TOC Part Four"You're sure you'll be okay from here?"
"Exactly what do I have to do to get you to buzz off and leave me alone?"
His expression was very serious. "Tell me you'll be all right, and promise you'll look after yourself."
She sobered immediately, recognising the sincerity in his voice.
"I'll be fine. Thanks to you." She swallowed, realising the enormity of what the kid had done for her. "Go on, then. Get back to that café before you lose your job."
<You don't *deserve* to work... liberty? What do you want with liberty? You don't *need* to be free... you're dependent on me. Never forget that.>He grinned sunnily at her, raising his hand to his forehead in a mock salute. "Aye aye, cap'n."
"You are so weird," she exclaimed, laughing at him.
They smiled at each other for a few minutes, before Lois broke eye contact and cleared her throat.
"Well... the bus is due to leave in ten minutes…guess I should find out where it is. And maybe make a pit-stop."
"And you're right, I should get back. I need this job. Gotta save up for a new drum kit, you know."
She nodded appreciatively, smiling. "Goodbye, Charlie. Thank you... thank you so, so much."
He nodded. "Anytime."
She was walking away from him when suddenly he yelled, "Hey!" Twisting around, she looked at him with a puzzled expression. "What?"
"You never told me your name," he shrugged, burying his hands in his pockets.
She paused, thinking hard.
"My name... it's Lo-Louise."
"Just Louise?"
"Yes. Just Louise." She was definite on that front.
"Okay." He was silent for a few minutes. "Bye... Louise."
She smiled at him and he finally turned, walking away without a glance behind. She watched him leave, feeling foolish for the twinges of sadness in her stomach. Another friend, gone out of her life. Another face that would haunt her dreams at night. Another man, leaving her to be blown around like a thistle in the wind. Another departure.
She swallowed roughly, bringing her hand up to bat fiercely at the sudden salty moisture on her cheeks. She was being a sentimental idiot. And Charlie hadn't abandoned her. Heck, he was just a kid! Just a kid who had helped her a little. Got her on her way. It was just... unfamiliar, after all this time, a man showing any kindness towards her. That was the only reason why she was crying.
With a start, she realised that the dam had broken. Sixteen months of hell, and she had never cried. Not once. Crying was not something you did in his house. Neither was screaming. Neither was fighting back. If you absolutely *had* to vomit, then do it neatly into your apron, as soon as you got enough breath back. Contribution to conversation was not tolerated. Passive submission. Blankness. That had been the name of the game. For sixteen whole months.
And it had been a *kid* - an adolescent, barely eighteen years old - who had made her cry.
She shook her head viciously, dabbing at the corner of her eye again. Taking another look around her, she slipped the card out of her pocket, swallowing queasily at the shininess and texture of it. She could almost feel his oily business dealings seeping through it, staining and shaming her.
Trying her hardest to appear nonchalant, she sauntered over to the machine and slotted the card in, breathing hard as the welcome message appeared on the screen.
She knew the pin. Date of her wedding day, backwards.
<A nice simple number, darling, that you'll remember... happiest day of our lives...>He'd been so like that in the first few months of her marriage - kind and solicitous and unbearably patronising. She hadn't even noticed the patronising part till that very second - how cruel, that she should be reminded just now, standing at this ATM, how blind she'd been, what a cruel sadistic powerful *monster* she'd married...
She froze, her heart thudding to an abrupt halt.
Power. Powerful monster. Lots and lots of power, and lots and lots of money, and lots and lots of contacts...
Contacts who could let him know exactly where and when his ATM card had last been used... and how much had been taken out... instantaneously.
Her hand came down hard on the 'cancel' button, and she watched as her card reappeared and the machine wished her a nice day.
What... what in the
world had she been *thinking*? What kind of stupid,
stupid, idiotic, self-destroying psycho was she? *How* could she have taken his ATM card? How could she have knowingly taken it all the way over to the bus station, punched in those numbers and never have figured out the direct link to the area?
But now... what was she to do for money?
