boomed, as Clark confusedly stared at the brilliant whiteness that continued to hold him captive.
“Who’s there?” he asked, afraid of what was happening and where he was.
“Not to worry, son. I’m Jor-El, your father.”
Clark squinted in the direction the voice seemed to be coming from. He didn’t know what had happened that he was engulfed by a white light and was hearing the sound of his Kryptonian father’s voice… Suddenly his eyes opened wide. Realization struck him like lightning.
“Am I… dead?”
“Sort of,” came the loud Zeus-like sounding response. “Do you remember what happened?”
Clark racked his brain. He remembered his parents, as different scenes from his childhood were playing themselves out in his head. He remembered learning to fly, sitting on clouds, racing with the shooting stars when the ability was still new and exciting. Sitting around a campfire in the dead of winter, talking with his mom and dad over a cup of cocoa. He smiled. He remembered turning to them when he had no one.
Lois… he remembered starting to work at the Daily Planet. He remembered feeling light headed upon meeting Lois Lane, whom Perry White had called the best damn investigative reporter he’d ever seen. He remembered the first time she threw him a small-town put-down. He fell in love with her… with her fire and energy. He remembered working with her throughout the year. Things were a little fuzzy though. He couldn’t remember much about his recent life clearly.
“I… I guess I don’t,” he said, frustrated. “What happened? Why am I ‘sort of’ dead?”
“You were almost fully dead… you still are almost fully dead. Your survival depends on a few things,” the voice declared.
“Okay, what are they?” Clark asked, eagerly.
“First… remember,” the voice said.
Clark closed his eyes, his eyelids rendering the unbearable brightness to a bleak darkness. He focused on remembering whatever it was he was supposed to remember…
*************
*************
Lois turned her jeep onto Clinton Street, a street she had learned by heart in the past year. She remembered the first time she ever went to his apartment; it was one of their first assignments together when he’d just started. At the time, driving to his apartment had seemed annoying, out of the way. She slowly started to make more voluntary trips to the little apartment on Clinton, as they got assigned to more and more stories together. She even went there for fun, when they weren’t on a story, or had just finished one. She liked his apartment; it was so lived-in, so Clark. Her apartment was just that, an apartment… the place she lived. But Clark’s apartment was a home. A great, warm home and she always felt his soft and welcoming presence there. His apartment embodied all that was Clark Kent. Family values, loyalty to work and a love for his friends. It was clean and organized, yet it wasn’t sterile, but tinged everywhere with touches of life. She had learned seven different routes to get there from her apartment and four from the Planet. She drove there now on automatic pilot. She was happy to be in her own car, as Perry and Jimmy had been using the phrase “Superman was…” too much for her liking, even after she reminded them repeatedly that she did not share the belief that he was dead. She knew they wanted to be there for her, but they really seemed to believe he was dead, and she could not bear to hear that.
Before she even realized it, she was there. And for the first time in her remembrance, she was afraid to enter Clark’s loft. Afraid to see it so abandoned. Without him there, the most important element to the entire picture-perfect existence, the key ingredient to the warm, friendly, wonderful atmosphere.
She pulled her car to the side of the road, and jumped out, slamming the car door shut quite harshly. Her nerves were starting to make her feel physically sick, she realized as she headed up the stairs to his door. She opened her purse, fumbling for the keys. She couldn’t locate them fast enough.
“Come on,” she said, starting to cry again. “Come on!” she said louder now, through gritted teeth, unaware of the people walking by watching the woman in the wedding dress who was talking to herself. She really started crying, muttering that she only had two hours. She finally gripped the jagged edge of a key and yanked on it, freeing her entire chain from the confines of her purse. The keys rattled in her shaking hands and she immediately located Clark’s key. The one he had given to her, with all the trust in the world in her, not expecting her to reciprocate the gesture at all. The thought now made her want to just curl up into a ball and cry her problems away. But her problems couldn’t go away unless she fought off that very feeling and worked hard on the task at hand… to keep her promise to Clark.
