When he woke again it was night. His head hurt, and he wondered why he had been allowed to sleep. He blinked slowly and it took him a moment to clear up enough to realize that he wasn’t in a hospital room at all.
It wasn’t a hospital room, though there was some equipment in the room beeping away. The hum was somehow soothing. It covered the sounds of crickets from outside.
Ignoring the pain in his head, Clark shifted position, turning on his side. He froze when he realized that the wall beside the bed was all one window looking out over the mountains, the forest laid out beneath. He recognized this mountain range; it was the Rocky Mountains, and from the look of the forest, this was somewhere in Colorado.
The view was beautiful.
The camera in the corner of the room was not. Clark froze, realizing that he was being watched.
He heard the door open behind him. He shifted again, and he realized that it was Lois, clad now only in a robe.
What had happened to them in the intervening years? Were they somehow...together?
The pain in her eyes suggested that wasn’t the case.
Clark found that he couldn’t take his eyes from her. She was even more beautiful now than when he’d first met her. There were lines around her eyes, but her eyes were as bright as ever.
“Lois,” Clark said. “I feel so weak.”
“The doctors say you’ve been poisoned,” Lois said. “You came into contact with something that wasn’t good for you.”
****************
He’d known the meteor could kill him. She’d seen it in his eyes when he’d stood beside the scientists as they'd explained their plan. Unlike the last near miss, this rock was radioactive, at a frequency so high that it wouldn’t even affect humans. Scientists had feared that he might not be so lucky, that the frequency of radiation might be close enough to that of kryptonite to depower him, to make him ineffective.
So they’d put him in a lead suit, knowing that it would be ripped away on the moment of impact. The hope had been that this would be just enough to let him split the rock in two, whatever might happen to him.
Lois remembered vividly sitting and staring at the paper in front of her, dreading what she was being asked to do. She’d signed it, against everything she wanted, against everything she believed because there was no other choice.
She’d lost her lunch violently after signing the order, retching helplessly as she sent the man she loved to die.
It wasn’t the first repugnant decision she’d had to make; the office often demanded decisions that were painful. Yet this one was different. It had been like she was closing a chapter in her life. She’d always hoped for a reconciliation, and with this, there never would be.
You could see it in his eyes on television, the knowledge that he was a sacrifice, that he wouldn’t be coming back.
And yet here he was, looking up at her in the moonlight. There was an innocence in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in so long that she couldn’t remember ever seeing it. It had been a simpler time, and for a moment Lois imagined that she was facing a time traveler, a Clark who hadn’t had to go through the past years, who hadn’t faced a decade and more of disappointments and pain.
A Clark who hadn’t seen her being forced to make compromises that blackened her soul. Politics was a dirty business, and during the few conversations they’d had over the years, he’d never understood.
She’d done what she had to do.
She smiled down at Clark. “Are you hungry?”
**********
It didn’t hurt like Kryptonite, but he wasn’t healing like he should. Clark blinked, then nodded, trying not to wince at the pain in his head. For a moment he wished that aspirin would affect him, but he’d tried it when he didn’t have his powers back in Smallville, and it hadn’t worked.
Lois reached for him, and helped him sit up slowly. He groaned involuntarily.
“Things are different between us, aren’t they?”
“We’re not partners anymore,” Lois said quietly. “We both had to...move on.”
He sat up in the bed, and Lois stepped back and reached for an intercom on the wall. “Bring us two roast beef sandwiches and iced teas.”
“You don’t have to tell them to put the mayo on the side and to make the lettuce crispy?” Clark asked, his lips quirking slightly.
“They know how I like my sandwiches,” Lois said shortly. She pulled a chair from the wall and sat down beside him. “Listen, Clark. Things have changed.”
“This is quite some place,” Clark said, turning his head to look out the window.
It was almost as though he was afraid to hear the truth. Lois could understand that. She was afraid to tell it.
“We’re just here to ride out the storm,” Lois said. “Until we get the all clear that there won’t be any meteor fragments hitting any populated areas.”
“I’d have thought you’d have been in the middle of it, reporting on everything. The end of the world is just your sort of story.”
Lois stared down at the blanket. “I haven’t been a reporter in a long time.” Lex had insisted on that. She should have known something was wrong then.
She glanced up to find Clark staring at her intently. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that he hadn’t been either.
“I’d have thought that you loved it too much to give it up.”
“I’m more of a newsmaker now,” Lois said quietly. “Life didn’t turn out exactly how I expected.”
Being the target of reporters instead of being one had been a shock from the beginning. It hadn’t taken Lois long to learn to hate them. She’d hated her entire life and at times the only thing that had kept her going was the memory of her time with him.
They’d been partners, nothing more, but it had been the highlight of her life.
She sighed finally. “We haven’t been friends in a long time, and I’m sorry about that.”
**********
Clark stared at her for a moment. Not friends? What had he done?
“Why?” he asked.
He loved her. He couldn’t see any reason that might have stopped.
“I got married,” she said.
Oh.
“I shouldn’t have done it. I knew it was a mistake the minute I said ‘I do’. I kept hoping that you’d break in and save me, but you never did.”
Clark wondered why he hadn’t. Surely he’d have done everything in his power to stop her, to convince her that he loved her.
“It just wasn’t the same after Jack and Perry died in the fire.”
Clark froze. “Perry’s dead?” It was a shock. Clark didn’t even know who Jack was, but that wasn’t important right now.
Lois nodded soberly. “The Daily Planet went up with it. Su...Superman was on the other side of the world, trying to deal with oil fires in the middle east.” She chuckled bitterly. “Maybe if Perry would have lived there might have been something to go back to.”
Clark glanced down at her hands. “You don’t wear a ring.”
“He died.” she said shortly. “I kept his name for political reasons.”
“Political?” Clark found that his head was spinning. It was too much change in too short a time. He was actually grateful when the door behind Lois opened and a uniformed man slipped into the door and set a tray next to the bed.
The next few minutes were occupied with the activities of preparing the tray and eating. The food was good, almost as good as his mother made.
**********
It was almost as though he knew, and just didn’t want to ask.
“Clark, I...”
A knock at the door interrupted her. A woman in a black suit stepped in. “Ma’am. It’s time.”
Lois glanced back at Clark, then said “I have to go.”
He didn’t protest, and the drawn look on his face told her he wasn’t ready yet for the truth.
She stepped through the door, and the woman stepped through the door. Her chief of staff was waiting.
“The fragments are starting to come down, and casualty reports are coming in.”
Lois glanced sharply back at the door behind her. “Not here. We’ll talk in the situation room.”
Clark had stopped Nightfall. But he hadn’t stopped the fragments left behind.
