Part FifteenThe sun was low set that summer evening, a scorching orange coin against the majestic purple of the distant mountains. Little breaths of wind puffed grains of wheat here and there and buffeted teasingly against his face. His work was nearly over. He was seated high on the tractor, his eyes clear and focused as he rounded up his day.
You would never have guessed that he was anything other than a farmer out doing his job. But if you had looked beneath the surface, you would have seen the hot heady joy bubbling swiftly through each and every one of his veins. The undercurrent of contentment flowing smoothly under that. The channel bringing thick clogging happiness to every cell of his body.
You would have seen his brain sparking, practically short-circuiting at the waves of elation passing through them. And you would have seen his heartbeat increasing slightly - ever so slightly - as he turned a warm and affectionate eye back at the farmhouse.
Where Lois sat playing with Jon, talking to him, cooing at him, playing round-and-round-the-garden on his tiny little palm, feeding him, changing him...
Clark Kent sighed happily. Life was perfect.
~&~
Lois Lane hummed as she moved through the small farmhouse to where Jon's bottle was being warmed on that handy-dandy little machine, her son gurgling on her hip. It was nearly time for his last feeding - she smiled to herself, thrilling that she knew that.
She knew that... just like she knew not to wake him up while he was napping... and knew to feed him at the same times every day... and knew not to hold him upright with his stomach full, though she'd learned that one from experience... and she knew not to leave him unattended, not even for a second. She didn't understand where she'd picked it all up, though she assumed some of it was just common sense; she'd never really seen herself as the sort of mother who left her child behind on buses, though the thought *had* crossed her mind a couple of times.
It was as if she had a pile of resources which she'd never realised, and now she truly needed them, they were coming into play. Such a load off her mind.
And oh, how she loved him. In the two weeks since he'd existed, he'd *grown* so much, and he'd gained a tiny little personality, all of his own. Sometimes she wanted to pick him up and squeeze him so tightly she actually feared for his safety, and it was only extreme strength of will that let her leave him sleeping at intervals during the day and at night.
She'd read so much and heard so much about sleepless nights and crying babies, but hers seemed to be an exception. It was as if she was somehow being rewarded for the hell she'd suffered through her pregnancy with the best child on the planet - he was already sleeping through the night, and he was pacified easily.
His eyes gazed up into her face as she fed him, and she smiled widely at him, thrilling in the knowledge that he was actually *focusing* on her - that he could see exactly from her arms to her face.
He cooed as she put the bottle down, and waved one of his fat little arms at her. She took his hand, marvelling at its delicateness, then brought it to her mouth and kissed it. How could she ever have considered not having this baby, this wonderful little child, this boy who would grow tall and strong till eventually he eclipsed her.
A noise behind her startled her and she looked around. Martha was standing in the jam of the doorway, smiling at them both.
"Honey, you look like an oil painting," she said softly, and Lois grinned.
She moved towards them both, her eyes fixed on Jon. Adoringly. Lois wondered how her son could ever be lonely, or scared, or miserable, when so many people loved him already - loved this little bundle of hands and feet and sweet baby smells.
Martha sat down beside them, and Lois settled Jon in her arms - felt a sharp spear of gratitude and affection from the older woman. She engaged in a few minutes of nonsensical baby-chatter. Apparently the cutest guy in the world wasn't, as you would expect, Brad Pitt or Antonio Banderas - nope, he was Jon Lane.
Lane. Jon Lane. She grimaced at the name - flawed in the eyes on the law. She really would have to do something about Lex, but she - they - were too happy and contented to stir that up right then.
She felt a twinge of annoyance at their procrastination. They were forgetting that they were still directly under the guillotine's blade, in the path of a raging bull. It wasn't over yet - not by a long shot.
As well as the selfish reasons she had for not exposing her husband right away, she was fearful of what the media would do to her son - her angelic little baby, already becoming sleepy in Martha's motherly arms. How could he survive, growing up in the limelight like that, Lex Luthor's son? How could he cope with the attention, the hatred? For hatred it *would* be - after Lex's many crimes surfaced, all the people he had killed, all the families he had destroyed...
But he was *her* son, too.
"This is strange." Martha's voice broke through the worried frazzle in her brain, and she tuned back in.
"What?" She was curious, and even a little indignant - there was *nothing* strange about her child!
"He looks just like Clark did when he was a baby." Martha didn't seem to see anything disturbing about that - she was smiling into Jon's eyes.
Lois found it disturbing. She found it very disturbing indeed.