The door finally opened, and she realized the place wasn’t as desolate as she imagined. Everything was left in such a way that seeing it almost assured her that Clark would be okay, walk in that door any moment and clean the place up. There were papers strewn about the coffee table, and plates and cups beside the sink. She could almost trace his steps the last day he was in his apartment as she walked through it now. She could tell without bending over that the papers were his notes on Lex. She could see another set of handwriting on another piece of paper… Perry’s writing, she realized. She felt such a fool to have been so blind to so many things for so long. To her love for Clark, his dual identity, and Lex’s true nature. Looking at the notes from her friends who were clearly working against the clock to save her from making the biggest mistake of her life, she knew that everyone BUT her had seen the truth about the evil rich man. Even her father and Lucy, for all she might complain about their faults and misgivings, were ahead of her on that one.
“Pull yourself together, Lois, you can feel like an idiot later,” she told herself, wiping the last falling tears from her eyes, forcing herself to stop crying and get to work looking for something that would bring back to life the most wonderful man she’d ever known.
She knew she had to get in touch with the only people who might know something about how to save him. She didn’t have their number. She’d only met them once, after all, and hadn’t made the kind of impression that might induce them to give their number to her, encouraging her to call whenever she might want to. She had called Clark’s dad a cross-dresser and accused them both of being technology-illiterate, all the while making fun of the place they lived and raised their son, who she was only beginning to appreciate at the time. But they did seem to like her, she mused, in the back of her mind. She had wanted to kill Clark for telling his mother what she’d said about the cook being a cross-dresser and wanted to throw dirt on his grave when she realized that she had been talking about his father. He didn’t take offense to her small-town put downs, insinuations, or assumptions; he rather seemed to enjoy hearing what she thought, or seemed amused anyway. He didn’t judge her for thinking so little of the place he grew up, and she quickly learned to appreciate that too… Smallville. He didn’t force her to see how wholesome it was, how relaxed, how different from the big city… she could see that in him while he was there, and in photographs strewn throughout the house of his life there. She came to appreciate the quaint place all on her own.
Thinking about his folks now, while looking around for any clues of their phone number, she was growing agitated and frustrated. “Obviously he wouldn’t keep his parents’ number around; it’s ingrained in his memory, he calls them practically daily!” she said, chastising herself for wasting time. Her head popped up, all of a sudden… “Redial!” she said out loud, running over to his phone. She knew there was a possibility—slight as it may be— that the conversation she overheard two days earlier was the last phone call he’d made on his phone, and she may be able to reach them via the wonderful invention known as redial. She waited patiently, hearing a ringing on the other end.
“Metropolis Pizza Place,” came the response from what Lois assumed was some pre-adolescent teen boy on the other end. She hung up, frustrated. She took a deep breath and looked down at the phone cradle… she saw a blinking light. She doubted his parents, even if they did leave a message, would leave their call back number, but she couldn’t think of anything else at the moment. She pushed the playback button and sat down at the kitchen table, resting her head in her hands, trying to keep herself together.
“Saved message,” the answering voice announced. “’Clark, it’s Lois.’” Lois’s head popped up when she heard her own voice. “’Although if you don’t recognize my voice yet, then maybe you should be in a different business. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I am on my way over. We just got a breakthrough in our story, I’ll tell you about it when I get there. You have exactly ten minutes to be ready. Don’t be late. I don’t like waiting. I’ll, uh, see you in a few…’” Click.
She remembered leaving that message. She knew it dated back some weeks, maybe even a month. Before Lex purchased the paper, before its demise, before her engagement… a long time ago. When everything in her life was right. She didn’t leave him messages very often, so she remembered exactly when she left that one. Her heart fluttered at the thought that he’d saved it and she found herself smiling a little.
The machine’s voice broke her from her thoughts. “Message received yesterday… ‘Mr. Kent, this is Mrs. Cox calling on behalf of Lex Luthor. He wants me to remind you that he is marrying Lois Lane tomorrow, and would like you to attend the wedding. He also would like for you to contact Superman and have him stop by Lex Towers to discuss a matter involving Ms. Lane …”
Click.
