Hello my lovely L&C readers! Here's what I've been up to while not writing L&C fic -- writing Smallville fic!
Anyway, this story tells what happened in those three weeks during Dominion (Season 10) while Clark was in the Phantom Zone and how Lois coped. It's just two parts. Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: Written for fun and not for profit. All characters belong to WB and some dialogue taken from the Smallville episode Dominion, written by John Chisholm.
~~~
A Hero’s WifeIt wasn’t possible. Clark wouldn’t leave her. He simply wouldn’t.
Surely Tess had done this. This couldn’t possibly be under Clark’s orders. He wouldn’t destroy the gate, his only way home. His only way back to her.
But what sacred Lois more, was the absolute honesty she saw in Tess. Gone were the usual subterfuges, the arrogance that as a rule, Tess generally wore. Deep down, Lois knew Tess was telling the truth, that Clark had decided they needed a back-up plan in case he couldn’t find who had opened the gate. He had decided he would sacrifice himself in order to protect the world from a greater evil.
Even if it meant abandoning her.
Even if it meant that they would be separated forever.
Tess turned pleading eyes on Lois, and Lois could see that for once, Tess was being completely forthright with her.
And what was worse, Tess seemed to comprehend and accept Clark’s sacrifice while Lois refused to purely for selfish reasons.
Lois didn’t want to contemplate that she would be asked to sacrifice Clark so soon – before their life together had really even begun.
She simply denied that Tess was telling her the truth, afraid of believing that Clark would ask that of her – of them – so soon, and without even having said good-bye.
On instinct or desperation, Lois suddenly pulled the emergency handgun from under the desk and aimed it at Tess.
Tess had betrayed them before. Surely she was the one betraying them now.
But not Clark… never Clark.
He wouldn’t leave me without saying good-bye. Without giving me a chance to talk him out of it…But she knew, deep down, that Clark wouldn’t have let her talk him out of sacrificing himself, especially not if it meant saving the world. What angered her the most was that she knew she would have been selfish enough to try and stop him.
Tess spoke calmly, deliberately, her shocked green eyes meeting the pistol in Lois’ hand. “I understand you love Clark, and that you’d do anything not to lose him.”
“You bet I would,” Lois said in a low voice, fear and anger vying for position in her heart.
“Lois, I don’t want to give up on Clark either. I don’t, but we have a responsibility to not put the world at risk for selfish reasons, which is what you’re doing by wanting to see him again,” Tess explained, finally understanding what it meant to do something that was for the greater good.
Lois felt tears rising up, but she tried to hold her emotions in check. She did not want to seem weak in front of Tess, and she wouldn’t back down. Not when her future with the man she loved was on the line. She had to stop Tess from destroying the gate. “I will not let you sacrifice him.”
“Being with a hero, means accepting that hero’s sacrifices.”
Lois shook her head in denial, oddly thinking suddenly of her mother who had always stood behind the General no matter what. And Lois would be no different. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said, steely determination in her voice. “Being a hero’s wife, means never accepting defeat.”
Tess lifted her palms in a slightly surrendering gesture, seeing that Lois was pushed beyond reasoning. Lois was afraid, and Tess worried how that fear would manifest itself. She just hoped it wasn’t a gunshot wound in her chest. “Lois, put the gun down. Please,” she coaxed. “We’ll find a way, okay? I promise… we’ll get Clark back.”
Her elbows hurting from the tension of holding the gun, Lois slowly lowered it, setting it on the desk. She was full of adrenaline, and her hand shook a little as she released the gun.
“I knew I’d get you to see things my way,” Lois said coolly, though her heart still pounded in her chest.
Tess turned to the computer, her eyes glancing now and then to the gun on the desk and back to Lois. “I can’t promise I can override the system. There are several back-ups in place, but I’ll do what I can.”
Lois came to stand behind Tess, watching over her shoulder as she typed some codes into the computer. “Do it, Tess. Find a way. I don’t care how noble Clark think he’s being by destroying the gate, he has to come back. He has to…”
Tess nodded reassuringly. “Ok, I stopped the clock. But it has an automatic restart if I can’t override the shutdown command in the next ten minutes,” she said, glancing at Lois. “Clark made sure the destruction of the gate would happen no matter what. He had me put in several security measures.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t even tell me,” Lois murmured in dismay, shaking her head. “I mean, of course I would have tried to talk him out of it, but to just step into that horrible place, not knowing if he’d come back—“
“Clark did what he thought he had to do, Lois.” Tess hit another few keys. “Okay, that did it. The gate will not self-destruct. It can now only be destroyed manually.”
