**Notes** Yes, we had a two week break between parts. My editors and I were quite busy. Hopefully, things have settled down. Thank you for still being with me on this ride.
Part Eight
The drive back to Clark’s apartment had been a quiet one. Clark had made bail and didn’t want to question how it’d happened — he was sure someone would let him know. He just hoped it hadn’t been his parents putting up the farm as collateral.
Clark sat in the front passenger seat, as he had so many other times, and Martha and Jonathan sat in the back seat of Lois’s Jeep. But other than his normal seat, everything about the drive had been different. Lois didn’t swear at the drivers who cut her off or even the black sedan that ran a red light.
Clark wondered how she could be so calm — he didn’t understand it — his entire life was on the line.
Lois pulled up to his apartment, managing to get a parking spot right in front of the building. Martha and Jonathan got out, and Clark sat there for a moment. He noticed she didn’t turn off the engine.
“You’re not coming up?” Clark asked as he turned to her.
“No, I have a lead on where Mrs. Cox is. I’m going to see if she’ll tell me who else was there that night. Or if she knows more about Lex’s illegal activities,” Lois explained, keeping her hands on the steering wheel.
“I wish you would stay out of this. She could be dangerous,” he warned, putting his hands on the dashboard.
“She is very dangerous, but I need to do it. I’m to blame for this entire mess, so I’m going to do everything in my power to fix it,” Lois said as she dropped her hands from the steering wheel and reached over to him. He felt her hand settle on his shoulder. “Clark, I got a couple bags of groceries for your parents last night. But I wasn’t sure what else they would need. I could always let you take the Jeep, and I could use a taxi.”
“You didn’t need to get groceries,” Clark said, suddenly. Then he paused, realizing all of the other little things she had done for him lately. “Thank you, Lois, for calling my parents and taking care of them. I know this isn’t easy.”
“Easy for me?” Lois asked, tilting her head slightly as though she was surprised with his assessment. “Clark, I’m doing all of this because of what you’re going through. I’m trying to help you with the disaster I created.”
“You keep saying that, but if I’d been honest with you in the first place…” He trailed off, realizing it was his secret that had caused a lot of the problems he was now facing, not Lois. “Just…thank you. I’d better go.”
Clark knew one reason all of this was so messed up was his other job. It had been almost a year now since he’d created Superman, hoping it would help solve the problems of his personal life while also letting him use his powers to help. Investigating Luthor as Superman, and telling Lois about it as Clark, had been a mistake.
Clark exited Lois’s Jeep, but before he walked away, he leaned in, his head through the open window. He still felt like he wanted to tell her more — explain some of that night — but he realized now wasn’t the right time.
“I know you, Lois, you’re going to go looking for Mrs. Cox, whether I want you to or not, so all I am going to say is please be careful,” Clark said, trying to be stern without sounding controlling. “And call me when you get back, so I know you’re okay.”
“I will.” She smiled, and he turned away and walked up to his building.
***
As she watched Clark walk away, she was sad to realize he didn’t have that confidence like he once did. His shoulders slumped a bit, and even his smile — the one that usually drove her crazy — didn’t reach his eyes. She hadn’t seen that smile lately, she thought.
Lois drove away, hoping she would be able to find the answers she needed. It only took her a few minutes to get to the Lexor Hotel. She just hoped that Mrs. Cox hadn’t checked out since Lois had gotten the information about her location.
Once in the elevator, she waited impatiently for the elevator to rise to the fourth floor. When it arrived, the door opened to reveal an elderly couple waiting to get on.
“Oh, dear, I can’t believe it. Aren’t you Miss Lane, the woman who was going to marry Lex Luthor?” the woman asked as she looked at Lois. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Lois replied, as naturally as she could while she tried to get past the couple and into the hallway, but she was stuck.
“I hope you’re okay, Miss Lane. Sweetie”—the woman turned to her husband, not letting Lois pass—“her fiancé had done so much for Metropolis.”
“Ma’am, please,” Lois said, sighing. The woman seemed oblivious that she was in Lois’s way. Lois had gotten off the elevator, but could move no further.
“Honey, please, let the woman pass,” the older man said.
Before Lois could get past, she noticed a door open to the left — it was Mrs. Cox.
Mrs. Cox must have heard the commotion down the hall and caught a glimpse of Lois because she turned and ran down the hallway in her heels the opposite way. Lois finally pushed past the couple and started running down the hall after her. Lois couldn’t lose this one chance at saving Clark.