Lois stared at the machine, her mind reeling. Lex had used her as bait to lure him into that trap. And he had gone, even with how things had been between them. She wanted to cry, wanted to throw something, wanted to put poison in Lex’s oxygen at the hospital, wanted to strangle that stupid Mrs. Cox, who she hated, whose voice just now had caused her to shudder involuntarily. She shook these thoughts out of her head. She could feel those things later. Right now, she had to find a way to save Clark. To bring him back to her. She saw a button on his answering machine that read ‘more information’ and pushed it. The machine’s voice informed her “this message was received yesterday at 2:33 pm, and was listened to at 2:51 pm.” She thought back… that was around the time she had seen him at the phone booth. He no doubt went to Lex’s after hearing that message, which means she was the last person he saw before being encaged and killed… and she had whizzed by angrily. It also meant, she realized somberly, that he was probably in that cage for almost a full day.
“No, no, I won’t do this!” she said to herself, angry for allowing self-pity and emotions to prolong the mission at hand. She picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Information? Yes, I need a number for Smallville, Kansas, for Jonathan and Martha Ke—“
She trailed off when she saw the door open and her eyes fell on the best sight she had seen all day, walking through Clark’s front door.
**************
**************
Clark concentrated on his present mission… to remember. He kept his eyes closed, but continued talking. “What exactly should I be honing in on here, da… uh, sir… uh, what should I call you?”
“I know you call Jonathan Kent ‘dad’, and he deserves that title. ‘Dad’ is a term that is strictly of Earthly origins. It embodies something that is inherent in your planet, and Jonathan Kent embodies all those things too. He is a dad. A human, caring, loving man who raised you wonderfully as his own. I am your father. You wouldn’t be taking anything from him and his place in your life if you call me Father. Or Jor-El. Whichever you like,” he said in that deep, resonating voice.
“Okay, Father, what should I be focusing on? A million things are dancing through my head right now. Many, many memories. A lifetime of memories. I can’t make sense of them all.”
“Just tell me what you’re seeing.”
“I see my parents standing over me. They look really big. I can see my own hands… I think I’m a baby. Then I see them hugging me while I cry. But I’m older. I think I feel… left out or something. I can see my high school too. I feel alone, but they are there and make it okay. Now I see them crying… I think I am leaving Smallville. Metropolis. I’m in Metropolis. I can still see my parents, but they’re further away. But now I can see The Daily Planet. I am feeling bad again, and they are there for me again. My parents. They’re my strength. Strength… I see blue, red, yellow… colors. My mother is making these colors and I’m… Superman. I can see myself in the mirror at a new stage in my life.”
Clark stopped, peacefully seeing more memories dance in his head, juggled around as they might be, and waited to grasp one.
“Lois. She’s my partner at the Planet. And… my best friend.”
Behind his lids, he could see confusing images interspersed in his mind. “We are working late together and she tells me not to fall for her,” he says, smiling, hoping to never forget that memory. “But I know it’s too late… I know I have already fallen…. She doesn’t want to work with me. I see us hugging… working brilliantly together. A great team. She is at my apartment, and we are laughing. She meets my parents and… I think she insults them, but I can’t help but think it’s funny… cute. She is the woman of my dreams. I… I remember knowing I love her, and feeling that emotion grip my heart a little more every day. We’re dancing in Smallville. Laughing. We’re kissing on a bed… in a plane… at the Planet… at an airport, but that’s not ME, I mean it is, but it isn’t. It’s Superman. I have kept secrets from her. I hate hiding from her. I… Smallville… and my parents… Lois… Smallville… the Planet… the Jason Trask story! We named it Kryptonite.”
Clark’s eyes shot open as his memories became crystal clear, engraving themselves, burning themselves, in his mind. “Lex Luthor used that Kryptonite to do this to me. To kill me. And he married Lois… I lost her. I’ve lost her. She’s gone. I’m gone…”
He trailed off. His heart sank and he felt like crying. He was confused. If he was ‘sort of dead’ why was he feeling things so strongly? How could he feel like his heart was breaking if it wasn’t supposed to be beating? All he knew was that he was feeling things strongly, and suddenly, remembering that Lois had married Lex Luthor, he wasn’t sure he had the energy to figure out what he was supposed to to get back to that world.
