Perry approved the copy. It had taken him so much longer to read through than any other story in his career… so much longer to approve. But it was flawless. Kerth-worthy, even.
She had done it. He’d known she would. He’d known it the minute he saw her break the sad gaze from Clark’s desk with a resolute expression on her otherwise expressionless face that seemed to say she would write the story without pause. And less than an hour later it was on his desk. Facts. Cold, hard facts. Layered in pain and emotion. The perfect dance of news and emotions and suspense and words. The perfect combination of things that the Kerth committee was always looking for when sorting through the thousands of writers and stories each year. He knew that she would get nominated for this story. Her last story. And he knew for a fact that she would not care. He didn’t care either. What they both wanted they could never have. They could never have him back. And an award sure as hell wouldn’t make up for that.
As soon as the story was off his desk, he rested his head in his hands, tiredly, his job as editor-in-chief for the moment done.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lois couldn’t go home. She’d been there earlier. With Superman. And it hadn’t been good. All she had thought about was Clark. He was everywhere. He’d sat on the very couch Superman had placed her on, countless times. She could see him sitting there, beside her. A ghost of him. A carbon copy, smiling at her, working with her, joking with her, talking with her, listening to her, teasing her.
Clark...
Superman had stood in her kitchen, asking if he could make her tea. Tea. She could see him. She could see Clark. He had always made her tea when things got too stressful with a case, or when she got herself worked up over something, or sometimes as a trick when she wanted her eighth cup of coffee for the day.
Everywhere she looked in her apartment, he was there.
It wasn’t that remembering him was bad. Quite the opposite. Thinking of his face was her only comfort just now. It wasn’t surprising, since he’d always been a comfort when she was upset. Unfortunately this time, he couldn’t help her pain abate. She knew it never would. Not really. The pain could never go away because Clark was gone. And as long as Clark was gone, there would be an emptiness inside of her. There would be no fire in her soul or light in her eyes anymore. If she ever smiled again, the smile would never again be evident in her eyes. She knew with certainty this was true. Something was gone from her. Something intangible that separated her physical existence from her life. She knew now that Clark was the reason she had been living – really living – for the past year and a half. And the moment his life ended, she had begun to only exist.
Sitting in Centennial Park, she found herself thinking about it again. Her mind just kept going to that awful moment so quickly. Without warning. Without invitation.
She could see Dillinger pawing at her and Clark’s arm go up. He had stopped Dillinger from doing anything more than touch her cheek for a split second. He had noticed her discomfort, of course. And he couldn’t stand idly by while she was being mauled by some creep. He never could.
She had immediately shot a look of relief and appreciation in Clark’s direction after Dillinger’s hand was shot down. How she wished she could have, instead of looking at him with that fleeting look of relief, said to him “thanks, now back off, they have guns,” or said “don’t do anything stupid, Clark” or shot him a warning look that implied all that. Anything. But she hadn’t done any of it.
No...
Clark’s hand had come to her defense for not the first time in their relationship, and this one time, she *had* initially felt genuine relief. Not annoyance, as she had sometimes felt when he’d tried to defend her. Not anger because she was well-aware she could take care of herself and thought he ought to know that as well. This one time, with these creepy 1920s gangsters, she’d felt relief at his interference. She didn’t know what Dillinger might have had in store for her and she really had not wanted to find out.
Relief.
She hadn’t warned him. And by the time she could have tried to pull him off his white horse, he’d already been knocked off of it. Shot off of it, she corrected herself, shuddering at that thought that she couldn’t escape, no matter how hard she’d tried.
It had been a few hours and her mind’s eye had played the scene out before her hundreds of times. Thousands. Millions. She wasn’t sure anymore. But each time was more painful and awful.
The sound of a gunshot had shaken her and she had instinctively turned to him. She could see the fear in her eyes mirrored in his.
One shot. Two. Three. Realizing immediately that she wasn’t being shot so he must be, her mind was screaming “stop!” One. Two. Three. It seemed to never end. One shot was not enough for Clyde Barrow. One, two, three… to ensure that Clark wasn’t just hurt, but… killed. “Clark!” “No!” “No, stop!” her mind had screamed, and when the noise had stopped, she had stepped forward and grabbed onto him, just in time to see one last look from him before his eyes closed for the last time. Just as he had fallen to the ground.
She had pleaded for it to not be true. She had called to him desperately, realizing it was no use. Realizing he was gone. “Breathe!” her mind had screamed. It was too late. He’d been taken from her. Lying beside her, he was no longer with her, and when that awful truth set in, a huge part of her left. A huge part of who she was – who she had become since he’d entered her life – died.
Even Superman couldn’t do anything to help. To save the day. Before tonight, Superman could do anything, in her eyes. But not the one thing she needed him to do now. He wasn’t a magician, after all. Or a miracle worker. He was a superhero and bringing people back from the dead was not one of his powers.
She realized she was cold. In the park, dressed in a large gray sweater she had borrowed from Clark some night long ago – that she couldn’t remember, but wished so badly she could find in her millions of memories of him – and warm sweatpants, she was so cold. Tears were falling unchecked down her cheeks as the wind blew gently, making her shiver even more than she already was. She was so cold.
She looked around. She was sitting on a bench that held a painful memory from long ago.