Her mind flashed back to the wad of cash she'd discovered in his desk drawer, back in that horrible imposing shadow of a house he'd built them. How she bitterly regretted her timidity now. She should just have taken the money and left the area as fast as her feet could carry her...
The area.
If she withdrew a couple of hundred dollars - the maximum a card would allow her take in one day - from the *wrong location*... that way if he did figure it out - when he figured it out - he'd lose valuable time looking in the wrong place.
Not her original escape plan, sure. She'd wanted to drop off the face of the planet and make him think she'd never existed.
But this was... a suitable alternative. Make him sweat. Make him pay. Make him doubt himself. And then peel that carefully-constructed public mask away and reveal the horror within...
She whistled for a cab.
~&~
~One hour later~
She'd done it. She'd actually done it. She'd ridden all the way back to the outskirts of their - his - house, and she'd withdrawn almost eight hundred dollars from their - his - account.
So by the time their - his - accountant figured out that the account had been depleted, she would be long gone. And he'd have absolutely no leads from what she'd done.
And now she was back where she'd started, about to take a Greyhound bus to...
Glancing around her to ensure nobody was watching, she withdrew the map that she had received and pored over it. Charlie had ringed her destinations in red Magic Marker - she grinned as she remembered how proudly he had whipped it out.
<Hopeless, Lois. Just hopeless.>Missouri. Home of the Ozarks and that banjo-playing boy from 'Deliverance'. She shuddered. She'd been to St. Louis, which was a nice enough place, but other than that large city, she didn't have great expectations of the state as a whole. Rural, backwards, boring. Altogether not a first choice of vacation destinations.
But the perfect place to lose yourself, if one needed to get lost.
From St. Louis, she'd make the transfer to Joplin, where hopefully she'd be able to lose any scent of a trail he might have picked up, should the dress fail to convince him of her untimely death. Then on through towns that got progressively smaller the further west she went. Hill City, Plainville, Greensburg... until she and the bus parted ways in the last town that had a bus station – Friend.
That name sounded comforting, even in her head. It would take her three long days of bus-riding misery, and still she'd be thirty miles or so shy of her final destination. How she was going to manage it eastward when the time came was beyond her, but it was a start. A... beginning. Definitely better than her other option, which was to stay in Metropolis until he inevitably tracked her down.
<You'll never escape...>Crumpling the paper viciously, she shoved it back into the pocket of her red sweater, biting her lip as she walked into the main terminal of the bus station. Suddenly feeling daring, she withdrew five dollars from her funds and ordered a large latte and chocolate brownie from the Starbucks stand. Taking a distracted step away from the stand, sipping her coffee, she bumped headlong into a tramp, who promptly fell to the ground.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, standing her coffee on a seat nearby, hefting him to his feet and trying not to wrinkle her nose at the smell. He brushed his hand down his coat distractedly, smiling toothlessly at her at last.
"No harm done, ma'am," he croaked, his eyes fixated on the brownie in her hand.
Suddenly feeling a cold twist of pity in the bottom of her stomach for him - he who had so many more troubles than she - she smiled encouragingly at him and slipped her hand into her pocket, then tucked a bill into one of the pockets of his greatcoat. "Here," she said, trying her hardest not to appear like she was being charitable.
He caught her hand and squeezed hard. "Thank you... thank you," he said, nodding fervently and wringing her hand between his two. She nodded back, slightly apprehensive now, and pulled her hand from his grasp.
It felt good to be generous again, she reflected as she walked away, heading over to the stop where the bus would pull in. She didn't see his jaundiced eyes watching her every step, and she didn't see him darting a sharp glance at the glaring neon sign that displayed the time and destination of the next bus.
She didn't see him. If she had seen him doing that, she might have gotten a little nervous.
But she didn't, and she boarded the bus five minutes later, confident that she had escaped at last.