***************
***************
“Lois, honey, why are you standing here, in Clark’s apartment, in your wedding dress?” Martha asked, rushing down the stairs toward Lois, while Jonathan took their suitcases inside and shut the door. “Is Clark here?” Martha asked, clearly confused by the scene in front of her. Lois was momentarily speechless. “Weren’t you supposed to get married today? Did you call it off?” she pressed, trying to hide the light of hope in her eyes at that question. Martha placed a hand on Lois’s arm. “Honey, you’re trembling, are you okay?”
“I…” Lois started. A moment ago she was prepared to call them and tell them everything, but now, looking Clark’s mother in the eyes, seeing her clueless expression, unaware of her son’s tragic fate, words failed her miserably.
“Here, sit down,” Martha insisted, leading a shocked and speechless Lois to Clark’s couch. She sat her down, looking at her expectantly.
“Here, Lois,” Jonathan Kent’s voice broke Lois from her dazed state. Her head jerked from her reveries and looked up at Jonathan, who was proffering a cup of water. She didn’t even know he’d gone into the kitchen to get it. She reluctantly took it and took a small sip. She had to do this, she told herself. “Do you want to tell us what happened?” Jonathan asked, while Martha held Lois’s arm in a very motherly, reassuring way that was foreign to Lois.
“Okay,” she said, taking another swig of the water, as if it would give her the strength to go on. “Well it’s a very long story, but the important thing for you to know is that Clark… has…” she trailed off, trying to find the right wording. “… had an accident,” she finished.
Martha and Jonathan exchanged confused glances, and Lois had a feeling she knew what they were thinking. “I know he’s Superman,” she added quietly, to add plausibility to her story. “Lex… yesterday… trapped him in a cage that was made of Kryptonite…” she started.
“That awful rock! It makes him so sick!” Martha said, an expression of fear and sheer pain alight on her face now.
“Is he… is he unconscious? Is he awake? Is he in there?” Jonathan asked nervously, already heading toward the bedroom.
“No!” Lois said, stopping Jonathan in his tracks. He turned to face her. She tried to keep her own feelings in check, as they were obviously distraught to be discovering what had happened. “He’s… in the hospital,” she explained. She opened her mouth to tell him that he was dead, or seemingly dead anyway, but she couldn’t get the words out.
“Lois, I can see that you’re upset and don’t want to tell us something, but you have to just suck it up. This is our son you’re talking about here. Now what’s wrong?” Martha demanded.
“He’s… really sick. He was exposed to it for a long time. I know you’re upset, but we have to try to save him right now. I promised him I would save him, but I don’t know how. I need your help,” Lois said, starting to cry despite her inner protestations not to do that.
As a few tears slipped down Lois’s cheek, Jonathan paced, his mind seemingly reeling and searching for a way to help his son.
Martha was clearly beside herself with anger at Lex Luthor and worry for her son, but the vision of Lois crumbling before her eyes, clad in a beautiful wedding gown, was enough to soften her and pull her into a motherly embrace. “There, there, honey. Why don’t you change. We’ll figure this out. He’ll be okay,” Martha said, trying to sound hopeful.
Lois hugged her back, looking over her shoulder at Clark’s apartment as tears fell down her checks, her efforts to keep them in for naught. She wanted to tell them of his real condition. But she couldn’t say the words. She told herself it was because she truly believed he wasn’t dead. She pulled away from the hug and opened her mouth to tell them… or try to, but Martha spoke first.
“Jonathan, put my suitcase in Clark’s bedroom. Lois, you can borrow something of mine. I know it’s not big-city glamour, but you shouldn’t be running around in your wedding dress anymore, it’s just depressing,” Martha ordered, already ushering Lois toward the bedroom. Jonathan placed the suitcase down and left the women in there together.