Lois nodded in relief. She began pacing, her arms crossed as she thought. “Look, sorry for going all G.I. Jane on you. I just—“
Tess lifted a palm, gently silencing Lois. “Lois, you don’t have to explain. I would have done the same thing, had the roles been reversed.”
Lois’ eyes darted to the computer screen, tears brimming in her eyes. “Let’s just hope they get out of there…” she said, afraid of voicing her fear of what would happen if they didn’t. “Have you tried the communicator again?”
“I have it on a loop to try every three minutes. So far, nothing. Anything could have happened to those communicators, Lois. Just because we can’t reach Clark and Oliver, doesn’t mean something has happened to them.”
Lois nodded in agreement. “I know. I’d just feel a lot better if I could hear Clark’s voice, or even if I knew he could hear mine. So he knows he’s not alone in there, you know?”
“He’s not, Lois. He has Oliver. They’ll look out for each other.”
Lois agreed, hoping that between the two of them, Clark and Oliver would make it back alive.
Suddenly, they heard a noise on the computer. It sounded like a muffled groan and people yelling in the background. It was only about two seconds long, but Lois honed in on the screen. “Did you hear that? The communicator! Try it again.”
Tess did some fast typing and then spoke into the mic. “Clark? This is Watchtower. Can you hear me? Clark?”
Lois waited expectantly, her fists clenched at her sides, anxious. “Let me try,” she said.
Tess gave her a helpless glance, but gestured to let Lois try.
“Clark? It’s me, Lois. Can you hear me? Clark!?” she cried, her voice growing more desperate with the respondent silence. “Clark!”
Lois stood at the mic for several minutes, every few seconds calling Clark’s name and straining to listen for some kind of answer.
After a while, when it was clear their efforts were futile, Tess put a hand on Lois’ shoulder. “It was just a fluke… we’ll keep trying but—“
Lois turned anxious eyes on Tess. “Did what we hear get recorded? Maybe we can get some clue as to what is happening. We need to hear it again.”
Tess nodded, the memory of Lois aiming a gun at her still fresh in her mind. She would do all she could to help Lois, if only so she’d feel like she was doing something. Even if Tess thought it was hopeless and knew that Clark and Oliver were on their own now.
Tess clicked a few keys, and set the volume levels high on the main computer. She hit play. It came out as jumbled noise, like there was some sort of struggle, and there was an audible grunt.
Lois, suddenly believing that they might have something, began to feel hopeful again. “Can you separate out the noises? Maybe we can know more about what is going on. How much danger they are in.”
“Lois, I don’t know what that will do, except make you worry even more,” Tess warned, knowing how helpless they really were.
Lois glanced at the gun across the room, an unspoken threat that she’d reach for it again if pushed. “Look, if that’s all we have, then that’s what we work with. If that was Clark—“ she swallowed hard, as if speaking her thought pained her. “If that was him, then I need to know what he said.”
Tess nodded, taking a deep breath. “Didn’t sound like much to me, but I can separate out the lows and the highs, and try to clean up any extraneous noise.”
The first track played the highs. It clearly was the sound of a crowd jeering and taunting. Tess glanced at Lois, who was nervously biting her fingernail, something she rarely did anymore.
“OK, here’s the other track.”
It sounded like a sword or a knife, slicing through flesh, and the grunt of pain—
“Clark,” Lois sobbed. “That was Clark, I know it.”
“Lois, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t get to the Phantom Zone yourself. I’m sure, if there’s a way, Clark will make it back.”
Lois nodded, afraid to speak. All she could think was that Clark was without his powers, he was vulnerable, and at the very least, wounded.
“Play it again,” she demanded.
“Lois—“
“Play it!”
Tess reluctantly complied.
At hearing the enhanced sound of Clark grunting with what sounded like a sword through flesh, Lois shook her head. “No, it can’t end this way...” Then she turned again to Tess. “Check the three minute loop on the communicator. Anything?”
“No, we’d hear it if something came through.”
Lois looked calculatingly at the equipment around them, her only fragile connection to Clark in that other world. “Teach me how to check it. How to replay any sounds that come through. I want to know everything about the gate, too. I want to know, because I will wait here until he comes back.”
“Lois,” Tess said carefully. “You have to prepare yourself for the chance that he won’t make it back. You have to understand that.”
Lois shook her head fiercely. “No. I won’t give up on him, because he’d never give up on me.”
~L&C~
Hours later, after Tess had shown Lois all she could on how to check all the possible outcomes with the communicator and how to rerun any sound that may come in, Lois was alone in Watchtower.
The sun was setting on the city, and sunlight was dancing through the stained glass. Despite her concerns and tears over the last few hours, the golden sunlight seemed to calm her just a bit.