"He does?" she said, then cringed at the croakiness in her voice. "Oh."
"Clark was so tiny when we took him from the spaceship. So vulnerable. It made me wonder what kind of person could have sent their child into space like that."
Lois nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
"Then later... when the globe lit up, when we learned who he was and where he'd come from... we could see how hard it must have been for them. His birth parents, I mean. Sending their kid away, to save his life."
"I guess some parents are the same the world over." She stole a glance at Jon - who was, she noticed in delight, yawning widely. "If *this* planet was dying and the only way I could save Jon was to send him away, I'd do it too."
"Yes."
A long, long silence - the only sound was the distant drone of the tractor.
"He's so good at it," Lois said suddenly. "Clark. So good with kids. I thought he'd be scared, or disgusted by Jon, but..."
Martha shook her head. "Clark isn't like that."
She looked at her - his mother. Possibly the one woman on the planet who knew Clark as she knew him.
"I'm not even sure I know anymore," she said in a whisper. "This is all so new... we've changed so much..."
"Oh, honey." Martha leaned over and gave her a one-armed hug. "I know it's been terribly difficult, and I know you guys still have issues you need to sort out - but no matter what, Clark still loves you."
Her spine stiffened. "You *know*?"
Martha drew back, tenderness and mild amusement in her eyes. "Lois, Jonathan and I have known from the first second he started talking about you."
"He was that bad?"
"You have *no* idea. He would get this look on his face - I swear it would have made you laugh so hard. All soft and moony-eyed."
She wasn't altogether sure it would have made her laugh.
"I've treated him so badly, Martha," she blurted out. "I mean, I really have - maybe more than you know. I just can't see how he can stand to be around me... especially not with Jon here..."
A light touch on her shoulder. "He can 'bear' to have Jon here because he sees Jon as a part of you. He can 'bear' to have *you* here because he loves you, Lois."
The simple truth brought tears to her eyes.
"I... I don't *know*, Martha... I feel so much for him, but everything in my life has been so bad for so long... I don’t trust myself to judge people any more. If I messed this up... I think I need to wait till I'm more grounded."
"That's perfectly natural, sweetie."
She looked back at her, decided to take the plunge.
"What if he doesn't wait for me?" Candidly, chokingly.
Martha just looked at her, then laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"He did before, didn't he?"
She stared at her hands, folded on her lap, for a long moment.
"Here," Martha said suddenly, "Jon's nearly asleep in my arms. Best get him settled for the night."
She took her son, who indeed was nearly asleep, and pressed a light kiss to his soft forehead. No matter how crazy her life got, no matter whether Clark was with her or not with her, she had Jon now - and he was all that mattered.
"So when do you and Jonathan leave?" she asked lightly over her shoulder as she moved from the kitchen to the living room.
"Any minute. I still can't believe he did this, you know," Martha called back.
Lois grinned. Jonathan had surprised his wife with tickets to Rome the day before, in celebration of their anniversary, and they were leaving that night.
Leaving. Her and Clark. In the house. Alone. For ten days.
Alone...
She banished the screaming demons within her.
"You guys deserve a break," she said evenly, smiling as she wrapped a cotton blanket around Jon and placed him in the bassinette. "You've been so good to me, and I've put you under so much pressure."
She heard Martha moving to stand behind her.
"Lois, trust me, it was no trouble whatsoever."
Such a flippant kind of reply - anybody would have said it, a nicety. But there was something in Martha's voice that left Lois with no lingering doubts - she was being completely and absolutely truthful.
She turned around and smiled at the woman she'd come to consider as her adoptive mother.
"We'll be back before you head for Metropolis, though," Martha said anxiously. "We'll be here to help you through it."
She grimaced, her moment of buoyancy forgotten. "That's gonna be ugly."
"Remind me of what you guys have found out?"
"Well, first of all, we have all the stuff he did to me." She kept her eyes trained somewhere to Martha's left. "Domestic violence, blah blah blah. But that's gonna be hard to pull, since *I* left *him*, took his child away from him... it's just... messy.
"Then we have what he did to Clark. There's a whole bunch of stuff we can tie in there - once we get back to Metropolis, we can find out about the 'Superman' who was stabbed. We'll also be looking into the explosion of the Planet - Clark and Perry were looking into that before I..."
//...nearly killed Clark and drove Perry to Graceland for a year and a half...//
"...got married, and the trail is still there - just frozen. All in all a pretty damning array of evidence, and we haven't even started yet." She sighed.
