He knew.
What surprised Lois was the sense of relief she felt. She’d thought of every way possible to tell him, but she’d never quite had the courage. It was as though a weight had lifted from her shoulders, one she’d become so accustomed to that she had barely known it existed.
“It was a mistake,” Lois said. “I knew it the moment I said ‘I do’.”
She’d felt sick the moment the words passed her lips, but by then it had been too late. She still remembered the look of triumph on Lex’s face, and the thought made her shudder.
“I guess part of me was waiting for one of you to rescue me. You or…him. It didn’t matter which.”
It had been so long since Lois had thought of them as separate people that it felt almost quaint.
Clark was silent, his face enveloped in shadow. Lois wished she could see the expression on his face. She wished she had a clue as to what he was thinking.
“It was my reputation that helped him win the presidency.” The familiar, acrid bitter taste rose in her throat. “He had the money, but he would have never survived the press poking around in his secrets if they hadn’t assumed that I’d have known about anything.”
“What was I doing?” Clark asked quietly. His voice was carefully neutral, devoid of emotion.
“I think you were trying to find proof. Lex found out about it, and it wasn’t long before the story of your secret was public knowledge.” Lois hesitated, “That helped him out too. People were so caught up in what was happening with you that the election was almost an afterthought.”
“And my parents?” If anything, his posture was even stiffer than before. He had to know that something was wrong. His parents hadn’t even attempted to contact him, despite knowing that he was injured and hurt.
“Your parents’ farm was burned. I still haven‘t found out if it was Lex‘s men or random crazies that did it. Lex had them put in the witness protection program. He held it over your head…told you it wasn’t safe to see them, that they’d be at risk just by your being there.”
Lois sat up slowly and reached for a tissue.
“In the end, it saved them.” Lois shook her head. “It’s funny how things turn out. He did a lot of bad things, but he died a hero.”
“So you…cared about him?” He wouldn’t look at her. Instead he stared off into the distance.
Lois chuckled bitterly. “It was a cold, empty marriage from the beginning. Lex was always more interesting in the pursuit of something than in actually having it. I think the only reason he kept 90 percent of his possessions was so nobody else could have them.”
“And us?”
“He knew how I felt about you, even before I found out your secret. When you announced that you were leaving for your home planet to fight in a civil war, he took great delight in seeing me suffer.”
Clark hadn’t even stayed to see the results of the election. It had hurt, but Lois had understood. He didn’t have anything left to hold him on earth.
“I’m sorry.”
“You were gone for three years. I guess you won, because Nor and the remnants of his armies escaped, and they came here.”
*************
Clark remembered some of the pictures he’d seen, of buildings burned, and bodies. He felt ill.
“So my people…people with abilities like mine came here and invaded.”
“If Lex hadn’t been so paranoid about you, made sure that key people in the military had kryptonite, we’d have been lost.” Lois grimaced.
Jimmy had said the invasion lasted eighteen days. He hadn’t talked much about what had happened during that time, but Clark could see it in his eyes. It had been bad.
Lois continued. “Eventually you returned and you rounded up most of Nor’s men.”
“Most?”
“Some deserted before the end. We’ve spent the last few years trying to round them up.”
Aliens hiding in plain sight. Clark could see how that would frighten people, keep them looking over their shoulder. The thought that your neighbor, or the punk kid on the subway could burn you to death by just looking at you...it would terrify anyone.
Clark had traveled extensively when he was younger, and he knew just how far people would go to feel safe.
Just what they would give up.
The hatred in the young girl’s eyes as she dropped the meteor on him...it was slowly becoming clear to him what it was about.
It was all about fear.
“The country wasn’t the same after that. People were afraid. They voted General Cash into office, and it only got worse. The things he did...the things we did...” Lois shook her head. “I don’t understand how we could have...”
“So you decided to run.”
“I had billions of dollars and the name of a martyred president. Mostly, I didn’t scare people as much as the other candidates did. President Cash would have had us under martial law, and the others were...weak. When people are afraid they avoid weakness. “
She’d kept the money. Why that disappointed Clark he didn’t know. From the look in her eye he suspected that it was an argument they’d had in the past.
Lois continued. “I promised to keep people safe without eroding the liberties that make this country what it is today.” She looked down at the floor. “I wasn’t always able to keep that promise.”
“I’m sure you’ve made a great president Lois.”
“Two thirds of the voters didn’t think so. I’m in the record books as the only president to ever win with less than a third of the popular vote. People didn’t like my age, the didn’t like my sex...and they didn’t like you.”
**************
Lois closed her eyes. “The comedians were relentless. The jokes they made...about us being together before Lex died...they were cruel and painful.”
The campaign had been hell, grueling and relentless. Her opponents had hammered away at her qualifications, at her character. They’d made her out to be inept, weak willed, a whore.
The worst was that there had been a grain of truth to the accusations. Lois had realized that she loved Clark early in her marriage, and there were points where she had been tempted. But Clark...he was too principled to even consider something like that, whatever the temptation.
His parents had raised him better.
She was glad of it now. She’d have hated herself. Her father had cheated, and she knew by example how empty, how damaging that was.
Even after Lex died, it hadn’t been the same. Lois had immersed herself in political events, trying to stop President Cash’s worse atrocities. Rallies, fundraisers, lobbying. She’d fallen into it with the same intensity that she’d used in her life as a reporter. It had consumed her, left her with little time in her life for anything or anyone else.
She hadn’t even had much time for him.
And given their arguments about Lex's money, it hadn’t been easy to talk to Clark. He wasn’t used to the sort of compromises that politicians had to make every day. He tended to see the world in blacks and whites.
It had been a luxury she couldn’t afford.
The compromise she’d made to gain the presidency was still the source of her greatest guilt.
“My advisors...they pushed me to do something I didn’t want to do.” Lois felt a tear forming at the edge of her eyelid.
Clark leaned forward and said, “It’s all right, Lois.”
Pulling away from him, Lois said “It’ll never be all right. I rejected you, and I did it publicly.”
It was the lie that Lois hadn’t been able to live with. Seeing the pain in his eyes, even if only in the glaring lights of television cameras had been a nightmare.
How much worse must it have been for him? He could have been a king among his people, but he’d given it all up for a world that didn’t want him.
For a woman who couldn’t admit that she did.
She'd looked in the mirror every day, and she’d seen the weight of the world settling on her shoulders, the burden getting heavier and heavier. It happened with everyone, but Lois had hated the growing deadness in her eyes. She’d been alone, in the one place where no one should ever be alone.
Maybe there was a reason that they’d almost all been married. Everyone needed comfort, especially the holder of the office.
She jerked slightly as she felt his arms encircling her. It had been a long time since she’d been touched by anyone, and Lois felt herself sagging into his embrace.
The wetness of tears on her face surprised her, but they shouldn’t have.
She felt as though for the first time that she could remember, she was coming home.
********************