~&~
<And she was walking towards him, as bold and beautiful and *real* as ever. For four weeks, his subconscious had taunted him, time and time again with fleeting images of her - deep, fathomless eyes, silky, gilded hair brushing against a creamy shoulder, lips pursed in a perfect Cupid's bow - but, faced as he was with the real picture, he could see how pale the impression had been. A mere pencil sketch, as opposed to the real colour photograph.>"...fourteen, I saw this television show - funny, I don't even remember the name of it now - and from then on, I knew I wanted to be a journalist..."
<She was smiling, her teeth a perfect contrast to the dusky, tanned hue of her skin, the suppressed radiance in her face making him feel pale and grey beside her. He folded his arms in front of his chest, suddenly painfully aware that he was clad in black from head to toe. Hades against his Persephone.>"... wanted me to be a secretary, or a nurse... a 'woman's job'. He had very fixed ideas. It was... tough, especially since I've always been shy, but eventually I managed to break away." A tinkly laugh. "I waited tables and saved my birthday money for almost eight years, and at the end, Daddy finally relented and sent me. All the way to Cambridge..."
<"I've missed you," she said, almost shyly.>"...you decide to go into journalism?" she asked, smiling encouragingly. "Did you go to college, or did you do it the old-fashioned way?"
<He swallowed, hard. "I've missed you, too.">He blinked, leaving his fork down. He suddenly wasn't hungry any more.
"I... uhm... that is..." He broke off, shaking his head hopelessly and looked at her, despairing.
<He cleared his throat awkwardly, breaking the silence that had woven its spell around them. "So... how've you been?" he asked uneasily.>"...didn't go to college?" she asked, clearly surprised. "Gosh, I would never have had the patience to start as a novice! Was it difficult?"
/Smart. Real smart./
"No!" he burst out. She raised an eyebrow.
<"Oh... okay, I guess." She laughed nervously. "Tiring. This month. I mean, I know that you're supposed to relax on your honeymoon, but..."
"Yeah," he said, cutting her short. He couldn't bear to hear the rest of that sentence. "Where'd you go, anyway?" he asked, more out of politeness then any real interest.>"...of course, I wouldn't know, I went to college from the first day and started when I had my degree, but I suppose it's as good a way as any to do it..."
He shook his head viciously, trying to clear his brain, not registering the fact that she was taking the gesture as a knee-jerk reaction to her statement.
<"Paris is lovely at this time of year...">"...but I suppose anybody would think that. I mean, I didn't think college was so great, either, when I was going, but now I think it was really the best option... for me, I mean..."
He snapped to attention, shaking his head irritably. "No, no. I went Midwestern University. In the US," he added for her benefit.
A long silence followed.
"Oh."
Funny, how you never really noticed detail unless you were looking close at something. The pattern of the wallpaper was actually very intricate. Some kind of circular, loopy thing. It almost seemed to depict... he held his head on one side, trying to figure it out.
"So... whereabouts are you from, then?" She was off again. "In America, I mean."
He gulped. Not good. "Oh, no fixed spot, really," he lied through his teeth, shrugging his shoulders uncomfortably. "We kind of drifted from place to place. Then I went travelling myself when I got my degree."
<"I'll have to see for myself one day ... when I'm in a better mood to enjoy it," he said meaningfully. He realised belatedly that the sentence had been cruel when he noticed the red line creeping along her cheekbone.>"...must have been fascinating. I've always wanted to do that, myself. I suppose you've seen a lot... more than I have, anyway..."
"Yeah, I've lived through some pretty... interesting experiences." He shifted around in his seat impatiently.
<"Can we still be friends?">He was lost in thought, swirling in the never-ending cesspool that was his memory, sinking deeper and deeper into the echoes of a broken man and the sweet torment of her...
"...Kenneth?"
His head snapped up, and he was suddenly staring at her, embarrassed, under the glaring lights of the little restaurant. She was uncomfortable, he could tell - and trying desperately to hide it.
"I don't really mind," she admitted bashfully. "I mean, the meal was lovely - I just wanted to know... who wants dessert, anyway? Only makes you fat..."
He glanced at the column of black-and-white that suddenly arrested itself into his line of vision, colouring as he noticed the inquisitive waiter hovering at his elbow.