She walked over to the large window, thinking of the day she had saved Clark’s life, by pulling that blue kryptonite stake from his chest. And how, like the Egyptian god Rah, he had been reborn with the sun.
She had believed in the hero and the man that day, seeing them at last as one. Lois knew Clark would do all he could to make it out of the Phantom Zone. And no matter how badly he was hurt, he would be okay—but only if he made it back to Earth, where he could be healed by the rays of the yellow sun.
“You have to come back, Clark. I don’t know how to go on without you,” she whispered to the empty room.
Tess had brought her some Chinese food before she left for the evening, but Lois couldn’t bring herself to eat. For the next hour, she instead obsessively checked the communicator, hoping that it had picked up some noise. Now and then she’d hear some static, and she’d play it over and over again on the larger computer, trying to enhance it to hear something more substantial, but every time she was disappointed.
Torturing herself, she played the one sound clip they had, of what had sounded like Clark being wounded. She played out in her mind a million different scenarios about what could have happened, and how he could have survived. Only in her darkest moments did she wonder what would happen if he didn’t…
She glanced at Watchtower’s clock, and at the frozen countdown timer that was to have destroyed the gate. If she hadn’t stopped Tess, the gate would have been destroyed by now, and Clark would have been lost to her forever.
She comforted herself with the fact that at least there was still some hope he could return, that the gate was still intact.
Just like the rays of the sun that healed Clark, the light in Watchtower seemed to light on that sliver of hope.
Somehow, he’d make it back to her.
He just had to.
~L&C~
Tess came in the next day, and found Lois half-asleep at the console.
Lois started awake when she heard Tess approaching. “We have to keep trying, Tess… maybe they will get the communicators working again,” she said sleepily, her hand reaching for the mouse that had almost grown attached to her hand during the night as she had checked and rechecked sound files.
“Lois,” Tess chided gently, seeing what a mess Lois was. “Go home. For at least a few hours. Get some sleep, and a shower… We’ll take turns at Watchtower, okay?”
“Home… what is home?” Lois said morosely. “My home is in some Kryptonian wasteland, Tess! I’m not going anywhere. Not until he comes back…”
“Lois, as a member of this team, I am ordering you out of here for a few hours,” Tess said in a voice that brooked no argument. “You will be sharper once you’ve had some rest. If anything comes through, you know I’ll call you. Just go home for a while… it will be all right.”
Eventually, Lois reluctantly nodded, knowing she wasn’t much use as worn out and upset as she was. “My head does feel a bit like a grease ball… I know I need a shower. Fine. We’ll take shifts. I’ll be back this afternoon, fresh as a daisy. And meanwhile, if anything happens, even if you think it’s minor, call me.”
“I will. I promise.”
~L&C~
The walk to the apartment was painful.
Her and Clark’s new apartment.
Where they were to start their life together…
How was she to face going there, knowing that Clark wouldn’t be there to greet her, may never—Lois refused to finish that thought.
He had to come back to her.
When Lois arrived, she stood at the door for a long moment, her hand on the doorknob, unable to turn it, afraid of facing the empty apartment full of their future, alone.
Home.
This was to be their home… and yet, could it be if he didn’t return?
Smallville is my home, Clark. Not this one, this Smallville, right here. You're all I'll ever need.Tears came to her eyes, knowing that she’d never feel home again until she could be wrapped in Clark’s arms once more.
She looked around at the stacks of boxes, her eyes falling on her Whitesnake pillow that Clark had teased her about just yesterday.
"Don't worry. My 'for better or worse' will include your love of hair metal."Lois grabbed the pillow, pushing several boxes aside to sit cuddled with it on the couch. She thought all her tears had fallen the night before, but suddenly her cheeks were wet again.
“You have to come back, Smallville. You have to.”
Lois cried herself to sleep, curled up amid the many boxes and waiting memories, snuggled close to her Whitesnake pillow.
~L&C~
When Lois awoke, she felt slightly disoriented, not yet used to the confines of the new apartment. For a short second, she almost forgot where she was, about Clark being trapped in the Phantom Zone. About the fact that she didn’t know when or even if he’d return.
But as realization hit, she suddenly reached for her cell phone. Had Tess called while she slept? Had anything happened?
But no new messages or missed calls were on her cell phone. It was the same as it had been this morning. Clark and Oliver were still in the Phantom Zone.
Lois needed to get back to Watchtower as soon as she could. She dug through a box labeled “bathroom” and found a towel. Clark had bought toiletries from the drugstore yesterday morning, after Lois had sent him out with a list. She found the bag on the kitchen table, and felt a little lurch in her heart as she looked at the contents. He’d gotten everything she’d ask for down to the letter.
