from last time...
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jack turned. “How long have you been here?” he asked, embarrassed.
“Just long enough to hear your threat. You know, I have tried pleading and luring him back with words of love. But blackmail… that I haven’t tried,” she said, smiling.
“Well, I’ve never been a straight-shooter,” Jack said.
“True. Listen, do you need some more time with him? I can come back.”
“No… no, I’m good,” Jack said. “I said all I wanted to say. Thanks for that, by the way… I’d still be staring at the wall in here if you hadn’t forced me to talk to him in that subtle way of yours.”
“Any time,” Lois said, taking Clark’s hand in hers again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME
PART 16
*******************
“Well, Clark, I feel like I’ve worn out every possible thing to say to you,” Lois said to Clark, as it was her first time alone with him all day. And it was closing in on the end of the day… again. He hadn’t moved or opened his eyes or shown much sign of improvement all day. His breathing, everyone had noticed, however, was getting very strong on its own, without the machine’s assistance much needed.
Lois pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and looked at it, smiling a little. “See this? Well, of course you can’t see it, but you should know that it’s an important piece of paper. You see, the Daily Planet is being rebuilt. Clark, not only did you bring down the biggest crime lord in probably the world and saved countless lives most likely in doing that, but you made it possible for our owner, Franklin Stern, to see the truth about the unnatural fall of the Planet, and now he wants to bring it back better than ever. It’s going to happen, Clark. And this piece of paper lists the important employees; the ones he wants back. You have barely been here for a year, Clark, and there you are. They want you back. They know they’d be stupid to not ask you back because of seniority of reporters with longer careers here or more experience. Actually, to clarify what exactly it is that you’re not seeing, it’s your name, on the same line as mine. Next to it. Lois Lane and Clark Kent. They want us back. Our team. Our partnership. Our chemistry. Whatever it WAS that made us the ‘hottest team in town’ within the first month of our working together… whatever it was that made us get those page one stories every time… whatever it was that we have that is so amazing that no one can ignore it. Not this man, our owner, who has never met us, not Perry, not the readers, not you… and not me. We have something, Clark. I’ve been so afraid of what it is for so long and look where that fear took me. I hurt you. I hurt myself. And now…” Lois trailed off, taking a deep breath. As much as this demon still haunted her, she wanted to just put it to rest for a while.
“Now I’m not afraid anymore. I am praying for the opportunity to take that terrifying leap into the unknown with my best friend; to cross that invisible line that divides our friendship from so much more.”
Lois looked at him lying there, looking so vulnerable and innocent. He deserved to live more than anyone she knew. Not that anyone didn’t deserve to live… but seeing him fighting for his life for two days now, she was struck with that thought, that more than anything, this man deserved to live. This man who always put everything on the line for everyone else… his personal life, the chance to be normal… he gave it all up to save everyone he could. He wasn’t bitter, though. Never bitter. He just enjoyed his time where he could be normal, at work and just hanging out with friends, even more. It didn’t seem right to her that he was fighting so hard for his life or that yesterday… his life ended. Really ended. He actually died. And before he ever even really got the chance to live. And love…
****…”he learned to deal with things, and eventually let himself do some normal things, like kiss girls. He became quite the Smallville High Casanova! Girls were always chasing him around! But he never got too serious. He didn’t like anyone enough to risk… well, what he thought he was risking by getting too close to them. He was very popular because of his personality, but a little bit of a mystery to most people. And he hated that. He hated hiding. He never got extremely close to anyone before you. He wouldn’t let himself.” ****
Lois could hear Martha’s voice in her head, a certain part of one of their conversations from the day before echoing in her mind.
She looked at him lying there. He really did look so sweet and innocent.
Innocent…
He really was innocent, she realized. She knew with a certainty as strong as her knowledge of her love for him, that he had never made love to anyone before. She knew Clark Kent, and was pretty sure he had probably never done much more than kiss anyone. He was waiting, she knew. Waiting for her, as his mother… and he, himself… only made all too clear.