Martha's eyes were very round.
"You're possibly the bravest woman I've ever met."
She opened her mouth to retort -
"I'll second that!"
- and whirled around, to face Clark, framed in the doorway. He grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, couldn't help overhearing."
She laughed along with Martha, but inside, she was sober as a bishop. Did he really think that? How had that happened?
"Mom, Dad's calling you," he continued when their laughter had ebbed. "I think he's about ready to go."
"Miracle of miracles," Martha said wryly. She crossed the room and dropped a kiss on Jon's downy head, then enfolded Lois in a hug.
"Be happy, honey," she heard whispered into her ear.
Dimly in the background, she was aware of Clark embracing his mother, of Jonathan coming in and repeating the motions, and then of the sound of the truck as it rolled out of the driveway. Clark's presence in the kitchen - close to her - was to the forefront of her mind, and she couldn’t concentrate on much else.
He looked towards her, his eyes bright.
"Jon down for the night?"
"Yeah. He's such a good baby," she said, grinning at him nervously over the bassinette. "He hardly ever cries. And he's already sleeping through the night. I've never even *heard* of that happening. I got lucky."
"We both got lucky," he said, softly, his eyes warm on her face.
She felt a little jolt and suddenly she was transported back to that day in the park when he'd kissed her.
How her blood had hammered in her veins, thundering like a herd of stampeding elephants. How sweet his lips had tasted against her own. How strong he'd felt, how gently he'd kissed her - gentle passion, surely a contradiction. How she'd melted into him, how they'd seemed to meld as one.
How she'd torn her lips from his and looked over quickly to the dark blue van inside which she knew Nigel was watching their every move. And then how she'd slapped him; though it had felt like the ultimate betrayal to do so.
She hadn't kissed him in so long - not since that day, in fact - and yet she knew it was something she could slip back into effortlessly. They hadn't been in the habit of it, but they'd done it often enough for her to feel completely at ease with him, and for her to realise that kissing Clark Kent came naturally to her. Ploy or no ploy. Her husband's henchman watching them or not.
She let her gaze linger on the firm lines of his mouth for a little while, wondering what would happen if she took two steps, if she allowed herself to...
"Night's falling," she said lightly, and then she was over and looking out the window. The moon was a milky orb in the sky and the stars glimmered in the distance; inconstant, like her heart.
"Is it?" His presence behind her, his gaze on her back like a lover's hand on a soft summer evening.
His voice, gently. "I always loved this time of evening. Dusk. Halfway between day and night. It feels... magical, somehow. Like if you reached a little farther you could fall into it - a middling place, a limbo - and stay there. Neither one nor the other. How peaceful that would be."
"I don’t know about that," she whispered back. "Half of nothing is still nothing. And half of everything is fifty percent worse than what you had before."
"But half of everything *added* to nothing is twice as good as before." She felt his arms come around her waist, lightly. Platonically. "Ever the optimist, remember."
"Do we have half of everything, Clark?" she murmured lightly. His cheek against her hair.
"No." He sounded definite. "We have *everything*."
"You sure about that?"
"Lois..." His hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. "Right now, at this second, I have everything I've ever wanted."
She felt the twilight, the intermediate place between loving him and not loving him inside her, shift a little more in his favour.
She let herself lean forward very slightly and plant a whisper of a kiss against his cheek. Stood there for what seemed like an eternity, savouring that place, before tilting back. His eyes were glistening and very full.
"You think..." His voice came out croaky. She could see him clearing his throat, trying again. "You think Jon would be okay if we left him sleeping for maybe ten minutes or so?"
She cast a glance at her slumbering son, feeling the hand of worry grasp her. Then looked back at Clark, sensed how much this meant to him - whatever it was.
"I think maybe. If we made it quick," she said softly, smiling up at him. "What do you want?"
His fingers grasping hers lightly. "Come with me."
He lead her out to the middle of the dewy lawn. "Close your eyes," he said, and she did, trusting him completely.
Then she felt a rush of wind curve against her face and hair, and she couldn't help it - she opened her eyes at the unfamiliar sensation. And gasped as she realised where they were. Hovering fifty feet in the air. Her arms were around his neck, and he was holding her lightly - like he'd used to. Funny, she hadn't even registered him picking her up.
"Is this okay?" he said anxiously, maybe noticing her lack of reaction. She looked back at him, nodded tremulously, then tilted her head back and laughed.