“You are everything I’ve ever asked for, Smallville,” she said sadly, pulling out the shampoo, soap, and shower poof. “Which is why you have to come back.”
Lois took a shower and quickly got dressed, focusing on getting back to Watchtower as soon as she could. She thought she’d kill Tess if anything had happened while she was away that she hadn’t told her about.
Before leaving the apartment, Lois glanced around at all the boxes. She knew that the only way she’d get through this was to believe that somehow Clark would return.
Smallville was her home.
And their new home would be waiting for him when he returned.
She’d start unpacking the first box tonight.
~L&C~
“Find anything while I was gone?” Lois asked, stepping into Watchtower with a little more confidence then when she had left.
“No, Lois. Unfortunately not.”
Lois glanced at the computers, noting that nothing had changed since last night. “Tess, what are we going to do? I’m going to go crazy without having some way of trying to help them—“
“Well, I’ve contacted the rest of the League. We’re going to video conference here in a minute and see what they say. Maybe they can go in after Clark and Oliver… but Lois, they will probably decide against it,” Tess warned.
Lois nodded. “Well, let’s see what they say first, okay? If there’s a chance that we can go in after them, then we take it. We can’t give up on them, Tess. I can’t give up on them.”
“I know, Lois. We won’t.”
Suddenly, the conference screens turned on. Lois and Tess headed to the small semi-circle of computers as the League checked in, one by one.
John Jones appeared, shortly after Black Canary. Cyborg and Impuse checked in next, followed by Aquaman. They all seemed a bit surprised to see just Tess and Lois.
Tess quickly briefed them on what had happened in the Phantom Zone.
“Oliver followed Clark in. We lost communication with them shortly afterwards. The gate is still open, however, no one has ever gone to the Phantom Zone before without Clark. We don’t know what will happen if we send one of you there.”
Lois stepped forward. “Or if you could even find them. It’s a vast wasteland… miles of desert…” She suddenly turned to Tess. “Send me,” she said quietly, thinking the others wouldn’t hear her. “I know what it’s like there. I could go—“
“Lois, no.”
It was John Jones who had spoken. “You know that Kal-El wouldn’t want you there. Not when he is without his powers. Any one of us should go before you should.”
Lois faced them all defiantly. “Why not me? If Clark can sacrifice himself, then so can I, to find him.”
“And then what, Lois?” asked Tess, a bit of exasperation in her tone. “Even if you found him, you couldn’t necessarily help him. Clark will come back if he can.”
“It’s too risky for any of us to go. And we need heroes here on Earth, in case the gate can’t be closed,” said John. “Kal-El would want us to stay put. We’ll keep trying to reach them, but there is no reason for all of us to risk the Phantom Zone.”
Lois backed down, seeing they were right. She wouldn’t be able to help Clark even if she found him. But that didn’t mean she’d give up.
“Then Tess and I will keep an eye on things from Watchtower. We’ll continue to try and make contact with them.”
Tess nodded. “But with Clark and Oliver gone, we’ll need all of you to be more vigilant than ever.”
“We’ll do what we can to be sure Earth remains safe while Kal-El is away,” said Aquaman.
One by one, the heroes signed off, leaving Tess and Lois with the task of once again trying to reach Clark and Oliver in the Phantom Zone.
“Was there really no sign of them last night, Tess?” Lois asked pensively, heading back to the monitor where they had been trying to reconnect the communicators.
“No. But it doesn’t mean that they won’t make it, Lois. Look, I won’t give up if you won’t. We’ll do what we said, take turns monitoring the communicators.”
Lois nodded decisively. “Right.”
Tess started gathering her things. “That means you are in charge until tomorrow. I can make excuses for you at the Planet, but I have to show my face for at least part of the day.”
“I understand. We’ll split shifts. And on the weekend—“ Lois paused, realizing it was only Tuesday. How long would they have to wait before Clark and Oliver returned? It didn’t matter, she realized. She’d wait for Clark forever if she had to. “On the weekend we’ll both camp out.”
Tess dipped her head in assent. “I admire your determination, Lois. You know, I think I was wrong about you when we met.”
Lois smiled, her first since she had learned Clark had run off to the Phantom Zone. “Thanks. Back at ya.”
“Well, I admit I haven’t always played fair, or even always on the right side. But I always tried to,” she admitted, the small jut of her chin showing an air of defiance. “But Ollie…” Tess started, but couldn’t seem to finish.
“Means something to you,” Lois filled in for her.
