From Last Time:
"I know he must have deserved it, but what did Ralph do?" They stepped into the elevator and Lois pushed the 'Door Close' button.
"He was making some single mom comment," Lois said.
She saw Jimmy wince. "Wow, Lois, I'm sorry."
Lois bit her lip. "Well, it's been more than three years, and I haven't even seen my husband since we got married," she said unsteadily. "It's not exactly what most people would consider a marriage."
Jimmy pulled the 'Stop' knob. She closed her eyes and hugged her young friend tightly. "You know, it's still so hard," she murmured.
"I know," he whispered. "I know how much you miss him. And I also know Clark. He's going to come back."
"He is," she agreed, feeling tears sting her eyes. And she would be there, waiting for him. If the sun burned out and died and all the stars in the sky were extinguished, if the continents crumbled to dust, if every ocean and river ran dry, and the world split open at its seams and was engulfed by hell itself, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. She would keep waiting, until the moment she could welcome him home.
********
New Stuff:
"How long was it, sir?" Mar Dov asked again.
"I don't know," Clark repeated.
"Well, surely, you can estimate. Was it one week? Two?"
"There wasn't a clock or a calendar in the hole they kept me in," Clark replied, anger burning just below the surface. "There were no windows, so I couldn't keep track of the days or nights. I was unconscious for good stretches of the time, and it isn't like I ate or slept regularly."
"So you have no idea how long you were kept in the second location?" Mar Dov asked diffidently. He didn’t bother to make eye contact, instead focusing on the digital tablet on the conference table.
"I think that's what I just said," Clark bit out irritably.
"But it was longer than a few days?"
"How many times are we going to go over this?" Clark snapped.
Mar Dov folded his hands in front of him on the surface of the table and looked at Clark, trying, and failing, to disguise his exasperation. "As many times as it takes, sir. Defense counsel is going to try to cause you to lose your temper. You cannot allow yourself to be provoked. And I cannot allow myself to be surprised by your answers on the witness stand. I am not going to pretend that I can understand what you've been through, but I am going to demand of you all of the details. Everything you can remember, significant or not, I need to know."
Clark stifled a sigh. Mar Dov was right. He was a jerk, but he was still right. "We've been at this for almost twelve hours and I promised the Chief Engineer thirty minutes today. Let's start again tomorrow." He stood up, hoping to impart that his statement wasn't a suggestion.
"Of course, sir," Mar Dov replied as he stood, his tone once again polite and deferential.
Clark left the conference room and made his way to his library. He opened the doors to the deserted chamber to find it not quite so deserted. "Captain, get out of my library," he said, feigning annoyance.
She froze, a look of horror settling on her face as she turned toward him. "Sir, I'm so sorry, I did not mean any offense…" Enza began and he suddenly felt terrible. He had to remind himself that the Kryptonian sense of humor was something that, after more than three years of trying, he still didn't get.
He smiled, hoping to defuse the situation. "I'm sorry, Enza, I was joking. But you still shouldn't be here. Go home; be with your husband, your family," he said as he walked toward her.
Enza looked visibly relieved. "I just wanted to collect a few files to review." She was definitely starting to remind him of someone else who was incapable of taking a vacation. He'd worried whether he would be able to keep Lois's mind off work for an entire two weeks for their honeymoon. As it so happened, he'd never had the chance to find out.
"You can come back and break up fights between Mar Dov and me in four days. Until then, stop working and go home. That's a direct order."
"You're not actually fighting with him, are you, sir?" she asked gravely.
"No," he replied. "And that isn't the point. We're about to start a trial that is going to take over your life. You're going to wonder if you're more concerned with the fate of a mass murderer than you are with your own family. You're going to resent the toll it'll take on your marriage and you'll probably start to hate me for it. Most of all, you'll regret not spending this time with your husband and your niece. Believe me."
"Sir, I hope you do not believe I'm ungrateful," she said, her expression conflicted. "Giving us this time together was the nicest thing anyone could have done. I just can't help but feel like I'm neglecting my responsibilities."