Lois looked over her shoulder at Martha, who had already gone to work, unbuttoning her dress and then turned her head back around. She stared ahead blankly.
“Not how you thought the dress would come off on the big night, huh?”
Lois didn’t turn to answer her. She let out a little whimper and laugh, mixed together. She finally felt the dress loosen, as the last button was unbuttoned. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves and clutched the front of the dress to her and turned toward the older woman, meeting her gaze.
“I’ve been so awful to him,” she said quietly. “And now he’s—“
Martha handed her a tee shirt and sweatshirt and looked at her sternly. Lois put the tee shirt carefully over her head, still clutching the dress to her. “Lois, don’t—“
“I know, I know,” Lois said, her voice trembling as she put the sweatshirt over her head, letting the dress fall around her ankles once she was covered appropriately. “Not now…” She put her hands through her hair, pulling herself together. “Martha, do you know anything about Clark’s genetic make up? Or Kryptonite and how to cure him from too much exposure?”
“We only just learned about Kryptonite a few months ago when you came to Smallville. We didn’t think anything could hurt him before that. He’s never even been sick. Never went to a pediatrician, had to take Pepto-Bismol or Tylenol. There was just never any need,” Martha explained, trying to hold herself together, clearly.
Lois stepped out of her dress, out of the prison it made her feel like she was trapped in, and sat on the bed in a huff. Martha handed her an old, worn, comfortable-looking pair of sweatpants. Lois quickly pulled them up over her waist and walked out of the bedroom, thinking, with Martha following behind.
“We do know a little about how his powers work,” Martha offered.
“And a little about his Kryptonian heritage,” Jonathan added, once they’d entered the living room, where he stood.
“How? Was there information in his spaceship?” Lois asked, not taking in how odd the conversation really was to her.
Martha gave a little laugh. “Oh, heavens, no! That makes him sound like an appliance or something. Coming shipped with a manual and instructions!”
Lois smiled sheepishly. It did sound funny.
“It would have been nice to have a manual for raising him, though,” Jonathan added.
Jonathan and Martha exchanged an amused look, at that, nodding in agreement.
“No, awhile ago, he found a globe that contained some information about him,” Martha said.
“Of course, the globe!” Lois said, recalling the globe that belonged to Superman and had been stolen from Clark’s apartment months ago. She remembered how upset he was.
“We believe his powers are solar-based,” Jonathan said.
Lois nodded, trying to think like a reporter, and not like someone whose life seemed to rapidly be falling to shambles. “He has his powers because of our yellow sun… The heat wave, that’s right, he, well Clark, mentioned that… I can’t believe I forgot that!”
“Well when there’s an emergency, it’s easy to forget details,” Jonathan said.
Martha chimed in, looking like she was in her own, separate train of thought. “I’ve often wondered, since his first experience with Kryptonite, if exposure to the sun could—“
“—restore him,” Lois finished, a distant look in her eye. “Anything else? Do you know of a cure? Or if human medicine would work on him?”
“We just don’t know those things,” Jonathan said. “We don’t rule out that human medicine could work, and we definitely don’t know of a cure for Kryptonite, or we’d keep it on him and us at all times.”
Lois ran over to the kitchen phone, picked it up and quickly dialed a number. She waited a moment, drumming her fingernails on the table’s surface. “Yes! I need to speak to Inspector Henderson, this is Lois Lane,” she said quickly. Then she waited… and waited… drumming her nails nervously again.
“Henderson,” his voice finally came.
“Henderson, it’s Lois! Has there been any change?” she asked, hope in her voice.
“No, Lois. He’s still dead. And I’m pretty sure I know the exact time of death.”
“When?” Lois asked, her voice practically failing her.
“The second your ceremony started. He was pretty out of it for most of the night, drifting in and out of consciousness, I think. And Luthor wired the church so Superman could hear the service himself. On the tape, you can hear the organ music starting and his head shoots up and he looks around, and then he falls back down, letting out a deep breath. He doesn’t move a muscle after that.”
Lois stood there, her eyebrows furrowed furiously, her knuckles on her left hand white from holding the phone so tightly to her ear, her knuckles on her right hand white from making a tight fist.