Tess nodded. “I mean, I know we haven’t meant anything to each other for a long time, and I’m happy for him and Chloe—but yeah, I’d do whatever I can for him.”
“Then that just means we won’t give up.”
~L&C~
Moments after Tess left, Lois dug out what she had deemed her survival kit: slippers, a six pack of beer, a picture of her and Clark, and her Whitesnake pillow.
Normally she would have brought along a Whitesnake CD, but she didn’t want to risk missing anything coming through on the communicator. Besides, the pillow made her think of Clark, and it gave her something to hold that he had recently touched. Oddly, she felt like it was a tether to him, proof that he was still alive.
Lois ran through all the files Tess had accumulated since early that morning. There were only a few with anything to listen to, mostly full of static, but nothing as substantial as that horrible clip of what Lois was convinced was Clark getting wounded.
She refused to think the worst.
He was still alive. And he’d come back to her.
She had to hold onto that, or she’d go crazy.
Lois connected their communicator to the monitor, hoping against hope that she’d somehow connect to Clark or Oliver.
“Clark? Come in. This is –Lois…” she finished with surprising sincerity, first thinking she’d try to say she was Watchtower, but in the moment needing to reach out to that infinite space as herself. “Anybody listening?”
She waited… and waited.
Nothing. No static, not even a blip.
She knew how impossibly far and otherworldly the Phantom Zone was. It had been a miracle that they had had a connection at all.
But that didn’t stop her from wanting that connection again.
After a while, Lois opened a beer and began humming some Whitesnake to pass the time. Anytime she thought she heard a noise, she’d jump in her seat and replay the last looped recording.
Around midnight, and after about four beers, she had an intriguing thought. What if Clark could hear her, but just couldn’t respond himself?
Her heart lightened at the idea. She connected into the communicator, watching the screen for any indication of a response as she began to talk.
“Clark… if you can hear me---well, I just want to say I miss you,” she shook her head, realizing that she wanted to say more. Needed to say more. “No, it’s more than that. I miss
us, what we’ve become together… You know, I think back on all those years at the farm. How blind I had been. Not just to your abilities, but to you. I ignored you for as long as I could, you know? I mean, I always thought you were good-looking, but so many of those good-looking guys I had fallen for before had always turned into disasters… and besides, I never thought I could compete with Lana.”
She scoffed at herself, taking another sip of beer. “I know, it’s funny now. But I was intimidated by her for a long time… and you, well, I guess I just never thought that you and I could ever be more…”
She felt tears well up in her eyes, and hugged the Whitesnake pillow tighter. “But when I started falling for you… you know it took me by surprise, right? It happened even before I knew it. But the first time I acknowledged it was at Chloe’s wedding when we almost kissed. And I—I felt like such a fool when Lana reappeared. Anyway, enough about her… I just—well, it’s ancient history now, right?”
Lois put her slippered feet up on the console, keeping an eye on the screen for any kind of response.
“And then when you came into the picture as the Blur… wow, looking back, I really think I was stupid for not putting it all together sooner. Some reporter I am, right?” She smiled. “I know what you’d say: ’You’re a great reporter, Lois.’ …And you’d be right, of course.”
She was quiet for a moment, contemplative. “Did I ever tell you what it meant to me, the moment you actually told me your secret? I had known for a while, as you now know, but in that moment—Clark, I thought my heart would break if you didn’t say something. I remember heading to the elevator, feeling as if you would be lost to me forever, separated as we were by your secret. And then—a miracle. You told me and I knew that we’d be okay. That we’d somehow figure out how to move forward together, no matter what came our way—even, through things like this…”
Lois opened another beer, staring at the screen until she could see herself in it. “Bottoms up,” she said, waving the beer towards her reflection. “We’ll make it through, Clark. I have to believe that you will return. I can’t think of any other possibility, you see? I won’t give up on us – on
you. I just wish – or maybe I hope that you are listening to this. And that somehow it’s giving you the courage to continue and to find a way back to me, Smallville… because my only home is with you. Be it Kryptonian desert or the farm or our sweet little apartment in Metropolis…“ Lois looked around at the empty and quiet solitude of Watchtower, imagining her days here—without Clark. “But the truth is, it will only be a home if you’re there… Smallville…”
She felt tears roll down her cheeks. “I miss you,” she whispered, just wishing there was some sign, some ray of hope that could tell her that Clark was still alive. If only there was another anomaly from the communicator, some indication that her vigilance wasn’t in vain.
But Lois wouldn’t give up. Not without concrete proof that Clark was gone forever.
She wouldn’t give up, even if only the smallest ray of hope shimmered.
She couldn’t.