"You're not," he assured her. "I'm going to need you in this fight, but I'm also going to need you to remember that there things in this life worth fighting for. Things we should hold onto and never let go. Now go be with the people you love."
She smiled and he knew she understood exactly what he meant. "Thank you, sir," she replied.
"And get out of here before Rab Dun shows up and accuses me of being a hypocrite for giving her favorite engineer the week off while I still make you work."
She bowed humbly. "Good night, sir."
"Good night, Captain," he replied.
********
"Ralph is an idiot," Martha said simply as she held up the fitted bed sheet, gesturing for Jonathan to help her fold it.
Jonathan chuckled as he took the ends of the sheet. "That's exactly what I told her."
"She didn't hurt him, did she?" They finished folding the sheet and Martha placed it on top of the clean pile of laundry.
"No," he replied, shaking his head. "She said she didn't use any more strength than she would have had before Ultrawoman. But she's still pretty upset about the way she reacted."
"I wish I knew what to tell her," Martha said wistfully.
"So do I," Jonathan replied. "But I don't think there's anything we can say. She's talking to a trained professional and it doesn't seem to be helping."
"There has to be something we can do," she insisted.
"When Clark became Superman, it wasn't us he came to when the job was too much. It was Lois. Even before he told her about himself, he went to her. Being 'super' is too much responsibility for just one person. They need each other to do this."
"Then what do we do until he comes back?" Martha asked.
"I don't know," Jonathan admitted.
********
"Come on, boys," Ching said as he folded his arms across his chest. He smiled at Zara's younger brothers as they struggled to finish their run. Out of breath, they stumbled to a stop right in front of him.
"Please…tell me…we're…done…" Dek Ra panted, leaning forward with his hands on his knees.
"Of course not," Ching replied as he stared out at the rough terrain. "We have to run the course again."
Tem Ra groaned. "You cannot be serious."
"Your commissioning is in a few weeks and if you are going to lead good men and women, you must be worthy of it."
"The war is over, Ching," Dek Ra said.
Ching frowned hard as he stepped right up in front of the younger man. "That's Commander Ching!" he barked. The twins straightened reflexively, standing at attention. "War or not, we live in a dangerous world. When we forget that, people die. Now let's run it again."
The Ra brothers saluted and began jogging back toward the beginning of the course. He was hard on them, but what choice did he have? They were about to take a solemn oath, a promise to defend their people against all threats. More than a decade ago, he and Zara had taken the same oath and though they tried, they couldn't prevent the war that engulfed their world for years. Of course, he hoped the boys would never be asked to uphold that pledge, but it was his responsibility to make sure they were ready in the event the worst occurred.
********
"Breathe deeply," she instructed, her tone even. He could hear her footsteps behind him. His eyes closed, Clark inhaled slowly and then breathed out. "Now, we've been having trouble with the total consciousness barrier because your mind isn't completely clear. I need you to focus. Think about a time when you were completely content. When your mind was totally at ease."
He thought about her. About her smile, her eyes, the sound of her voice. Her laugh. He didn't think about their wedding, or their wedding night. Contentment was simply not among the millions of fiery and chaotic emotions he'd felt that day. He remembered a day, about a week before he'd left, in his apartment when she'd been left to fend for herself with his soon-to-be mother-in-law on the phone. She'd retaliated by starting a pillow fight with him. He felt the corners of his mouth turn upward in a small smile at the memory. About to be married to the most wonderful woman in the world, a woman who thought nothing about throwing pillows at the head of the Man of Steel, he couldn't have been happier.
"Good." He heard her voice cut through the reverie. "Now turn inward, focus, hold onto that sense of contentment and let go of everything else."
Clark drew in another deep breath, bracing himself against the onslaught he faced every time he tried to breach the barrier. His body started to go rigid but he reminded himself to relax as he held onto the way he'd felt that day, that day when his life with Lois was about to start.