**** “He never got extremely close to anyone before you. He wouldn’t let himself.” ****
She knew that he never was close to anyone. She also knew he would never just sleep with someone, meaninglessly. It only made sense…
He spent his life keeping people at a purposeful distance. Hiding. Hoping and praying they DIDN’T get to know him well. He was protecting his family and himself. Never let anyone too close, they may learn. Or see…
If you don’t let people in, then you don’t run that risk…
**** “… he never got too serious. He didn’t like anyone enough to risk… well, what he thought he was risking by getting too close to them.” ****
That statement of Martha’s made more sense now. Clark, when he was younger, a teen, thought that if he got too close to someone, he might actually hurt them accidentally. Put them at risk. But the flipside of her statement held truth too. If he got too close to someone, he put himself at risk. Personally. Professionally. Completely.
He was only willing to risk everything with her…
She stared at his still form, breathing steadily and quietly. Facing her, eyes shut. Sleeping…
She smiled, touching his cheek with the backs of her fingers. They were so alike…
She used to keep people at a distance too. Put up walls. Hide. Don’t let them see the real Lois Lane. She knew that if she let people in, she would risk the pain of losing them or being hurt by them… or both. She had learned the lesson the hard way… through having them leave her and shame her even. She was done putting herself at that risk, and so she closed herself off to protect her heart. To protect herself.
She, like him, only took the risk with him…
She let him in, even when she didn’t want to. He broke in, really, with his ways. And being in her heart, he did hurt her. She took the risk and was hurt, when she discovered he’d lied to her and kept one of the most important things about himself a secret from her.
At first she thought it was the most important thing about him. But now she knew it wasn’t. The person he was, she already knew. The things that mattered to him, he let her see. That was the main reason she had ever let him in at all. What he kept hidden was something about him that was part of what MADE him the amazing person she knew.
But his lie did hurt her. He hurt her. Because she risked everything, she was able to be hurt, just as she knew it would be. But what surprised her was that the strength of her love for him and his love for her was so much stronger than the strength of that pain, that she was able to learn from it and move on, still keeping him in her heart, only no longer afraid of the potential risks that entailed. She was willing to risk anything to just be able to be with him. There was no more fear.
Just love.
Part of her wished that she had waited too. For him. He probably didn’t wait for her, per se, she mused, but assumed he would just be alone forever. He probably assumed that and accepted it. And then he met her… and he felt it instantly. He’d just never met the right person before. But she was it… she was what he was waiting for. She knew that he felt the connection immediately… she remembered the look on his face when he met her. He looked taken aback, surprised… maybe at himself and his reaction to her… and downright smitten. She had rolled her eyes, at the time, hoping to just shrug off this new reporter’s obvious instant crush, as she had assumed it was. She had ignored the fact that she felt something too. When she had met him, she had felt that something was beginning. A new era in her life, perhaps… maybe a better one than she’d just experienced. She hadn’t made the connection then that that feeling coincided with her meeting him. But there it was. And now, part of her did wish that she had waited… but she knew also that if she changed anything about herself and her history, she would be different, and maybe it would have changed a lot of things, including him falling in love with her and her, in turn, finally falling in love with him too. She was who she was, and every experience in her life, good and bad, eventually brought them together and made their relationship the one it was. Her often untrusting nature was part of that relationship. It was something he didn’t possess and as a result, made them even more compatible and work that much better together as both partners and friends. Their core differences were the magnets for them. Like positive to negative, they were constantly pulled to each other. Perry must have seen that too, she realized, which is why he had put them together.
Neither of them waited or didn’t wait, really, she realized, after looking at him for a long moment. He just closed himself off all his life, whereas she didn’t close herself off until she had been hurt a few times. Unfortunately it was after the special act of making love that she would close herself off. For him, he stayed as far away from people as he could from the beginning. Probably as soon as he was capable of rational thought, he knew he couldn’t let people get close to him.
When she turned him down, she realized, he must have thought that was it. He would always just be alone. He had accepted it before he met her, but had been given this amazing sense of hope upon meeting her that maybe he didn’t have to be alone. Maybe he could be with her and just love her… like a normal person. In turning him down, she had turned him right back into that alien. That outsider. That person who stands alone.