Mrs. Cox ran farther down the hallway, heading toward the stairwell, but Lois was catching up to her. Lois’s penny loafers versus Mrs. Cox’s high heels was no contest, and suddenly Lois was just five steps away from Mrs. Cox.
“Please, Mrs. Cox, stop!” Lois yelled as she jumped toward the woman, trying to grab her arm. Both of them tumbled over, and Mrs. Cox slipped down a few steps. Lois stood up quickly and went down to Mrs. Cox. “I just want to talk to you.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Mrs. Cox retorted as she dusted off her legs and then brought her hand up to hold her arm as if she might have injured it.
“I just want to know about Lex and what might have happened. Who else showed up that night? Where are the other two people who worked for him?” Lois demanded as she stepped closer to Mrs. Cox and held her hand out to help her up. Mrs. Cox pushed it away.
“You—you didn’t even love him. You’re in love with Mr. Kent. Lex knew it, and so do I,” Mrs. Cox stammered as she pulled herself up using the handrail. “Lex even said that after Mr. Kent left that night.”
Suddenly, it dawned on Lois the significance of words that had come out of Mrs. Cox’s mouth. Clark had left that night before Lex had been murdered. Here was the proof she needed that Clark didn’t do it.
“What time?” Lois asked.
“What?” Mrs. Cox seemed confused or annoyed or both.
“What time?” Lois demanded, moving even closer to Mrs. Cox. “What time did Clark leave?”
Mrs. Cox backed away, forgetting that she was on the stairs, and she started to fall backwards. Lois reached out to try and grab ahold of her but couldn’t reach, and Mrs. Cox tumbled partway down the stairs, hitting her head hard. Lois looked down in horror. She could see blood trickling from the woman’s head.
Lois quickly grabbed her cell phone from her messenger bag and dialed 911, trying to steady her breathing. She hadn’t meant for this to happen, and she certainly hadn’t meant for Mrs. Cox to be injured. The 911 operator told her not to move Mrs. Cox just in case she had a spinal injury as well as the head injury. It was a nerve-wracking, waiting for the paramedics, and she breathed a sigh of relief when they finally arrived.
Lois stood up at the next landing, watching as they worked on Mrs. Cox. What was she going to do now? What if…
Lois had trouble calming her nerves, especially when a uniformed police officer came over to Lois to question her. Lois told the officer what happened and that the hotel’s security footage would show it was an accident. She had important things to do, so as soon as she knew Mrs. Cox was in good hands with the paramedics, she rushed home.
Her heart raced, both from her nerves from the accident and her realization of the luck she’d had in getting this new information. Mrs. Cox had mentioned that Lex was alive when Clark left Lex’s penthouse, that she had talked to Lex after Clark had left. This was it, this was what she had been waiting for. Only now, she wasn’t sure how she’d get Captain Benson to believe the information thirdhand.
By the time she got back to her apartment, three hours had passed since she’d dropped Clark and his parents off at his place. As she played her messages, Lois changed her clothes into khaki shorts and a black tank top. It was a hot day, and she didn’t have air conditioning in her apartment.
There were four messages on her answering machine. One was from Perry saying that he had talked to Mr. Stern and that Jimmy had come up empty handed with the businesses she’d asked him to talk to about security footage. Captain Benson had left a message to let her know that he’d heard about the accident at the Lexor Hotel, and he wanted to talk to her tomorrow. Finally, there were two messages from Clark checking in on her. Wanting to delay having to give the bad news to Clark, she started by calling Perry back.
“Lois, darlin’, how did it go today?” Perry asked.
“Clark is at his apartment with his parents. I located Mrs. Cox…” Lois told Perry. “But there was an accident, and she’s now at Metropolis General Hospital.”
“What kind of accident?”
“She fell down some stairs. I swear, Perry, I didn’t push her or anything! She had admitted to talking to Lex after Clark left, and I started asking her more questions. The next thing I knew, she was tumbling down the stairs.”
“Well, I hope she’ll be okay. Unfortunately, Jimmy has come up with a dead end on the businesses having any footage of Clark leaving. There’s a video of him arriving at the time he said, but not leaving,” Perry admitted.
Just then, Lois heard a knock at the door. She wasn’t sure who it could be. She wondered if it was the police asking more about Mrs. Cox.
“Perry, someone is at the door. I’ll talk to you later,” Lois said before she hung up the phone.