“It’s like he was almost dead all night, but holding on, barely. And then you see him just give in to it and die.”
Lois heard a strangled sob escape her, and surprised herself. She wasn’t aware she’d started to cry again, but she knew she had to get a hold of herself. She realized she had a death grip on the phone and relaxed her hand a little.
“Henderson, listen to me. He needs sunlight,” Lois said.
“Lois, I know he’s a little pale, but I don’t think—“
“This is no time for jokes!”
“I wasn’t joking,” Henderson said, seriously. “Believe it or not, your solution to ‘saving him’ sounds… bizarre.”
“No, the sunlight might restore him. I can’t get into it now. But we can’t waste any time. He needs a lot of exposure to sunlight and he needs it soon!”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said.
“You have to try this! You promised!” Lois said, adamantly.
She heard a long pause at the other end.
“Don’t ever say I don’t do favors for you, Lois,” his voice finally said, and Lois smiled.
“I’m on my way back to the hospital!” she said, hanging up.
Her smile faded when she turned and was faced with Clark’s parents. Jonathan was standing behind Martha, his hands reassuringly on her shoulders. They looked like they were about to break. Just break in two. But they were holding each other, trying to find strength. They were searching Lois’s eyes for answers, although it was obvious they were afraid of what the answers would be.
“I should probably tell you the whole story,” Lois said.
***************
***************
“Lois married Luthor. I remember fighting with her about it… she said she couldn’t love me….” Clark’s voice trailed off, his memories swimming to the surface in full gusts. “But she does love Superman,” he added, resentfully. He shook his head. “All I ever wanted was for her to love me, not my abilities. The person inside…”
“What do you remember about the end of your life?” Jor-El demanded, as Clark was getting a little side-tracked in self-pity.
“I remember talking to her… as him… and being rude. Refusing her. We tried to work it out, but she was angry… so angry… at me.”
***” I do not consider you a friend anymore. You have hurt me in ways that I cannot forgive. I don’t trust you and don’t want you in my life…”***
Her voice echoed in his mind, taking over his senses.
“She hates me. Before she even married Luthor, I lost her. All of her. She hated Superman by the end too. I remember feeling… alone… in the end.”
There was a long pause.
“Father? Are you there? Did I do something wrong?” Clark asked, feeling all of a sudden like a small child. He wasn’t sure where he was or where he was going, and definitely wasn’t sure what he was supposed to remember or what he was expected to say.
“When you came to this planet, Earth, you were alone. You were born into love and then you were alone. You grew up with love, and then were alone.”
“Are you saying the next part of my life will be filled with love?” Clark asked, hopefully.
“Maybe. Or maybe you’ve come full circle and you’re at the end or back at the beginning… or both.”
Clark stared ahead at the bright void. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Is your life worth saving if you haven’t ventured past the beginning? Maybe… maybe you’re at the end now,” Jor-El said, to which Clark opened his mouth to argue. “Listen to me,” Jor-El said, and Clark shut his mouth obediently. “You have to sum up your life in one word, and tell me what you see in your future.”
Clark finally was allowed to speak. “Am I on trial for my life?”
There was another long pause.
“Sort of.”
“I’m ‘sort of’ dead and ‘sort of’ on a life or death trial?” he asked incredulously, running a hand through his hair. “I’m not dead! I know I’m not. I can still feel things!”
“Exactly. We are going to examine what you feel.”
“Why do I feel like this is a test? You want to see how I feel about life to see if I deserve to go back to it?” Clark asked, unbelieving of this whole thing.
“A little while ago, when you thought about Lois marrying Lex Luthor, you thought you were not sure you wanted to go back to a life like that,” Jor-El said.
“Yeah, but… wait, you can read my thoughts?”
“Yes. So I will know if you are lying. Now, let us have a civilized and honest discussion. I want to know what you remember and how you feel, in one word, about life.”
“Oh, is that all?” Clark asked sarcastically.
“No, there’s more,” he heard Jor-El say, laughter in his tone.
*******************
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