As the tears continued to fall, she closed her eyes and imagined a sunny, spring day. She heard the voice of her best friend telling her sweetly and selflessly that he loved her. That he’d loved her for a long time.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “I love you, too,” she cried, burying her head in her hands, letting the sobs come and take over. Letting her body be controlled, once again this evening, by the forceful tears.
“He loved me,” she had cried to Superman earlier in the evening. Superman had agreed. He’d known. What she hadn’t admitted to anyone, especially to herself – until this moment – was that she loved him too. She had loved him all along. And he would never know.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Clark’s apartment was empty and quiet and his things were scattered around as if nothing had happened. Everything was just waiting to be put away and tidied up. The couch waited to be sat on. The television waited to be watched. The apartment waited, patiently, for a night like most others.
But this night was different. The world had changed.
Lois walked through the apartment, bombarded by memories. She thought herself insane. It had been too hard to be at her own place, but his place she could handle? She just wanted to be as close to him as she could be. He haunted her at her own place, but somehow comforted her at his, with his overwhelming presence.
She noticed a work shirt that was thrown on his ironing board, which was set up behind his couch. She sighed sadly, realizing he had probably intended to wear it to work tomorrow, and had ironed it before they’d left for the club.
She started crying again, realizing there would never again be a tomorrow for him. She cried, knowing that he had left his apartment earlier in the evening, expecting a routine night. He had expected to find something out… and then to come back here. To go to sleep. And start it all again... she cried more... tomorrow.
She knew he was aware of the dangers of their job. She had made him aware early on in their relationship and partnership. She sighed, realizing he never really thought their job was too dangerous. She never truly thought that either.
They both thought they were immortal. There was nothing they couldn’t handle.
She looked again at the shirt on the ironing board. She remembered what she had been doing before they’d left for the club, and her cheeks burned with shame and guilt…
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Where is it!?” she’d said, throwing more clothes into an ever-growing pile of colors by her bed.
She was searching for her red dress. The one she had bought a month ago. The one that the saleslady had said would cause a heart attack to her poor, hapless victim, or any man that saw her in it, for that matter.
She wanted to wear it tonight, to hopefully get the attention of one of the gangsters and get information from him for the story.
“Aha!” she’d said, finding the slinky red material dangling weakly from a hanger, in between two broader, thicker, darker outfits, that were blocking the sexy, small number. She yanked it off the hanger and held it up in front of her in the mirror.
She had still had her bathrobe on and hot curlers in her hair. But she could see that the red dress was going to stand out. It was a hot dress. She’d known that.
She had smiled at her reflection and said, merely, “this’ll do.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
She picked his work shirt up off the ironing board and brought it to her, inhaling his scent and closing her eyes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“What is this?” Clark had said, when he’d come to pick her up.
“Oh, just thought I’d get dressed up for the occasion. We have to blend in, you know. This *is* an undercover assignment,” she’d said, throwing a shawl on.
“I know,” he’d said, his voice deeper than usual.
“Well, Clark, the people that hang out at Georgie Hairdo’s aren’t exactly the toast of the town. They are sleezy and trampy. And *we* have to fit in.” She looked at his suit. “I guess that’ll do,” she’d teased.
He had smiled back. “Well, Lois, if that was your goal, then you failed. Big time,” he had said, as they walked out of her apartment.
She had looked at him, her eyebrows raised, as if insulted.
“You don’t look trampy or sleezy, for one thing. You couldn’t if you tried,” he had said smoothly. “And there’s no way you’re going to blend in. All eyes will be on you,” he had finished, looking like he had genuinely meant it.
She had given him a playful look, and turned away, ignoring the feeling of secret pleasure that had filled her when he’d complimented her…
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
She put the shirt back down and looked around his empty apartment.
The silence intensified the emptiness, and as she felt it all around her and deep inside of her, she thought, somberly, about her actions earlier. She had dressed to kill… and it had worked, ironically, only too well. She knew she would forever regret the methods she had stooped to to get her story. She had dressed herself on this fateful night with every intention of using her sexuality to get close to the story. To get the facts and go home so she could write what she knew and be closer to solving the absurd mystery surrounding this particular story.
It wasn’t the first time she had done that on a story. Hell, she had done it only a month before, when trying to prove that Lenny Stoke was the Sound Man. It had always been harmless. A quick way into the circle the villain moved in. A weakness to that person. A way to get the inside angle to better the story. She had used this method before. And it had never cost her a thing.
Tonight it had cost her everything.
Oddly enough, what she had wanted to happen had happened. She’d attracted the attention of John Dillinger. But when he’d commented to everyone about the “lady in red” – while looking at her in that way – and then touched her cheek, she had recoiled and felt dirty, wanting him to just stop. Wishing she were wearing a pant suit or something. And that moment, right there – how she had chosen to react to his pass – was her fatal mistake.
Fatal for Clark.
Or maybe she should have just left when he had suggested. But she had *needed* to stick around on account of some stupid nickels!
Oh, the fates had conspired against her in numerous ways, which all added up to the very worst moment of her entire life.
She collapsed, finally, on his couch. She didn’t think she could cry anymore.
But everywhere she turned, scenes from his apartment danced through her memory. Those scenes – happy memories that warmed her soul – were intertwined with one scene from earlier in the night – a loud scene, filled with gunshots and the sound of her own voice pleading for her best friend to not be dead and to come back, not to leave her – that chilled her to the core.
And finally, when it was too much to bear, she cried and cried and cried and, at some point, fell asleep.