***
Clark had tried to call Lois twice, and she still hadn’t answered. So instead of doing nothing; he figured he’d wait at her apartment instead. Clark was worried about her, especially with Mrs. Cox involved. He wanted to make sure Lois was okay and maybe finally get some of their issues resolved.
She took a few minutes to open the door, but he wasn’t too worried after checking for her heartbeat with his super hearing.
“Hi,” Lois said, looking at him.
“Can we talk?” he asked as she opened the door wider.
Lois waved her hand, gesturing for him to come inside, and Clark stepped into the apartment. He walked toward the kitchen and turned back to notice her sighing.
“What’s going on? Did your parents need something?” Lois asked.
Clark stood at the kitchen table with his hands on the back of one of the chairs, and he breathed deeply, trying to gather his thoughts and his courage to talk about the bail money and what it really meant. But then he realized exactly what was spread out on the table in front of him — notes and files, all about Lex and his doings, and calculations about Clark’s whereabouts and times and conjectures. He read everything he could see, his anger rising the more he read.
Why did this matter so much to her? Clearly, she didn’t believe him after all, that he didn’t do it — or at least that he wasn’t fully innocent of fighting with Lex. If this was some weird obsession to prove something, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know why.
He didn’t even want to look at her. “So even though I asked — no, begged — you to stop this, you’re going through with your investigation anyway?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” He heard defiance in her voice. Always so stubborn.
“Because I asked you not to!” he hissed.
“I’m just trying to fix it! I didn’t trust you enough to believe what you said about Lex —”
“Exactly! I’m in this mess because of you! If you hadn’t said yes to Luthor’s proposal, none of this would have happened!”
“Don’t you think I know that?” she yelled, moving closer to him.
“And what about the bail money? I asked my parents, and they said you posted it. Where did you get the money?”
“I asked my dad,” Lois admitted, so quietly he almost had to use his super hearing to hear.
“Excuse me? The last I knew, you weren’t even talking to your dad after what happened a few months ago. So why would you ask him? I don’t get you, Lois.” Clark started closing the distance between them, trying to keep his breathing even. “Why are you really doing this? Don’t give me the excuse that you are the one at fault. It’s more than that.”
He couldn’t fathom what on Earth would make her ask either of her parents for help. He didn’t know everything about her childhood, but he knew it hadn’t been easy.
“Why?” he asked again after she hadn’t answered.
“Because I think — no, that’s not—not it,” she stammered, then continued, “I don’t feel sadness about Lex’s death. What does that say about me? That I’m more scared of you going to prison for a crime you didn’t commit than I am upset that my fiancé died.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I can’t live without you, Clark.”
“You turned me down in the park,” he said, not quite understanding, and he held his breath, almost afraid of her response.
“I didn’t…I didn’t realize then. I was scared, Clark! I didn’t want to risk losing my best friend…but that’s what’s happening anyway, but in the worst way imaginable. I-I can’t lose you, Clark!”
He let out a heavy breath and hung his head for a moment. “You could never lose me,” he said, cursing his foolish heart even as he stepped closer to her. His eyes flitted down to her lips and then back without his permission. He wasn’t done asking her the tough questions, but all he wanted was this moment in time. He’d wanted this for so long. He put his hand under her chin, his heart torn. Clark wanted to kiss her, fly away, make everything and everyone disappear. Even though he knew that letting Lois into his heart fully could destroy him.
“Where were you that night?” Lois asked, her voice quiet.
He dropped his hand from her chin and ran it roughly through his hair. For a moment, he’d thought he would kiss her. Now, all of that hope was lost.
“I should have known,” he sighed, turning away from her.
“Known what?”
“This was all a ruse. You don’t have feelings for me; you just want to know where I was,” he snapped.
“How could you stand there and think my feelings aren’t real? I just don’t know why you won’t tell me where you were. There is no proof of you leaving when you said.”
“Lois, you turned me down, then threw yourself at Superman —”
“I didn’t throw myself at Superman!” she said, cutting him off. “And how would you know? I can’t believe you think so little of me.”
Clark threw his arms up in the air. It was the same argument once again. The last time they had this argument, the police had shown up before he could answer. What was he supposed to say? Yes, he loved her.
Clark had never known someone like her — she made him so angry one minute, and the next minute he could fall even more in love with her. But he couldn’t understand why she was so obsessed with helping him when she should be grieving her fiancé. Why did she keep pressing for his whereabouts that night? Was she just angry that he hadn’t gone to the engagement party?
