To Wake from Dreams
Part 2
Perry stood at the window in his office, which overlooked the newsroom. He watched her.
She wanted to write this story.
She said she’d write it.
He watched her, his hands in his pockets, as she stared, slumped in her chair, at that unoccupied desk.
He waited a few moments before walking out into the newsroom for what seemed like the hundredth time, to see if she was okay and wanted to talk. To see if he could write the story instead and relieve her of at least that one burden. The memory in her mind was more burden than anyone should ever have to carry in a whole lifetime, he thought as he approached her desk.
“Lois… Lois, honey, let me take you home. You don’t have to be here,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Perry,” she said, still staring at Clark’s desk. “I know I said I’d write it. It’s just… every time I write a sentence, I think about him… remember him… I remember it… and then I… I…” she started, her voice quivering.
“You don’t have to explain, honey. And you don’t have to write this.”
“Yes, I do. My last story will be about Clark, and it will be the best tribute to him that I can possibly manage to put into words. Although nothing could ever capture…”
“Last story?” Perry interrupted.
“Yeah. I’m done.” She looked up at him for a moment, before resuming her post staring at Clark’s empty desk. “There was a time when I thought reporting was important enough to risk everything for it. To die for it even. But this headline, the new front page for tomorrow’s edition… I can’t get it out of my head. Reporter Ki – Killed in the Line of Duty. It shouldn’t have happened. It just should not have happened. But it did. It happened to the best person I’ve ever known. He… died,” she said, spitting that word out with disgust and grief, “because of how important I thought this job was. This ‘line of duty’. Well… I’m done. And this will be my last story.”
Perry stared down at her, unsure of what to say. He’d lost one of his reporters and good friends tonight forever... and now it looked as if he was losing another. Just… in a different way.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“We’ve lost our boy, Martha,” Jonathan Kent said somberly, sipping his tea as he took a seat at the kitchen table.
“Jonathan, don’t be silly. We’re lucky. Think of all the people that love Clark who think he’s really dead. We are lucky. We know it’s not true. That he’s okay and alive.”
“Knowing he’s alive is great, Martha, I know that. But… we’ve lost him all the same,” he said, staring ahead.
“What are you talking about?”
Martha sat next to Jonathan and took his hand, urging him to explain.
“Next week, we were supposed to go to a baseball game. Clark got me those season tickets for Christmas. We’ve had such good times at those games. We can’t do that anymore. I certainly can’t go to those games with Superman. Clark’s alive, Martha… but he’s gone. He can’t openly visit us ever again. Walk around Smallville with us when he’s home, like he used to. And Superman can’t talk with us openly ever. Why would he? If we want to protect this secret, we can’t ever REALLY see him again. He can visit here, sure, but just to hide. That’s what it would be.”
“It’ll be hard, but we’ve hidden for twenty-seven years, Jonathan. We’re pretty damn good at it now.”
“Not like this. Look at this kitchen, Martha. Windows everywhere. Wayne Irig and the Harrises and the Martins, they visit randomly all the time. How could we ever have dinner with Clark again? Our friends will find it strange if we are constantly drawing the blinds in our home for no good reason.”
“Honey, just remember. We need to be grateful right now. If our son were an ordinary boy, we’d have lost him tonight. He would have died. We were given something other parents pray for in these circumstances,” Martha said, stroking Jonathan’s hand.
“Believe me, Martha, I feel selfish complaining like this at all. But this secret is like a double-edged sword. Don’t tell me it’s not. In many, many ways, we did lose our son tonight. He’s alive. No one can know that. And we’re sacrificing something for this secret, yet again. He’s alive… but lost to us. And I am ordinary… human. And this is how I feel.”
Jonathan left the kitchen, as Martha stared sadly after him.
She sighed. Their lives would never be the same again if they couldn’t figure a way out of this.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lois stared at her computer screen, not seeing the screen at all. The only thing she saw, she tried so hard not to think about. She tried to get back to reporter mode.
“Write the story. It’s just a story,” her mind told her. It was just a story. Just another story, she reasoned with herself. She just needed to hurry up and write it.
And then she could leave. Run. Go somewhere. Away from this. This place that had taken him from her. She would never have to face it again.
Just as soon as she finished the story. When she finished the story, her nightmare could really begin.
It was already there, in her mind. Numbing her. *Hurting* her.
But if pushed it back, it couldn’t harm her. Not yet, anyway.
Soon enough, she would face it and see…
And, she realized, she’d probably never wake up.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Clark sat on his bed in the room he grew up in. He looked around, wondering if this would be where he would live for the rest of his life. If this would be what his life would be like from this night on. Superman full-time and then a secret journey back to Smallville. Land in a deserted field, and travel at super speed into the house he hadn’t really lived in since he graduated from college.
