WHISPER OF A THRILL
(aka The Story that Made Dave Cry)
By: Sara <sara_farneygal@eircom.net>
Rated: PG
Submitted: April 2006
Okay... I can't believe I'm actually posting this now <g> I started the first draft of this last June as a form of therapy during a rough patch I was going through, and it's ended up... nothing like what I envisaged it. It's been a heck of a ride, and it wouldn't have happened without the buckets of help and support people offered me - knowingly or otherwise.
So... thank you to Erin, who got me started with a truly lovely email. Thank you to Sara Kraft for her endless encouragement and/or screams of anguish/death threats <g> Thank you to Saskia for the incessant nagging. Thank you to Cat for the sporking
, and to Nicole for the swap - I got the better end of the deal! - and the wonderful comments. Thank you to Pel and Julie for the tireless cheerleading and for holding my hand and dragging me onwards <g>. Thank you to Wendy for the threats, the invaluable suggestions and for getting my butt in gear... whether I liked it or not <g> You're all fantastic, and I couldn't have done it without you!
Most of all, thank you to David, BR extraordinaire and supreme nagger... Dave, Davey, Daithi, Honey, this one's dedicated to you. For letting me make you cry
The following was mostly inspired by the movie "Meet Joe Black" and its score, composed by Thomas Newman - particularly the gorgeous piece after which this story is named. Standard disclaimers apply, and all feedback and constructive criticism *very* very welcome. I should also mention here that though the story is about 97% done, my posting schedule will most likely be irregular... apologies for that
~&~
"Love is passion, obsession. Someone you can't live without... To make the journey and not fall deeply in love? Well, you haven’t lived a life at all..."
~ Sir Anthony Hopkins - "Meet Joe Black"
~&~
Part OneThe night was all around her and she wrapped her arms around herself, against its bite. The soggy fabric of her drenched sweater clung to her arms, and she shook the heavy sleeves in disgust, trying to sluice some of the excess cement off herself.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am about your partner..."
Professor Hamilton was saying something, she realised distractedly, bleating about Clark, sending his name on a path through her left ear to rocket around her body. She braced herself grimly against the tumult of loneliness threatening to surround her, gritting her back teeth against the tide of tears waiting to sweep her away, and concentrated on repeating a mantra.
<You're not alone... Hamilton is right beside you, Jimmy and Perry are across town, there are people in the apartment blocks right across from you, and Superman is somewhere up above you. You're not alone...>
The thought was a small spark of cheap comfort in her head. Worthless and hopelessly contrived though it was.
She sniffed, throwing her maudlin thoughts to a corner of her brain, where they could be looked at later, over a tub of Double Choco-Monster Chip ice-cream.
And she froze at the sound of stiff formal shoes on cold pavement.
It was so late, and they were in such a deserted area... who could possibly...
<Capone,> she thought wildly. <He's coming back. He's coming right at me.> And yes, there was a shadowy form emerging from the darkness right in front of her.
She forced herself to examine it carefully - and her insides sagged in relief. The figure was too tall and walked too quickly to be Capone. And his shoulders were too broad to be Barrow's. There was no danger, it was just a random stranger from the street...
...strange... something about that swinging, easy gait reminded her of...
But what didn't remind her, now? What didn't? From the scent of freshly brewed coffee to the tang of sugar as it connected with her bottom lip from a doughnut to the lyrics of a particularly manufactured teenage pop anthem currently rocketing its way around Metropolis's main radio stations - all of them made her turn and start conversations with thin air.
Would you like a highly fattening, artery-clogging, nutritionally worthless snack item, Clark? Isn't it amazing what somebody with a bellybutton ring and a voice box can do these days, Clark? Can I get you a high-sugar, high-saturated-fat, fully-caffeinated cup of coffee, Clark? You realise at this rate you're going to develop diabetes before you're thirty, right, Clark?
Clark? Right?
"...Clark?"
She was walking, jogging, sprinting, saying his name into the air and not worrying about how crazy she was or how she looked or who might see. A blade of moonlight slashed across the person's face, and her heart turned a somersault as it reflected off his glasses.
"Clark!"
And she threw herself forward into his arms, wonderfully solid, hugging her as only Clark could hug her and he was there right in front of her and he wasn't a ghost, wasn't made out of mist, he was hers and he was there and he was alive, oh *Clark*...
She was sobbing wildly as she hung onto him, as she ran her hands over his shoulders, glorying in the breadth and warmth of him. Clark, her strength, her life, her Clark, there in front of her, and the feel of his...
His business jacket... but... no... it was smooth and... slippery to... to touch... over his shoulders, right there, it was... her hands were sliding off it...
Puzzled, she took a step back.