"Oh, Emma, I'm sorry," he gasped, acutely aware of his rudeness. "I was... a million miles away."
She smiled half-heartedly. "I did notice," she admitted.
"Dessert sounds... good," he hurried. "Chocolate, I assume?"
She made a face. "Nope. Never worked for me." She was addressing the waiter now. "I'll have the sherry trifle, please."
He swallowed, mumbling "Just coffee," at the waiter and looking down at the tablecloth. He had to remember. This wasn't... this was Emma. *Emma*. Not... not...
<He walked away, trying desperately not to succumb to the melancholic twists in his stomach as the image of tears rolling down her face swirled and spun around him. He was swallowing heavily, trying to quash the cataract of water threatening to make its way up his chest and out through his eyes.
It was better this way. No more hurt. No more pain. Not now, not ever again. It was easier. He could move on, now - find another apartment, another job, see other women...
And he was running, running in the wrong direction, back to where she was. A feral sob tore at his chest as he pulled her into the circle of his arms, and he stifled his rough cry of torment in the silky russet of her hair. He clutched at the glossy strands with desperate fingers, crushing her head to his shoulder almost cruelly. Her arms, questing, curious, made their way up his back, and he almost keeled over at the weight of emotion that flowed over him like a sweet, cruel cataract, choking and confusing him.> "...all right? You're so pale... and Daniel says you've been working long hours lately. There's a 'flu bug going around, did you know? You should really take better care of yourself... get some chicken soup or whatever you Americans are so obsessed with..." Another tinkly laugh.
<"Clark," she whispered, her eyes wide and tremulous. "Clark...">"I'm fine," he blurted out. His voice sounded too loud to his own ears. "Absolutely fine."
<And suddenly he was kissing her, his mouth stroking fire and heat against hers, as his arms crushed her to him. He felt her groan, deep in her throat, and then she was kissing him just as urgently as he was she. He felt like he'd been starving, parched, desperate for all this time, and suddenly there was a sumptuous banquet before him. He was kissing her as if he'd been waiting to kiss her his entire life.
And he had. He really had.>"You look so haunted..." Emma remarked worriedly.
<The slap came unexpectedly, stinging the side of his face, the vibrations making his heart throb. He brought a hand up to his offended cheek, rubbing it in surprise. He looked at her, puzzled.>"Kenneth?"
<The sun glinted off of the burnished white gold band around the third finger of her left hand. He barely heard her single, stuttered sentence - "I'm married" - before he ran, the image of her flushed cheeks and scandalised eyes playing over and over again in his mind's eye, like a sick sort of movie reel. He was aware that he looked strange - probably spooking the various small children scattered around Centennial Park - but at that point, it was a blessed relief to be *able* to run. To have an escape route. To get away from her - in body, at least.>A soft hand touched his own, and he jumped back as if scalded, cursing his luck as he saw the immediate withdrawal in her soft blue eyes.
Blue eyes. And coppery hair. And human interest stories. A non-chocolate-fan. And totally, completely wrong for him.
The back of his knee connected sharply with the chair behind as he stood up, throwing his napkin on the table beside a shell-shocked Emma.
"This was a bad idea," he blurted out. Remembering his gentlemanly attitude at last, he threw five twenties on the table, adding "For the meal," as a way of explanation. Brushing past a taken aback waiter, he made his speedy departure from the stuffy restaurant, cursing his situation, his stupidity, his shame.
He walked through the streets, hands in his pockets, as the flaring, old-fashioned lanterns chased the shadows away from his mind, leaving it free to remember his intolerable cruelty, his boorishness, his total and absolute lack of decency.
One hundred dollars. No, one hundred *pounds*. Surely too much for the meal - but then again, what did he know? This was London. Food was horrendously expensive in London. He was an outsider. Of course, that was nothing new - he'd been an outsider all of his life - but somehow, this time it was... different. More painful. More acute. He had some inkling of what it felt like to belong, and now that he didn't... it hurt more.