Just Superman.
He couldn’t start a new life for himself anywhere. It would be too much work. And more importantly… he wouldn’t want to.
He was Clark Kent.
And Clark Kent was dead now.
He looked around the room. It seemed so much smaller now than when he’d been a boy, growing up there. He always loved sitting in his old room now that he was all grown up. A city man. When life seemed too complicated, it was a place he could go that made everything seem a little simpler.
But now…
He sighed. He didn’t want to live there again! He had moved out of his parents’ house. He was living on his own. In an apartment he loved. In Metropolis. He had his own place, his own job, his own friends, his own life…
But that was no longer the case.
All he had now was Superman.
Superman…
Thinking of his alter ego just now immediately made him think of what he had been doing two hours ago.
He had been Superman. And he’d been consoling Lois.
He tried not to think about her just now. It scared him to think of her that way. The way he’d seen her tonight – a way he’d never seen her before.
He’d flown her into her window…
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Lois?... Lois?” Clark asked, placing her gently on her couch.
Her body instinctively moved forward, her hands covering her face. She was still shaking.
“What can I get you? Can I make you tea? Give you something that will help you sleep?... Lois?”
She looked up at him, a smile that held no joy on her face. “Clark would say I need Oolong Tea right now. And then he’d tell me about some voodoo tribe of Indians or something that showed him how to make it, and he’d make it for me.” Her voice was shaking as the words came out. “I’d protest and say I’d rather have coffee. But it would work. It would relax me. Or maybe it was just his presence. Maybe a mixture of both. I don’t know. He always knew what to do. In every situation. He knew how to handle it… handle me. He knew how to make me feel the best I could feel in any given situation. And if I was going to remain feeling crummy, he knew it, but would at least calm my nerves with one of those cups of tea or something! He did… little things. He…”
Clark looked at her, concern overwhelming him. “Lois, I think you are in shock.”
“I’m not in shock,” she said, still visibly shaking. She hiccupped from the tears and then looked at him, her eyes wide and full of realization… looking like even she knew better. She was in shock. As it continued to dawn on her about what she had lost, she was in great shock.
“Lois, you haven’t stopped shaking since Georgie Hairdo – “
He trailed off as he noticed the look that passed over her features as he said the name of the dreaded club that he’d been killed in. “Lois,” he said, kneeling in front of her. “Let me take you to the hospital. I really think you’re in shock,” he said, trying not to sound as if he, himself, was also in shock. “They can give you something that will relax you and calm you down,” he said.
She looked at him, controlling her emotions for the first time since he’d seen her. “No.” She looked right at him, seeming to see him for the first time all night. “No,” she repeated.
And then she crumbled. “Oh, Superman,” she said, shaking her head. “What am I going to do?” she cried. She was sobbing more gently than she’d been outside the club. But crying all the same and still looking completely heartbroken.
He’d always known her to be this woman who didn’t need anyone. He was glad to know that she needed him as much as he’d always needed her… but he’d have preferred to learn that any other way than this. Her voice, her tears, her hanging shoulders… it was all tearing him up inside.
“I can’t wrap my mind around this. It… it didn’t happen… did it?” She looked up at him and the expression on his face must have crushed her desperate hopes. “Oh, god, it did. It…”
“Lois,” he started. And then he stopped. What could he say, he wondered. Nothing. Nothing could change the fact that tonight Clark Kent HAD been killed.
“Why didn’t I see it coming?” she asked, as if unaware of Superman’s presence or the fact that he’d spoken. She talked to herself mostly, it seemed. “Clark saw the gun, and he selflessly stood in front of it… I saw it too and I panicked. I froze. By the time it registered to do something, it was too late to do anything. He… he was…” she broke off, shaking her head as more tears silently fell.
“It’s not fair,” she said, quietly, after a moment. “It’s not fair that I was alive and sitting over him and he was. . . he wasn’t. He wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t moving, I mean. He wasn’t moving,” she repeated, as if trying to grasp it.
“I can’t be here anymore,” she finally said, breaking her gaze from the nothingness before her – which seemed to have been playing a movie for her… a horrible, painful movie – and looked at Superman. The only side to him that still existed. “I’m going to change and then I want to go to the Planet.”
“Lois, I really don’t think you should do that. You’ve been through something awful and you need to calm down. If you’re not going to go to a hospital, then you really must stay here, Lois. Relax. Sleep,” he said, lamely.
She looked him in the eye, her face hard and determined and absolutely wretched. “I need to go to the Planet.”