The moonlight fell on his chest, and she gasped in a strangled breath at the familiar crest - the red and the yellow, the symbol of all that was good, the thing that made her hate him so.
"No!" And then: "Why?" She yelled, she screamed hoarsely, and she pounded a fist against the centre of his chest, against that thing that made him not-Clark. "*Why*? First you don't save him, the most *powerful* thing on the... and now... how could you make me think..."
His hands clasped hers in a firm grip, and slowly she lifted her head. She felt as if she was moving underwater and she stared at him then, his face so impassive and free of emotion. Just as it always was. Superman, always so free of emotion, always so calm, always so perfect. His face was never mobile and full of expression like Clark's.
"Lois..." His deep voice a distant mocking mumble in her ears. "Don't you understand? This is what you wanted, this is what you asked for..."
"No!" she shrieked, horrified, stunned into submission at the dazzling candid unfairness of that. "I didn't want this! I don't want this, I don't want *you*, I want... I want..."
<...Clark...>
~&~
Some people think living on the edge is fun. There's a whole group of them somewhere, they're called the People Who Think Living On The Edge Is Fun. Poor lunatics, to think that it's exciting, breathtaking to be unsure of yourself. It's *not*. It's terrifying. One more step, one wrong move, and things will change forever.
It had only been a dream. Nothing to read into at all. A product of her frazzled brain, which had doubtless not been helped by the pint of Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice-cream she'd indulged in right before going to bed - her traditional chocolate taking a break for the briefest of moments.
Only a dream. One little dream. One little figment of her imagination. Nothing to worry about. And all she was doing right now was... waiting to talk to him. That was it. That was right.
Actually... all she was doing right now was waiting to knock at his door.
She hadn't seen him in so long. A week, at least. Her sense of timing hadn't been the greatest recently. She couldn't figure out where the days had gone - she'd wanted to call him, see him, but somehow the hours and minutes had slipped through her fingers like so many grains of sand.
She - they - needed to talk. To eat pizza, to drink soda, to watch Lethal Weapon for the zillionth time, or maybe Top Gun - she wasn't fussy. They *needed* that. To reconnect.
She knew that things would be a little tense. Uneasy. Tainted with a touch of darkness. But surely, surely he wouldn't be anything other than he ever was, please, please don’t let him be different... she didn't think she could stand it if he was different...
She blinked, berated herself. It was utterly ridiculous to be as afraid as that. After all - it was only Clark.
Only Clark.
Somehow her arm was straight in front of her, her hand clenched, her knuckles ready, and she knocked before she even realised what she was doing.
She waited. And waited. And waited. For at least ten minutes. Definitely ten seconds, anyway. Lois's Sense of Timing still holidaying by a sparkling aquamarine pool, sipping cocktails along with Lois's Rational Thoughts and Lois's Patience. The last was long gone, anyway, so she gave the door another sharp rap, trying her hardest to peer behind the curtains on Clark's door.
A minute - or two - later, she stepped away in frustration, having tapped a staccato beat on the obstinate piece of wood. All of a sudden, her mishmash of emotions cleared and she was aware of one severe feeling - anger.
A very irritated sound expelled itself from her throat. How *dare* he? How dare he be not-home, when it had taken so much effort for her to just knock? It was so inconsiderate, and *so* like him. So like any man, to be unavailable, to be away when she trusted in his accessibility, to bail out on her when she genuinely needed him...
She should walk away, right now. She should leave her disgust at his tardiness and her anger at his lack of consideration on the porch, so that he'd feel it when he came home and be depressed by it, though he wouldn't know why, he wouldn't know...
Maybe that was everybody's problem, maybe that was the very root of everybody's problem, not being there for somebody when somebody needed them, not knowing when somebody was mad at them, not knowing what to do or say when somebody cried. And maybe Somebody was the troublemaker. If she ever met Somebody, she'd sure give him or her a piece of her mind.
Yes; definitely, she should *definitely* leave.
As if the gods were listening to her disjointed thoughts and growing tired of her babbling, the heavens suddenly opened. She stood there for a second or so, shocked into silence as the rain assaulted her, beating her head and shoulders with angry fists. Then she came to her senses, swore wildly, and jumped under the slight overhang at his door, but it was too late. She was already soaked through.
Leave. Now. Leave. Right now. Go.
She turned so that her back was to the wall - an apt position, she thought humourlessly - sank down into a miserable little heap and stared out into the billowing, swallowing night with empty eyes.
Wasn't this always what happened? Didn't she always end up here, waiting for a man, waiting for somebody, anybody to make her whole again? Why couldn't she stand alone? Why did she constantly need other people's confirmation that she was all right?