The explosion of light and sound, color and noise and feeling, blew past him. And it was gone. The tangible world faded away. He slowed down his heart rate, something he hadn't been able to do since his powers wore off years ago. Concentrating on only the sound of his breathing, he tuned out everything else. There were no distractions here, nothing to occupy his thoughts. His mind was completely clear.
Slowly, he found his way back to reality. He shook his head, almost surprised to find himself in the gymnasium again. Clark gave Talan a faint smile.
"That was excellent, sir," she said as she sat down across from him on the mat. "How do you feel?"
"Good," he said, surprised to be saying it, but he meant it. He felt relaxed, calm. How long was I…out?"
"About half an hour," she replied.
"Really?" It had felt like mere moments.
She nodded. "As you get more comfortable with it, you'll find that meditation will calm your moods, it'll help heal your body. You'll feel rested and more focused, but we must move forward slowly."
"You don't do it, anymore, do you? Use the meditation to block out the things you don't want to deal with?"
"That's right," Talan admitted.
"Why?" he asked.
A conflicted look flashed across her otherwise impassive face. "I reached a point where I had a choice. I could either continue down a path and eventually stop being a person, or I could learn to fight what frightened me the most."
"What…forced the issue?" he asked earnestly.
She hesitated. "It's complicated."
"Well, I have nowhere else to be right now," he replied.
"Sir, I really don't think…"
"It's that whole, 'I'm your boss and can give you orders,' thing, isn't it?" he asked with a faint smile.
"Something like that, sir."
He frowned. "Maybe I should fire you."
"I'd still call you 'sir,' and I still wouldn't answer the question."
"Why is this friendship so…unequal?" he asked.
"Because we're not equals, sir. It's my job to help you do your job."
"So it's nothing personal at all? You'd follow me into hell and back even if you didn't like me very much?"
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. Talan sighed and looked away. "No, sir," she confessed. "But I am asking you, as a friend, to let this go."
Clark nodded silently. Apparently being a better friend was going to be more difficult than he thought.
********
"Uh, Lois, I really need you down here now," Perry drawled.
"I'm kind of in the middle of something," she said as she balanced the phone between her shoulder and her ear. She lifted Jon out of the bathtub, wrapping him up in his yellow towel.
"Well, I have someone from the Nobel Committee on the phone…"
"And?" she asked impatiently.
"And, he wants to talk to Ultrawoman."
"Are you serious?"
"As a heart attack, darling," Perry replied.
Lois easily lifted Jon up and held him against her hip as she stood up. She adjusted the phone against her ear. "I'll be there in a minute," she said. She looked at her son. "Let's go find Grandma."
A few minutes later, she was flying through the large windows into the Planet bullpen. She floated down and crossed the floor to Perry's office, ignoring the dozens of pairs of eyes that curiously turned toward her. Her boss held the phone out to her. She took the proffered receiver from his hand.
"Hello?" she said.
"Ultrawoman, this is Anders Neilsen with the Norwegian Storting. It is my distinct privilege and honor to inform you that you have been selected as the recipient of this year's Nobel Prize for Peace."
Lois waited for a long moment before picking up her jaw from where it rested on the floor.
"Ultrawoman, are you there?"
"Yes, yes I am," she said at last.
"On behalf of the Storting, my congratulations to you," he said.
"Thank you," she murmured. She handed Perry the phone, still in a daze.
"You just won the Nobel Peace Prize, didn't you?" he asked her.
She nodded mutely.
"Judas priests," he muttered. "Well, who do you want to do your interview? Or do you want to handle it yourself?"
She blinked. "Huh?"
"Lois, this is a big deal, and the Planet is going to want an exclusive."
"Oh, right," she said softly. "You'll get the exclusive, but I need some time to figure this out."
"Darlin,' we're going to want to run with this as soon as possible. This is major news and an interview with you will just make the copy sing."