Or was it because she actually cared for him? Was it really so hard for her to say the words? Why did it take having his life on the line for her to get even close to admitting her true feelings — if that was what they were?
“Why are you doing this, Lois?” Clark demanded as he stepped toward her. “Why did you say ‘yes’ to him? Yet here you are, not even mourning his death, but trying to prove my innocence.”
“You’re my best friend. How can I not do this?” she asked, stepping closer to him. “I made mistake after mistake that day. I am trying to fix it.”
“What mistake? Saying no to me, or asking Superman if there could be anything between the two of you an hour later?” he spat out angrily. “What makes Superman so damn special to you?”
“You’ve never answered me on how you know I threw myself at Superman,” she demanded. She stood before him, her arms crossed like she was being guarded. He knew she wanted the truth, but how could he tell her?
“Out with it, Clark.”
He let out a heavy sigh, all the fight leaving him. “I was in California,” he admitted softly, looking down at his feet.
“What? How could you be in California? Stop joking about this,” Lois said, still demanding, as she stepped away from him. “This isn’t the time for jokes.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“How could you have been in California that night?” Lois asked.
He looked into her eyes, mouthing a silent ‘I’m sorry’ before he spun into the Superman suit.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to. But telling people puts their lives at risk, and…I was hurt by the fact that you seem to think more of him than you do of me.”
“You’re Superman,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if it was a reaction to his revelation or to the fact that he was jealous of himself.
“Superman is what I can do, Clark is who I am,” he said, hating how sorrowful his voice sounded. All he’d wanted this past year was for her to see that. He’d dreamed that she would see him for who he really was.
He watched her pace in front of him for a few minutes. She would stop for a moment, hold up her finger as if there was a question, then start pacing again. He wanted to know what she was thinking, ask how mad she was, or even just hold her.
But he stopped himself, giving her time to think. He knew this was quite a shock, especially after all the moments they had shared together the past year. He had kissed her both as Superman and as Clark.
“That’s why there is no video of you leaving Lex Corp. What did you do — go through the back and fly off?” she asked, finally standing still and looking at him. “What are we going to do?”
“What is this ‘we’? Lois, I can handle this on my own,” Clark said, hoping that she would have let it drop now that she had the answer she’d been after.
“I put you in this mess; I’m going to help you get out of it. Not only that, but Clark, we’re partners and best friends,” Lois admitted.
“I don’t want your help. Don’t you get that? I don’t want to be that guy,” he said cold-heartedly.
“What guy?”
“The best friend, the guy who stands around and watches the woman he was crazy about date someone else. You were going to marry Lex. No matter what, I wasn’t planning on being at that wedding. Even if I couldn’t find the information on Lex in time, I wasn’t going to the wedding.” He turned his back to her. Clark didn’t want to be the best friend and partner — he wanted it all. Now he couldn’t have that — she’d chosen everyone but him.
“You said ‘was’…” Lois said quietly. “Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?”
“Maybe it’s not enough,” he said as he turned to face her again. “I don’t know if I can trust you anymore.”
“Then just trust this,” she whispered as she moved closer and kissed him.
She kissed him. Somehow he could tell it wasn’t Superman she was kissing even though he was standing before her in the super suit.
“Loi…s,” he murmured. He wanted to just melt into her embrace, and he kissed her back, his lips dancing with hers briefly, but then he pulled back. “I can’t.”
His eyes fell, and so did hers. He could tell she felt rejected again. But so had he.
“You don’t get it, Lois. I have waited months for you to kiss me like that, but not like…this,” he said, waving his hand up and down to emphasize the spandex.
“So, if I kissed you as Clark, you would kiss me back?” she asked, her voice full of hurt.
“I don’t know if it matters now — I’ll never know if it’s Clark you actually want to kiss. This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” he explained, motioning to the two of them. “You told me before you would love me if I were an ordinary man, but you don’t.”
“That was a mistake,” she said, her eyes pleading with him to believe her. “That is what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s another reason I have tried so hard to fix this. I’m in love with you.”
“That’s not enough,” Clark said, his heart twisting painfully. “You don’t love me, you love the suit.”
“That’s not true! The night of the engagement party, all I wanted was for you to show up, not as Superman, but as Clark, and take me away from there. I wanted my partner, my best friend — you,” she admitted, and she then sank down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, clearly holding back tears.
Before Clark could react to Lois’s admission, there was a knock at the door. Lois tried to stand up, but Clark waved her off. He spun quickly back into his regular clothes and walked to the door.
“Captain Benson.”
***