They toured the farm, and she noticed how everything looked so different in the moonlight - touched with a silver lining, a hint of magic. Then they looped twice around the farmhouse - the height and the rushing air making her ears pop. Finally, he brought her up and up and up again, further than they'd ever been, and they drifted for a few minutes.
She noticed that from their current position, the stars didn't seem to be glimmering any more - their beams were steady and continuous.
She smiled to herself.
No words were said. None were needed. She felt a bond grow between them, a deep understanding, and she felt her indecision slide just a tiny bit more.
"Ready to go back?" His voice against her hair. Somehow her head had slipped down onto his shoulder. Funny how perfectly they fit together. Funny how they'd always fitted perfectly together.
She nodded silently, and felt them descend.
"It felt good, doing that again," she said, not bothering to raise her head from his chest. She knew he could hear her.
"Yeah," he rumbled softly. "Flying is what I missed most."
They touched down, and she bent her head back. "Thank you," she said, and she smiled at him. The moonlight slicing across his face like a blade.
"You're welcome," he said, his eyes fathomless. She looked into those eyes, nearly fell into those eyes, and so wanted him to kiss her.
In the same breath she knew it would never happen, could never happen. It would destroy them both. Maybe at a later stage - next week, she thought, smiling secretly to herself, when they headed for Metropolis and compiled an arsenal of paperwork against Lex - but not now. Not now.
She looked at him again, and saw from him that he'd gone through the exact same phase of thought that she had. She pressed her lips together, smiled thoughtfully at him...
...and stopped.
Stopped.
Stopped cold.
Because... something was wrong.
Wrong. Something was wrong. Somewhere.
Her gut was speaking out to her - clearly and strongly and almost painfully - something was terribly, terribly wrong...
"Look at that," he said, his voice coming from somewhere very far away. "The lights in the house have gone out. There must have been a power cut."
Her... her inner sense... her reporter's instinct... her... her intuition...
Intuition. Lights in the house out. Intuition - *mother's* intuition - and the lights in the house had gone out.
She grabbed him with desperate hands, her eyes flying wide open. And he saw her, saw the panic in her, darted a glance back at the house - and it clicked with him. She could see exactly when the pieces fell into place.
Firmly, he shook his head, held his fingers to his lips, then grasped her tightly around her waist and floated them swiftly down the hill and into the farmhouse. Heart in her mouth, she flew out of his arms and into the living room, where the bassinette lay...
Bassinette. Bright white bassinette. Baby colours in the moonlight.
The moon reflecting sharply against the snow-white pillow where her son's head was supposed to be.
~&~
What *was* it about the universe? *Why* did it have to fall down around his ears every time he even thought about being happy? Was his life doomed for failure? What debt was he repaying, that he could never be safe or happy or...
She was sobbing, he realised belatedly, and tugged her a little closer to him, trying to soothe her. Desperately, he manoeuvred them both into the kitchen, thinking that maybe, *maybe* Jon had managed to get out of the cot himself... maybe Wayne Irig had dropped by and he'd been concerned when there'd been nobody there with the baby... maybe... maybe...
Her fist landed hard against his shoulder, and he yelped in surprise, letting go of her in a hurry. That had actually *hurt*! He wasn't hurt by those things, how could she hurt him by doing that...?
In fact... that wasn't the only thing that hurt. Somehow he suddenly felt weak, shivery - and, he noticed belatedly, he was covered in a cold sweat.
And a hint of nausea was gripping him... hurting him... his stomach knotting...
Hurt. Him... him getting hurt. Him being vulnerable.
His heart gave an almighty shudder within him and even before he tried to float and couldn't, he knew what was happening.
He grabbed for her with desperate hands, pulled her hard against his chest, and hissed into her ear.
"He's here! Lois..."
She stilled.
Silence.
Eerie silence. Silence that ripped at him, tore at his throat. His heart pounding like a jackhammer against his ears.
His eyes had become accustomed to the dark, and with a sick feeling in his stomach...
Lois... get Lois safe... quickly... can't... sick feeling... sickness... green sparking against the cool cream of the ceiling... Lois... god, it was starting to hurt... green light... behind the door, they were behind the door... Lois, Lois was surely terrified, help her... Lex Luthor behind the door, he had Kryptonite and *he had Jon*...
A creak, the door cracking open... oh god, the pain... Luthor's face illuminated briefly by the glow of the Kryptonite before his eyes rolled back in his head... splitting burning bones and blazing eyeballs and throbbing lungs and...
//Lois, I'm so sorry...//
Blackness.
~&~
To be continued... 