She held up her hand, silently asking him to slow down. "Perry, please," she said. The excitement in his eyes faded and he nodded, tightlipped, in understanding.
She left his office and exited the newsroom the same way she'd entered. Lois had never imagined this would happen. She certainly didn't want the award and didn't feel like she'd earned it. A few minutes later, she touched down outside the farmhouse, where the leaves were turning and the harvest nearing completion. Inside the house, her in-laws and Jon looked up at her from the kitchen table, where they'd just sat down to lunch.
"What did Perry want? It sounded serious," Martha asked.
"Nothing really," Lois replied with a disinterested shrug.
********
Propped up on his elbow, he watched as his wife slowly woke up. She smiled sleepily at him as she opened her eyes. "Good morning," he said as he lowered his head to kiss her.
"Is it morning already?" she murmured.
He nodded with regret. She started to get up. "Don't," he said quietly. "I'll take Thia to school." As she always did, Enza had worked well into the night.
"Thank you." She smiled and started to fight off a yawn.
"I should have let you sleep last night," he said ruefully.
"You should have done no such thing," she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
He sighed in contentment and reluctantly rose from the bed. Lok Sim bent down to kiss her again. "Get some sleep," he said quietly, his hand lingering for a moment on the warm skin of her shoulder. He made his way to their washroom to shower and get ready. When he emerged again, she was fast asleep, her head on his pillow. He smiled, his entire body suffused by a feeling of tenderness toward his wife.
The months of preparations for the trial were taking an incredible toll on her. It wasn't just the sleepless nights, or the anxiety over the enormity of the task in front of her, or even the grim nature of the facts and events she immersed herself in. He knew that she felt like she was being torn in two – forced to choose between honoring the family she'd lost and cherishing the family she had now. She wasn't simply driven out of ambition; her work had a touch of the sacred to it. Enza was seeking justice for the people she loved. But that responsibility meant more and more time away from Thia – a little girl who couldn't understand why her aunt was gone so much, and shouldn't have had to.
For his part, he could be patient. Even if it didn't always seem that way, the trial wasn't going to last forever, he told himself. But he still missed his wife.
********
"Recruitment hasn't been easy, ma'am…" Jen Mai started to explain, his body tense as though he expected the onslaught he was about to receive to consist of literal blows and not mere words.
"I do not want to hear it!" she snapped back, looking up from the hologram of schematics of the main colony in the dim light of the bunker's basement.
"Of course," he backtracked. "It's just that your plan calls for more men than we can currently count among our numbers." They'd been able to regroup a bit in the many months since Nor's capture, but their movement had nowhere near the strength it once possessed.
"Then you find more," she said impatiently, as though it would be as easy as that. "The trial begins in a month. I expect you'll have found sufficient numbers by then."
"Of course," he said again, hastily retreating. There was no point in arguing with her. Not if he intended to stay alive, anyway.
********
"I know this isn't what you want to hear, Clark," Ching began. He placed his hand on Zara's shoulder as she sat down at her desk in the First Ministers' private study. It was a casual gesture of intimacy, but even this was more than Ching usually allowed himself when Clark was present. "But I don't think we should take any steps to initiate succession until after the trial has concluded. Shai can be counted on to be discrete until then."
"I agree," Clark replied. "If I abdicate, I won't be as effective a witness."
"Exactly," Zara concurred.
"That means it'll be several more months before you two can be together," Clark stepped out from behind his desk and walked toward them.
Zara looked up at Ching where he stood, steadfast as always, beside her. She placed a hand on top of his. "We spent ten years apart; we'll manage another few months." Clark understood and admired her pragmatism. He knew that she would have much preferred not to have to conceal her relationship with Ching, but compared to what they'd been through in the last decade, a few more months of subterfuge was a small price to pay.
"I don't think I can thank you enough for what you're doing for us," Ching said, his tone unusually quiet.
"Ching, you are the best man for this job and you've both postponed your own happiness long enough. This is the right thing to do, not just for you, but for everyone on New Krypton."
