TO WAKE FROM DREAMS
PART 6
The harsh sunlight begged Lois awake. She turned to the bedside clock. It was the same time that she woke up every day. 7:07.
She sat back against the pillows, wondering why she felt so much more different than every other morning she woke up in Clark’s apartment. Then it hit her.
She hadn’t had the nightmare last night. The one at the club. With the gangsters and the gunshots. The one of his face… his beautiful face…
…she hadn’t had it.
“Finally,” she said, under her breath. She tried to remember what she had dreamed about. She was sure she’d dreamed about something. But it wasn’t clear.
But she knew with a certainty that she hadn’t had that horrible nightmare, which a week ago was an awful reality.
That, at least, was something.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For the first time since catching the resurrected gangsters, Superman flew above the Metropolis skies again!
He made a few appearances, but mostly took to the skies to think. Thinking was always easier in familiar skies. So he flew around Metropolis, his thoughts scattered in a million places.
When he’d been running around the world, Lois had been haunting him, preventing him from falling asleep. And when, finally, he went home and was able to get some sleep, she haunted his dreams. She taunted him with a love she had never offered to him when he was alive. A love he sure as hell could never have now.
He’d woken up in the early hours of the morning in tears, sweating. Lois. He’d been dreaming about Lois. Being in his own apartment again, finally, had brought thoughts of her streaming out of his subconscious, and he’d awoken trembling and sad, thinking about how much he loved her and how hard it was going to be never seeing her again the way he used to. Never hoping again for the future he used to hope for every single day.
The only way he could ever be with her was in dreams. Dreams like the one he’d had from the night before… which he couldn’t quite recall… but had provided him with nothing but comfort and thoughts of her.
Of Lois.
He left his apartment as quickly as he’d entered it, not bothering to even look around and commit it to memory, in case he never saw it again.
He needed to get out of there. Away from memories of her.
Unfortunately, flying around Metropolis did nothing but bring him memories of Lois. He’d flown with her all over the city, and he’d walked with her on every city street. It was the city where their history was.
His hearing picked up a newsflash about a flood in the Philippines. With a sigh of relief, he zoomed off, out of Metropolis, trying to forget what it felt like to be there again.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Jimmy,” Perry said, looking drawn and pale. “Call Henderson. We need to find Lois and we need to pull out all the stops. And if you see Superman… if you see him at all, tell him too.”
Jimmy nodded, looking perturbed, as well. It had been too long and Lois had been in too bad of shape when she’d been last seen by Perry. They had to make new moves to find her.
They were terribly worried about her. Desperate, at this point, just to find her.
When Jimmy walked away to carry out this order, Perry looked at the vacant desks of his two best reporters, missing them.
He missed them so much.
He could never have Clark back and he knew that. But Lois was somewhere and he needed her. And he was sure she needed him too.
Clark’s parents had called a few days back, wanting to see how he and Jimmy and Lois were. He’d talked to them and given his condolences and they had returned the sentiment in kind. But he hadn’t told them that Lois was missing. He had just said that she wasn’t herself and was taking it really hard.
He shook his head. These two people had lost their only son. There was no need to worry them over Lois. Not yet. He knew they cared for her. He could see it when they visited. And he could hear it in their voices when they asked about her. They had always held out the same hope that he did, where Lois and Clark were concerned. And now there was no hope. They sounded like their world was forever changed. And he didn’t want to add to that.
Finding Lois was *his* priority. Something he needed to focus on. Then, he could tell her that they had called, wanting to know she was alright. That they were there for her, too.
His first logical step had been to contact her sister, Lucy. Her number was in his rolodex from when she used to work in Metropolis. And Lois had updated it when she had moved to California.
Lucy had shared his concerns over Lois’s well-being, but also alleviated them a bit by saying she had called, sounding “like *death*, to say she was okay,” a few days earlier.
Wherever she was, she was at least okay. But Perry shook his head. Knowing she was just okay was not enough.
He needed to find Lois. To get her back. He had to make sure he didn’t lose her, too.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lois had finally left Clark’s apartment. She had to, if she didn’t want to die from starvation. She’d used up all of his food, and needed to take a trip to the grocery store.
She hadn’t been eating much all week. She’d been too depressed to eat much. But she had been eating. And now his food was gone.
Dressed in his large sweats and wearing a baseball cap, she hoped she wouldn’t be recognized on the quick trip into the neighborhood. One thing that had made the past week bearable at all was that she hadn’t had to talk to anyone about it. She hadn’t had to relive the worst night of her life with anyone who “wanted to be there for her.” She couldn’t talk about the horror of that night. Not yet, anyway. The pain was too fresh. The thoughts alone made her cry. To put those thoughts into words would probably kill her, she thought.
She could vaguely remember talking to Superman about everything immediately after it had happened. She couldn’t remember what she had said. But she remembered that he had looked scared. She’d been out of control, inconsolable… and clearly beside herself with grief and pain. If she tried to talk to someone now, it would be like a repeat performance of that night. And if she’d managed to scare *Superman*, she shuddered to think of what Perry might do.