She shook her head, though, reminding herself of what Martha had said about love being blind. She did love Clark Kent all along… she was just too blind to know it. She couldn’t be at fault for hurting him. After all, they hurt each other in those few days. And while the hurt had subsided for both of them, what still remained was what mattered.
The love…
She touched her own cheek suddenly, realizing she was hot. It was burning up. The room was hot, but her cheek felt internally hot. She was blushing, she realized. Her train of thoughts had gotten deeply personal, she knew, and she was now blushing as a result. She looked down at her lap and laughed. She couldn’t believe she had just sat there for almost a half hour, thinking about Clark in a sexual context. Thinking about how he had never made love. About how she wanted to share everything with him… including that. She laughed again at that, still looking down. She felt she couldn’t even look at him while continuing down that train of thought. She just blushed harder. Never in a million years would she have thought that she would give so much thought, on her own, to Clark’s sex life. But now… she gave a lot of thought to everything about him.
“What’s so funny?”
Lois’s hand fell off her lap and she closed her eyes for a moment. She knew that voice. It couldn’t be…
She dared to hope and looked up…
He was looking at her. He looked like death and looked like he could barely keep his eyes open, but he was looking at her. Sort of dreamily…
“Clark…” she whispered, her eyes glazing over with tears. She whispered it quietly, in surprise, almost to herself. With his powers gone, he probably didn’t even hear her, she realized. “You… you’re awake!” she said, elated.
“Feels like it,” he said, slowly, wincing.
“Are you okay? You must be in pain,” she said, noticing his look.
He just nodded. But then, he smiled. Not his boyish grin, or thousand-kilowatt smile. He smiled a small, tired smile… the smile of someone who had just been through hell to get back. But the smile seemed to tell her that looking at her, it was worth it.
She wanted to jump up and hug him. Hard. To kiss him and hold him. But his expression held quite a bit of pain in it and she didn’t want to hurt him any more. Unable to take not making any contact with him, she kissed his hand, a tear escaping her eye. She had him back.
“I can’t even begin to…” she started.
But she couldn’t say anything to him, as she heard the door open. The doctor was back. When she turned to face him, he saw the tears falling out of her eyes and looked at the man on the bed, probably fearing he’d died, Lois thought.
The doctor looked shocked to see that quite the opposite had happened.
“Superman, you’re… you’re…” he trailed off, pushing a button to immediately call nurses to come to the room. “When did this happen?” he asked Lois, trying to regain his composure and professional air.
“About twenty seconds ago,” Lois said, still shocked. She looked at Clark. He was looking at her the way she was looking at him. Like they’d been given a miracle…
******************
It had finally happened, Clark thought, as soon as Lois came into view.
It seemed like so long that he could hear voices in his dark surroundings that were deep and slow and didn’t make sense. Then finally he heard her. Lois. His Lois. He heard her beautiful voice say ‘good morning’ to him. Then he heard his parents’ voices. And Jack’s. He could hear everything so clearly, finally…. He could feel himself getting further and further to the surface still. Further and further up.
Her laugh…
It was a laugh he’d heard many times before. Before that time in their lives where they were angry at each other and hurt… there was no laughter then. But he heard it a minute ago… clear as a bell, and beautiful as a song. It represented hope, for him, and then he did it. Finally…
He had felt like he had surfaced above water. That moment, seeing Lois… it was like that first big breath after being under water too long and racing to the surface and then finally breaking it. Breathing.
He’d made it back. Back to Lois…
When he first opened his eyes, his vision was blurred slightly, but starting to focus. When they focused, they focused on her.
Laughing…
He wanted to talk and he did… but it took a lot of energy. But it was worth it, he knew, because it got her attention and allowed him to look into her eyes again… those eyes that he had been dreaming about and wanted to see again so badly. He wished he could say to her the millions of things he wanted to say. But he didn’t have the strength. It hurt to talk. It hurt to look around. So he just looked at her. He looked into her eyes. Into her soul…
It felt good to look at her. It made him forget about the pain. It even made him smile…
He was aware a doctor had come into his hospital room, but he just continued looking at Lois. He couldn’t lift his head off the bed. He had no energy. It even hurt to think. He had so many questions. Did Lois know his secret? Did she know she was sitting with Clark? Or did she think it was just Superman? What happened to Lex Luthor? Those and a million other questions danced through his head, but it hurt to focus on them. So he didn’t. He just focused on her, letting those questions and all others wait. The sight of her was the only thing that made the pain bearable.