"We'll do everything we can to move the process along as quickly as possible," Zara said. "I know how anxious you are to get home to Lois."
A faint smile turned up the corners of Clark's mouth before disappearing. "I am," he agreed. And finally, there did seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. He was going to go home. It was almost impossible for him to wrap his mind around the thought. After all of these years of hoping against hope, practically too afraid to believe it would ever be possible, he was going to go home. He would see his parents again. He would see Lois again. He could begin to apologize for the pain they must have gone through in his absence. The pain his actions caused them. And maybe, he could start to put things right. To make it up to them.
"Our thanks can never be enough, but please do know that you have our deepest gratitude, Clark," Ching said.
Clark nodded, knowing that Ching's respect and admiration were all the more meaningful because they were hard won. "Thank you, Ching," he said quietly.
Ching responded with a small smile. "It's been a long day. Good night, sir. Good night, ma'am." With a polite bow, he exited the room.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zara watch as her lover walked away, formal and decorous as always. She turned toward Clark and smiled brightly. He gestured toward the doorway linking the study to the main chamber of their quarters and followed a step behind her.
"Zara…"
"Clark…" They spoke in unison. "Please, go ahead," she insisted.
"I've done a lot of thinking…trying to get perspective," he explained. "And a lot of the things I said, and did, over the last few years…well I'm not proud of them. Especially the things I said to you. I was rude, and even dismissive. I made it seem like your friendship and your support weren't important to me. And that couldn't be further from the truth."
She shook her head, a look of sadness in her eyes. "Clark, no..."
"But you never let me give up. You stood by me, even when I tried to push you away."
"It's what friends do," she said simply, belying the burdens she'd carried for both of them when he wasn't up to the task.
"You're a better friend than I deserve," he admitted.
Zara smiled at him. "You couldn't be more wrong."
Clark let his greatcoat slip from his shoulders and removed the pin holding the stiff collar of his tunic in place. "So what were you going to say?" he asked.
"Oh, I just wanted to let you know how grateful Ching and I are for everything."
"I meant what I said," Clark replied. "You both deserve to be happy." He kicked off his boots. "So what does the future life of Zara and Ching look like?"
"I don't know," she said as she shrugged out of the heavy mantle around her shoulders. "I think we'd both gotten so used to the idea that we would never have what we wanted that we stopped imagining what it would be like. What about you? What do you most want when you go home?"
"To finally start my life with Lois," he said. "I'd hoped that by this point, we'd have children. But maybe we'll need some time, just to get used to being together again. You know, I've been away from her longer than we spent together. And she's been Ultrawoman longer than I was Superman."
"Sometimes, I can't believe it's been more than three years. And other times, it's like I've forgotten what it was like before I knew you," she said. "I know this isn't where you belong, but you will be missed."
He smiled as he sat down. "The sooner I'm gone, the sooner you can finally get married to Ching. What about you two, have you thought about children?" Her face was suddenly drawn and pallid, an indescribable sadness settling in her eyes as she looked away. "I'm sorry, this is really none of my business," he said hastily.
"No, it's just that…well, I can't…"
He closed his eyes and tried to think of a way to remove his foot from his mouth. "Zara, I'm so sorry," he said, his voice soft and low. He looked up at her. "I'm such an idiot…"
She smiled unsteadily at him. "It's not your fault. And you couldn't have known. But we would have liked to have children…very much so. Ching has no family left in the world. No blood relatives. I would have liked to have given him that." The last part was whispered quietly as she looked away from him.
Clark stood up and closed the distance between them. He put his hands on her arms as she looked back toward him. "I know how Ching feels. Lois and I don't even know if we can have children. But even if we can't, it won't matter, because she is my family. She gives me somewhere to belong. You have to know that you do the same for Ching. That man couldn't possibly be more in love with you."
She allowed him to pull her into a fierce hug and neither said anything for a long moment. "You are a wonderful friend, Clark," she whispered at last.