So what if he had overspent? Forget the money. She could have it. Compensation for the lousy way he had treated her all evening. He'd arrived at the restaurant nearly thirty minutes late; he'd fallen asleep again, of course. She had accepted that excuse without question.
Somehow, he thought that had been the part that hurt most.
He broke into a run, determined to leave the bitter memories and half-remembered dreams spinning in the dust behind him. The movement didn't allow for thinking, and the cobbles that feet so easily stumbled upon stole his concentration. He didn't have time to dwell on exactly *what* reminiscences had drawn his attention for most of the meal. That would come later.
While he was conscious, it was easy to distract his brain with other things. But when he slept, when he dreamt, he couldn't escape. Couldn't escape the bitterness. Couldn't escape the pain. Couldn't escape the confusion.
He couldn't escape...
...and it was killing him slowly.
~&~
...she shrugged. "That sort of thing doesn't really matter to me anymore."
He looked up sharply, the papers in his hand falling limp as he stared at her, looking strangely crestfallen. "It doesn't?"
"I need to concentrate on making my marriage work," she explained. "I don't think I'd have that much time for reporting anymore. Besides, I've already *got* a job, remember?"
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "At LNN? But Lois, you've always been a newspaper reporter!"
She shrugged, again. "I've been working with newspapers for almost ten years now. I think it's time for a change."
"I see." He stared at the coffee table for another minute, his fingers laced and a vein twitching in his temple.
"Besides, repairing the Planet is economically illogical. It would be twice the cost of building it in the first place. You know how flippant insurance companies are; for the most part, they fell through. No help there."
He glanced at her, and for a moment, the look in his eyes scared her. She was killing him, she knew, but she couldn't help that. Better to do it metaphorically than for real.
"Don't you even want to know what happened that day?" he asked, and his voice was desperate. "Don't you want to know who destroyed our lives? Don't you want..."
"Perry, they've caught the guy who did it. Remember?"
He stared at her as if she had some sort of strange disease.
"Jack," she explained, looking at him as if he were three sheets in the wind. "They caught him, Perry. You don't have to worry."
He recoiled instantly. "Lois, you can't tell me that you really believe that!"
She raised an eyebrow at him, politely enquiring.
"Do you really think that boy would have had the knowledge it takes to create a bomb big enough to destroy a building like the Planet was? And besides, why would he want to? It was his job, as much as anybody else's."
"He lived on the street, remember? Who knows what he could have picked up? And I don't *know* why he did it. How am I supposed to figure out what drives a sick, twisted..."
"Lois, don't you talk about him like that." He was growing angry now.
"And besides," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken, "the Planet is gone now. There's no getting past that. What's the point in figuring the cause of the thing if it won't do us any good, anyway? It's not going to bring it back, is it? We should all just try and move on - *especially* me. I mean, I'm married now, Perry! I need to concentrate on..."
He waved his hands in the air irritably. "I know, I know, you've told me already." He cleared his throat, and threw a glance at her. "It's just that somehow I always figured the Planet meant more to you than that."
She straightened up. "The Planet does... did mean a lot to me, but..."
"Not as much as your new life does," he finished for her. "I see."
An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. He looked as if he were trying to swim through cement - he was still having difficulty believing her. Swallowing the story.
A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She *had* to make this work - she had to make him believe her. To save him, she had to push him as far away from her as possible.
"That chapter in my life is closed, Perry. I have to move on. No good dragging in the past - I have to make my future work. You don't know how important my marriage is to me - I don't want to -"
"Jeopardise it. I know."
On impulse, she stretched out her fingers and caught his hand, staring up into his face. "I'm... uhm... I'm very..."
"Happy?"
She swallowed, disappointed. "Yeah. Happy." She squeezed his hand and gave it a gentle shake. "You don't have to worry about me."
He grunted, nodding briefly. "I... uh... well, I wish you all the best, Lois. You'll... you'll do just fine."
A corner of her mouth quirked up. "I will," she promised, idiotically.
She watched him shuffle his papers together, get to his feet and take one more look at her before leaving the small cafe. She bit her lip viciously, trying desperately to stop her disobedient mouth from calling after him.