He was back…
He’d gotten back to her. He could see her crying, while the doctor checked his heart rate and other things. He hated seeing her crying…
“Ms. Lane, could you step outside for a little bit? We need to check him; make sure everything’s normal,” a nurse said, helping the doctor. The room was getting crowded.
“I want to be here,” Lois said, looking intensely at the nurses, the tears falling unchecked down her cheeks. “I can’t… can’t…”
“Lois,” the doctor said kindly. “Lois, it will just take a minute to check on him. The more room we have to work, the quicker it will be and then you can come back. I promise.”
Clark couldn’t hear what she said. She was too far away… by the door. But she must have agreed, he realized, because he couldn’t see or hear her anymore. He couldn’t focus on her anymore… and then he felt the pain. It was everywhere. His body ached severely, more than it ever had before. More than it had in the cage, even. It was the pain from being so long at the mercy of the kryptonite… an ache in every bone and muscle. An ache from a previously broken heart that stopped for so long and suddenly started beating again. An ache from dying, and then coming alive again, after his body had been so completely, agonizingly broken in the end.
And without Lois there to take his mind off that pain, he succumbed to it, passing out almost the second she was out of sight…
********************
Lois stood in the hallway, pacing. She was ecstatic. Elated. And scared, too.
She had him back. Inside that room, the man she loved, who she nearly lost, was alive and AWAKE! She couldn’t wrap her mind around that thought. Clark was awake… he’d been looking at her! He smiled, even.
She was filled with confusing, ambivalent emotions. The thrill at having his eyes finally open, after going so long without looking into them and seeing their beauty and depths, danced alongside her fear that maybe he was still mad at her for her treatment of him and would want nothing to do with her now. But his smile… that smile she had so desperately missed and wanted to see… seemed to say that he, like her, had long ago forgiven and forgotten, and after coming so close to being away from her forever, he loved her more than ever and wanted to just forget about those past demons. Or move on from them… together. Him being awake was confirmation to her… joyful confirmation… that he really would be just fine. And that made her ready to climb the walls from excitement… But the pain in his eyes, which he seemed to be trying not to think about as he bored into her soul through her eyes, was evident all the same. The joy of his awakening was piggybacked with worry. He was in a lot of pain. Probably more than she could ever imagine…
He had never been sick a day in his life. Had never scraped a knee or gotten so much as a blister from a new pair of shoes. This experience was the worst thing that could happen to anyone… but to happen to someone who had almost no experience with any kind of pain… She knew the suffering had to be magnified from the high state it was already at.
“Lois?” Martha said, walking over to her quickly, looking concerned. “Lois? What’s happened?” Martha said, her brow creased, looking at the door to her son’s room.
Jonathan and Jack had run over now too, noticing the worry in Martha’s face and the tears falling down Lois’s cheeks.
“He’s… he’s awake,” she said, with a quivering voice. She didn’t realize she’d started shaking. But she was shaking… just as she had yesterday when she thought all was hopeless. This was different, but her fear and the height of her emotions was the same… almost too much to deal with, which made her shake and tremble.
“Here,” Jonathan said, guiding Lois to a chair.
Once there, she looked up at them. She saw Jonathan meet Martha’s eyes, as the two shared a triumphant smile. They had their son back.
“How is he?” Jack asked, as the Kents seemed a little overcome.
“He didn’t say anything really… it looked like it was too painful to talk. He seems to be in a lot of pain…” Lois said, getting upset, even as waves of relief continued to wash over her.
“But he’s awake, and with the sunlight, he’ll be better in no time,” Martha said, encouragingly.
A man walked over to them; he looked like a doctor and had a kind face, Lois mused.
“Can we help you?” Jack said, a little edge in his voice, as the man kind of just stood there once he’d reached the group.
“Oh, gosh, sorry. Um, I’m Dr. Bernard Klein. I work at STAR Labs,” he explained to them.