Why did her heart constantly cry out for contact with something tangible, something real in the shifting world around her - why did she ache for that? Why? It wasn't logical, wasn't rational, wasn't...
That was the problem, right there, wasn’t it? The conflict between her head and her heart. Her heart drove her...
...*crazy*! She didn't know what it needed and it had never worked like this before... before...
<...before I met Clark...>
She stilled, suddenly aware of the truth in that. Clark had made her heart work again.
He had. Hadn't he? Hadn't he made her open up, hadn't he removed her protection, piece by tiny piece until she was delicate and defenceless as a newborn child?
And wasn't that just another reason to hate him?
Why was she staying when she knew how vulnerable he made her? When she knew how easily he could destroy her? Why wasn't she getting up? Why wasn't she going?
But she didn't get up, she didn't go, she stayed sunken on his porch, waiting for him to come home. Waiting for Clark. Staying on his porch, waiting for Clark.
A sudden, terrifying thought occurred to her - was she really staying with Clark? Was she staying *for* Clark? Would she be there... forever? Had she finally made her decision, the most dangerous one?
Her personal form of eeny-meeny-miney-moe. <Clark, Superman, Superman, Clark, Clark, Superman, Superman, Clark, Clark... Clark...>
Where *was* he at one in the morning, anyway? Out schmoozing around town, romancing some babe?
<Come on, be fair. You know he isn't like that.>
She swallowed, caught the end of her hair and wrung it tightly.
So what if he wasn't like that? He could make an exception, couldn’t he? He could behave completely out of character for one night so that she wouldn't have to be so alone. She wouldn't have to be Wet Miserable Lonely Lois; she could be Lois and her Aggrieved Sense of Betrayal instead.
Or Lois and her Righteous Anger. Or Lois and her Sleazy Womanising Best Friend.
She sighed, acknowledging that she was being extremely unfair. If Clark really *was* out romancing some ba - woman, it meant that he was contemplating a relationship with that woman... maybe even falling in love with that woman...
And she - she had Clark as a friend. He cared for her, he was kind and gentle and patient and understanding and he...
...dammit, he'd been in love with *her* for a whole entire year! Where had that gone? What had happened to loyalty, to friendship, to waiting for her?
Waiting for her. But... she hadn't asked him to wait for her. She hadn't said anything at all.
Who could blame him if he was moving on? Not her, certainly. After all, she was going to lose him sooner or later. Why not sooner, it wouldn't make a difference, and now she could get on with the process of not needing him. She didn't need him, not one little bit...
<Liar... *disgusting* liar... how can you say that after everything that's happened?>
Her throat closed suddenly and she stilled.
She was nuts. She was totally and utterly insane, that she should still be trying to convince herself that she didn't need him, that his presence in her life was easily replaced.
She exhaled, trying to get rid of the painful heavy lump sitting on her chest. A sudden, petrifying thought occurred to her - had *he* felt like that, like there was nothing beautiful left - because of her? Had he hurt like this - because of her?
<Oh, Clark...>
<Maybe he's *still* hurting like this because of you...>
She swallowed, shook her head. It wasn't possible. Not after six months of nothingness. He... he was fond of her, yes, maybe, but he didn't... he couldn't. Not really... surely?
<For Pete's sake, Lane, open your eyes. You know he loves you. It's not being cocky, it's being truthful, to yourself and to him.>
She bowed her head, trying desperately to quell the tide of tears in her eyes. She was standing on a precipice and there were things at the bottom, strange and terrible and yearningly beautiful...
Yes. Oh, yes. She did know that Clark Kent loved her. No matter how much she tried to rationalise it away, no matter how she tried to make it unimportant, she knew he loved her - with a certainty that was petrifying in its steadiness.
All the little things he did for her spoke for themselves. Unspoken avowals of love in the cups of coffee, the jelly doughnuts, the supportive hand on her shoulder as she pounded the keys of the computer in a desperate effort to squeeze the story in before deadline. The look in his eyes when she made him laugh, that warm sparkling appreciative... thing...
And then the big things - the unspoken understanding that flitted between them, the shirts she'd ruined with mascara after a particularly poignant scene in whatever movie she'd forced him to sit through, the way he'd tried to teach her how to cook, the way he hadn't strangled her when she'd nearly burnt his kitchen down, all the times he'd saved her life. Weak and prostrate on the floor after her ordeal with Mr Makeup, how his arms had been around her, his large hand cradling her head against his neck.
Big things he'd done for her...
Like when he'd challenged a dangerous gangster for her.
Like when he'd stepped in front of a bullet for her.
Like when he'd died for her.
When he'd died for her.
A misty veil rose quickly in front of her eyes and her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, something was tearing at her lungs and scrabbling wildly at her chest and oh god, it was happening. She was choking on her own grief.