"You deserve an Oscar, Mrs. Luthor. I must admit, I'm impressed."
She winced as Nigel's plummy, bored voice echoed around her eardrum, and put a hand up to her head, nervously making sure that the tiny earpiece was still concealed. "I'm glad you appreciated it," she hissed irritably into the microphone, pinned onto the front of her jacket, concealed as an elegant brooch. "Now can you *please* get out of my head?"
He snorted. "Trust me, Mrs. Luthor, I have no desire whatsoever to be in your head. I assure you, I have no wish to trail after a nosey, stubborn shrew all day."
"Yes, well, the feeling is mutual," she muttered touchily, as she watched Perry disappear around the corner. "So I can assume you're satisfied? *Both* of you?"
He chuckled darkly. "I'll let you find out for yourself. That hand gesture was a bit friendly, wasn't it?"
She glanced around suspiciously, under her eyelashes. "How did you..."
"See the man sitting on the park bench, right across from you?"
She darted a glance over her shoulder. There was indeed an old guy sitting there, feeding the ducks.
"Yeah?" Her tone was wary. "What about him?"
"Helpful when you have friends in low places, isn't it? Barry was always eager to please..."
She stared at the man in shock. As if he had read her mind, his gaze lifted and he was suddenly looking straight into her eyes. He grinned widely, shooting her a thumbs-up.
She ripped the device out of her ear, shuddering as Nigel's bark-like laughter washed around her brain, making her head throb hopelessly. A single tear rolled off her nose and plopped heavily into her coffee as she sagged forward, over the table.
At that precise moment, she knew three things. She knew that that look which had lingered in her surrogate father's eyes would haunt her for the rest of her life. She knew that she would always remember the worthless feeling that thumbs-up had brought. And she knew that from that day on, she would live with the realisation that she had given her soul to the devil incarnate.~&~
Her forehead met the clear glass of the window with an audible crack; cursing softly, she brought a hand up to soothe the ache, rubbing her fingers in a circular motion all over her head. Blinking, she groaned as the rollicking motions of the bus brought her sharply back to reality. The girl next to her shifted away; glancing at her, Lois could see that she obviously had noticed her discomfort. Looking back out the window, her reflection jumped out at her from the clear pane, and she saw that her face had turned a delicate shade of pea-green.
She swallowed queasily, regretting the brownie she had eaten earlier as it threatened to hurtle upwards, as the memories and remnants from her dream spun around her crazily, tilting her world from side to side.
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead gently against the rattling glass as a hot tear made its way slowly down her cheek. She would carry that image with her till the day she died - her surrogate father, mentor and great friend, walking away from her like a defeated puppy as Nigel's cackles echoed in her brain. She had pushed them away - she had pushed them *all* away - but sometimes she thought doing that to Perry had hurt even more than the rest.
He had been the final straw. The second she had seen that photograph of him, asleep on a beach in Florida, with his sunglasses perched jauntily on his nose and his hat slumped over his forehead, she had given in.
Lucy, her mother, her father; there had been little risk to them. How long had it been since she had spoken to any of them? How much had they had to do with her life? Not a lot. Certainly not a lot, and pushing them away then had only been a slight intensification of what she had been doing all her life.
It had been Perry who had hurt the most. Perry... and... and...
<I have no place in Metropolis anymore.>She let out a slight whimper as her throat closed over her anguish. That had hurt a lot. That had definitely hurt a lot.
She suddenly felt cold... so, so cold. The light red sweater she had on was insufficient to protect her from the stiff breeze that was suddenly rattling in the window. She huddled up in a tight ball, her teeth chattering, folding her feet up underneath her, tucking her head tight into the hollow of her own shoulder and slipping her hands into the large pockets on either side of the sweater, curling into herself.
All of a sudden unable to prevent the heavy fogginess of sleep from settling on her eyes, she uttered a fervent prayer to whoever was listening for the sweet blank silence of oblivion.
~&~
To be continued...