“Isn’t that where they took…” Lois started, trailing off, as she didn’t want to leak any information about Kryptonite to this man, in case he was yet another person that hated Superman.
“… uh, yes,” the doctor answered, saying no more on that, as if understanding Lois’s discretion. “Yes, and I have been studying it… and Superman himself.”
“Studying him?” Jonathan said, his protective instincts clearly kicking into gear.
“Well not ‘studying him’, in the way a scientist might study a lab experiment. Rather, I have been trying to understand him, get to know him and how he works. I have been keeping an eye on him, not just for the last day, but for a few months... You see, he saved my life a few months ago. There was a fire at the lab. The worst possible chemicals that could have mixed together caused this massive fire—“
“Of course, the big STAR Labs fire; it was like an explosion!” Lois said, recalling that day. “My partner and I covered that,” she explained.
“And wrote a wonderful article about it,” he said, smiling at Lois. “I presume that you won’t trust me that easily, and it is understandable. Superman has enemies. He’s here at all because of that fact. I have here,” he said, producing a large binder of documents, “every known document you could ever pull on me, in case you wanted to research me and see if I am trustworthy at all. I know looking into me could take a long time and you don’t want to, so I have done it for you. You can have someone corroborate the facts in there if you’d like; I have nothing to hide. It’s all in there… my full name, history, dental records, driving records, address, social security number, and even the official account of that fire at the lab is in there, plus a lot more. Every girlfriend, prom detail, high school and college committee and class lists…”
“…sounds fascinating,” Jack said, wryly.
Lois shot him a look and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, it is,” Dr. Klein said. “When you’re done with it, I think I may try to have it published. An autobiography can really put you on the map!”
“And this one is sure to be a best-seller,” Lois said.
“I have this hope to make a difference. It’s what I dedicate my life to. And then there’s this fire and everything… everything in this book, and everything else that’s just in here,” he said, touching his heart for emphasis, “almost goes up in smoke. And then I’m just a dot on the lines of history. Superman came in and got me out, completely unharmed, even though I was in a lead-lined room and couldn’t yell because of the smoke…”
“How did you know about lead?” Martha asked.
“I told you, I’ve been paying attention. Wanting to get him… to know him. He found me against all odds and saved me. I remember saying, ‘I thought I was going to die’, and he said to me, ‘that wasn’t an option.’ I try to make a difference, right? After that day, it hit me. The greatest thing I could ever do is try to make a difference to the person who makes a difference to the world. You know, he spent several Saturdays, between rescues, helping us rebuild a new lab, quicker. We have a greater facility now, largely due to him. He is about so much more than just the act of saving the day. And those times, when he would help us build that lab, I watched him. Observed him. I listened. If he looked at something and looked frustrated and mumbled ‘lead-lined,’ it must mean he can’t see through it. I just learned. And now… I owe him. I want to help.”
“Help with what?” Lois said.
“I would like to work with the doctors here to help him get better, with as little pain as possible. I know more about him than they do, and just think I could be of assistance to them.”
“How did you know about what happened to him?” Lois asked.
“I have a friend at the police station that was in Lex Luthor’s cellar when all this came about. He would never have told me, except he knew that I was passionately trying to understand Superman biologically, medically, as a person … he thought, if anything… I might be able to help.”
“Who’s your friend?” Lois asked, having a feeling she already knew the answer.
“Bill Henderson. We’ve known each other for years,” he explained.
Lois smiled a small smile. As if on cue, Henderson walked over to them.
“We having a little reunion out here in the hallway?” he said, walking up to the group. “Lois, I see you’ve met my old pal, Bernie. The smartest guy I know,” he finished, seriously, so as to tell Lois that he wouldn’t risk anything if he didn’t think it would really help.
“Thanks for calling him, Bill,” Lois said, genuinely.
“I didn’t want to tell you yesterday, because I thought it wouldn’t be easy for you to trust anyone, after everything… but I can promise you this: you can trust him. He’s on Superman’s side, believe me,” Henderson said reassuringly. “So… why are we convening OUTSIDE his room?”
“Well, he’s awake,” Lois said, a nervous smile creeping its way up her lips.