She put her hands over her ears and crouched down, whimpering, the still night suddenly overflowing with a deafening cacophony of sounds. The roar of a gun, the sickening thud - bullet crashing through bone? Oh *Clark* - the horror of that instant, her screams, kneeling there over his still face, motionless, pale and...
...dead.
Dead.
In front of her.
Everybody had it so *wrong*. Everybody thought they had a never-ending supply of time - time to write books, time to stop and stare at the sunset, time to paint a beautiful picture, time to live and love and breathe. They couldn't see the hourglass above their own hands, with its ever-decreasing supply of sand. They couldn't hear the alarms sounding.
The cruellest truth in life - mortals always realise how precious time is, but only when they've run out of it. Why was it that people thought things could wait, and *why* did people think life was precious, that death was the miscreant, something that destroyed them? They were so wrong. Life was the ultimate murderer, it killed people every day.
If she'd died right there, right alongside him, it would have been fine. When he was taken and she left, the very fact of her existence had destroyed her. It had been incomprehensible that she could breathe without him, impossible to contemplate living without him. And she'd done just that.
She'd lived without him. For a whole week, she'd gotten up in the morning, she'd eaten, moved, spoken, maybe even smiled. Even though she had been *so sure*, holding his body there in her arms, that she would drop and fade beside him and never get up again, that she couldn't possibly survive this. Anything else, but not this.
And even though she'd been so *sure* that her existence afterwards would kill her, that she couldn't possibly survive in a sterile Clarkless world... after a day or so, she'd realised that she wouldn't, that she would continue living in the vacuum for as long as it took. That she would go through the days and years drearily, praying and hoping that he would wait for her in death as he'd waited for her in life.
How many times had he worked beside her, his eyes patient behind his glasses, his mind working as smoothly as a well-oiled machine, his hand warm on her shoulder and his one-liners poking unwilling laughter out of her? How many times had she caught him gazing at her with a look that made her blush and lose her train of thought? How many times had she actually done something about it?
She'd fallen into the trap as well. She'd though she had an endless supply of time, so she procrastinated, made excuses to keep him away from her. Thought maybe tomorrow she would risk telling him how she really felt, tomorrow or the next day, it didn't matter because he would always be there loving her, and when he wasn't...
When he wasn't... she was lost.
She hadn't dared define *them*. She hadn't dared define LoisandClark. Not even in her mind. Because once she looked at their bond too closely it would lose its appeal - working off the principle that the most beautiful things in life, love and friendship and family, all of them faded in time.
Hadn't defined she and Clark. Until she'd stared into the barrel of Clyde Barrow's gun, knowing but not fully comprehending what a horror it was. How it could kill. How it could take him away from her. How it could widen that gulf between them and multiply it to the power of infinity.
Abstractly, she realised that her chest was heaving and salty tears were intermingling with the spots of rain on her cheeks.
She'd been one of the lucky ones. She'd had him restored to her, good as new, lifetime guarantee firmly in place. Another chance.
Back to normal.
Except it wasn't normal. And it could never be normal again. She'd had a taste of how it felt when there was no time left, and she couldn’t bear it. She couldn't delay even one second longer...
But she'd have to, if he didn't get home soon. Where *was* he, anyway?
Where... he... one in the morning...
Oh, god.
A breath caught in her chest and then she was up in one fluid movement. Why hadn't she *thought* of this? Why hadn't she been worried when he hadn't come home, when he hadn't appeared in front of her, chivvying like a mother hen, asking her what the heck she was doing sitting on a patch of cold concrete in the pouring rain? Why hadn't she *thought* of it?
She bounded down the concrete steps, managed to stub her toe on a slice of brick wall that affronted itself too quickly for her to avoid, and stopped. Chilled, she stared out into the darkness.
The world was a large and dangerous place. Drilled into her so many times in childhood, by her parents, by her teachers, by every person who'd ever held authority over her. And yet, she'd never heeded it. Until now.
Clark Kent - the man who'd so recently been restored to her - was out in the perilous night somewhere.
Somewhere. Under an eighteen-wheeler truck. At the bottom of Hobbs' river. At the mercy of a gang holding knives.
Maybe even staring down the barrel of another gun.
Right at that second he could be breathing his last, and she'd spent the last fifteen minutes musing offhandedly on his front step... if he died, it would be her fault, just as it had been her fault before...
She swallowed a sob of grief and headed for the street in a flurry of tears and panic...
...only to encounter a force with all the flexibility of a brick wall which sent her tumbling, flat on her back on the pavement.
And then she was exhaling, long and slow, as a very familiar voice yelled, "Lois?"
~&~
tbc...