After that first horrible night, she’d had other moments – many of them – just like the ones she’d had that night. She’d had those same intense reactions when Clark’s death would again sink in. When it would hit her. She would be fine and then something as small as seeing a tie of his that she remembered making fun of would trigger an attack. That was the only word she could think to describe the fits. Attacks. Her feelings were attacking her. Her love was attacking her. Her grief, her guilt, her shame, her sadness, her cowardice ATTACKED her.
It would happen sometimes in the morning. Sometimes it would wake her from a sound sleep. Sometimes it would happen in the middle of a movie on television.
And she found, flipping through the channels, that any time someone on television got shot, for entertainment value, to pack a movie with action, she just could not watch. The noise would immediately push her backward in time to when that noise had been all too real. And the ramifications were not at all entertaining.
She couldn’t watch those kinds of movies.
Or romance movies, which brought on the tears, as her many regrets would surface at the sight of happy couples in love.
Many things brought her emotions – which she was constantly trying to suppress and control – rushing to the surface.
She couldn’t control the attacks. But in the week since his death, they hadn’t stopped happening. Her last one had been just before she’d stepped out for the grocery store. When she realized she’d used up all of his food. Just the idea that his food was gone, like him, brought on the intense feelings.
So running into someone she knew who might want to talk was just out of the question. She just… she wasn’t ready.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hey, Chief, I just had a thought about where Lois might be,” Jimmy said. When Perry looked up, but said nothing, he took it as a sign to continue. “Maybe she went to Clark’s apartment. You know to…”
“Torture herself? I doubt it,” he said. “That place has probably been cleaned out. There may even be someone new there.” After a moment, he looked up from the paperwork on his desk. “But good thinking. Why don’t you head over there and check anyway,” Perry said. “I mean, if you don’t mind, that is. If it’s too hard for you, son, then…”
“No, Chief, I can do it,” Jimmy said.
Which was how he found himself picking the lock at Clark’s place fifteen minutes later.
When the door finally opened, he gasped when he saw the inside. It was Clark’s apartment… and another reminder of what had happened.
It was a lot messier than he had ever seen Clark’s apartment in the past. But it made sense… he had been pretty busy in the days that led up to his… murder.
Standing on the landing, he closed his eyes, briefly. Even just in thought he could barely trudge over that word. Murder. Death. Killed. Shot. Any of those words. His thoughts would stop dead in their tracks when talking about Clark in the same sentence as those words. Clark was young and healthy and alive… To him, he always would be. So to think of him in that context…
He looked around the apartment, realizing he hadn’t been there in awhile. Months, really. He and Clark occasionally went out for a slice of pizza or something after work. Sometimes, Clark invited him over to hang out and watch a game or something. He’d refused on occasion because of a date and on occasion because of another obligation and once because it was just going to be him, Clark and Lois, and he’d been waiting for them to finally get together and didn’t want to prolong it with his presence. Just now, though, he wished he had said yes to those invitations a little more often.
It was quiet and still at Clark’s place. A quick walk around, while trying to just keep his emotions intact revealed what he’d assumed and, in a way, feared. Lois was not there. Which brought him back to square one. Lois was missing.
He quickly let himself back out, looking once more at the apartment and trying to commit it to memory.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lois arrived at the grocery store and quickly grabbed everything she’d come for. Milk, bananas, chicken soup, bread, tuna fish… everything she’d used at Clark’s place. She didn’t pick up anything new. She wanted to keep the place his, and if she’d bought anything that she would keep at home, like cookies or macaroni-and-cheese, it wouldn’t have been Clark’s place anymore. Not really. The cabinets had to contain what they had contained when she’d shown up at his place the night of his… the night…
“Cash or credit?” the cashier inquired, when her price flashed on the screen.
“Credit card,” she said, keeping her head down. She’d have preferred to pay with cash, but she didn’t have any on her. She handed the card to the woman and watched as it was swiped.
“I’ll need your signature here, Miss… Lois Lane…” the woman said, reading the card. “Hey, aren’t you that reporter? I thought I saw something last week about you, some hot news or gossip or…”
“Here you go,” Lois said, signing the receipt and handing it to the woman. “Thanks,” she said, not sounding grateful in the least.
She walked away, angry at herself for not having stopped at an ATM and just gotten a little cash out. She hadn’t been recognized, but her name had, and somehow it was just as bad. To this woman, Clark’s death *was* a hot piece of gossip.
Lois realized, with a shudder, that when she read about murders, she was always intrigued and wanted to know every morbid detail. She thought it was maybe human nature or just the inquisitor and reporter in her. She also realized that she’d have reacted just like that woman if it had been some person she’d never met.
But this hot piece of gossip for some people was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. It was her nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from. It wasn’t removed, so it could never be gossip. It hit close to home – too close – it hit her heart – and it was all too real.
She walked quickly back to Clark’s, her head bowed, wondering how she could have been so stupid to have left at all.
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