Henderson’s eyebrows shot up and he smiled. “Lois Lane Saves Superman… if this weren’t a secret, it’d make a hell of a headline.”
“I didn’t save him,” she said, self-deprecatingly.
“Lois, yesterday, when we found him, every cop, including me, every witness, every paramedic was ready to take him to the morgue. You MADE us give him a chance to come back and live. And now, to wake up.”
Lois smiled, as the doctor finally opened the door and walked out into the hallway, his nurses continuing down the hall.
The doctor looked at the group. “Well he certainly has support,” he said. The whole group just looked at him expectantly, looking as though they were really not in the mood to beat around the bush. “Okay. Well, he’s out again.”
Lois felt something tighten inside. “Out? Unconscious?”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “That’s not unusual. He’s in a great deal of pain, which will undoubtedly get better with time, patience and sunlight. He seems to improve a lot as the day gets on and the sunlight gets stronger, we’ve noticed.”
Lois took a deep breath, feeling like it had been a dream that he had even woken up at all. She had seen him for mere seconds with his eyes open and now he was out again.
“I suggest giving him pain killers,” Dr. Klein said.
The other doctor looked at him.
“I’m Dr. Klein from Star Labs and I’ve been observing Superman for some time now.”
“Have you ever x-rayed him? Or taken his blood? Or…” the doctor started.
“No.”
“How can we offer him a painkiller when it could actually have an adverse effect on him?” the doctor said.
“We know his heart beats where human hearts beat. He looks just like humans, down to his teeth and his fingers and his hairline, his eyebrows, and even his fingernails. He can breathe from his nose or his mouth, both of which look perfectly human as well. The only things un-human about him are his abilities. But right now, he doesn’t even have those. He is human right now. He was sent here, not because of the strong human resemblance, but because Krypton had human life form, but received something that humans simply don’t receive from the sun. So he has powers, which is all that sets him apart. This is part biological and part symbiotic, but I believe that right now, in his condition, he is a human being. I won’t take his blood or give him an x-ray, because I don’t think he would want those things on file anywhere… but I have a feeling that if he gets cut, he would bleed. He has blood. And bones…”
“That’s right, he does bleed. Normal looking blood,” Lois said, flashing instantly back to her time with Clark in Smallville, remembering the fuss he made about getting a paper cut. Now she realized why he was so upset by it… he had never bled before. She noticed a few people looking at her quizzically. “He came across that substance once before and I was there, and he got a really small cut at the time.”
“That previous exposure probably saved him,” Dr. Klein said, looking as if he just solved a mystery for himself. “I was wondering how someone who had never felt any pain before in his life was able to survive that long trapped with a radioactive poison, more or less.” He shook his head, clearly remembering his argument at hand. “So, okay doctor, follow me. He bleeds normal, human-looking blood. From what we see externally about the way he functions, it seems he functions internally normal as well. I firmly believe that a painkiller would help him. I can say with complete certainty it would not have an adverse effect on him. If anything, it wouldn’t help at all, so we risk nothing. I just think that if we can make this less painful for him, we should. His body has been through hell, and most likely every fiber, every muscle, every bone in him aches in a way we can’t even imagine. If it doesn’t help him, then he remains in the same condition. If it does help him, then we help him. It will not have an adverse effect on him, though, because I am more certain than ever that without his powers, he is merely human.”
“If the sun does that to him, then he is obviously built differently than us,” the doctor pressed.
“There is something in him that is different, granted. But that’s genetics. He has the same organs and bones and muscles as us, all of which are aching right now, and he functions the same as us, now more than ever.”
“It makes sense,” Martha said, aside, to Lois.
Lois nodded her head absently, taking this all in. She didn’t know why, but she had a lot of trust in this man. Dr. Klein. He was a friend of Henderson’s and seemed to want to help Clark… or Superman as he believed… with every ounce of his being. “Why don’t we try it?” Lois said to the doctors. When they looked at her, she added, “just a little. Don’t give him the complete dosage to all his pain… just a little, to make sure it’s okay.”
“I’ll help you,” Dr. Klein said to the other doctor, walking with him into the hospital room.
