Title: The Goblin Bee
Author: Sue S.
Rating: G
The poem is by Emily Dickinson and has been rattling around inside my head since high school. Even though I hated the New Krypton arc on the series, I've always appreciated the angst factor of that final farewell at the Planet. The timeline is off a little in my story since Clark seems to pop back up within a few days of leaving. For the purposes of this story he's been gone for at least a couple of months.
Many thanks to DJ for her beta skills - and her even more invaluable friendship.
<><><>
If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
<><><>
Some days it was all she could do to maintain the ruse. It killed her to go to work and report that, yes, she had talked to Clark last night. He was fine. He was still working undercover. He would be back. The lies tortured her. Not because of the secret she was protecting but because she was certain they were just that - lies. Clark wasn't coming back. But she lied anyway - she owed him that. She could be as strong as he was, no matter how shredded her soul had become.
<><><>
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
<><><>
She relived their last moments together over and over again. One last look. One last touch. The last time their eyes would meet, the last time he would touch her, the last time he had kissed her. Her eyes had teared up, but she hadn't cried in front of him. She had shed enough tears for a lifetime the night before.
The night before they had made promises to each other. They would wait. They would miss. They would be together again. She had promised to watch out for his parents and she had no doubt that he had extracted the same promise from them regarding her.
They had kissed at her window. She wanted to cry the entire time. Had wanted to rail and scream against fate and how unfair it all was. All those wasted years - she had known him for over two years before she had truly known him. If she could have those moments back again, she would... what? Throw herself into his arms the moment Perry introduced them? Would having loved him longer make the gulf between them now any easier to bear?
It was useless. The time was gone. She couldn't get it back. She couldn't get him back. The rest of her life stretched in front of her - bleak and empty.
<><><>
If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.
<><><>
She had thought that nights would be the worst. That she would miss him most when the sun went down and the world turned dark. The first few nights were terrible. She had laid in bed and listen to the sounds of the city. Every siren's wail was like a dagger straight into her heart. Each one was another call for help that he wouldn't be answering.
After the first few nights, though, it was the days that were worse. At night she could let herself into his apartment and drift off to sleep enveloped in the scent of him - his shirt, his bed, his pillows. They all retained his smell. The days were worse because she couldn't sleep through them. No matter how involved the story she was working on, his absence was the strongest presence in her waking life.
<><><>
If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.
<><><>
One night, long after she should have been asleep, Lois stood at his window and gazed at the darkened sky above her. The lights of the city obscured all but the brightest of stars and she couldn't discern which one was meant to be Clark's. Where were they now, all those Kryptonians with a birthright to Clark that she had been unable and unwilling to compete with? Had they taken him so far away that he could never return?
She stepped back from the window and her hands fluttered uselessly to her sides. If she closed her eyes she could still feel him there, could still hear the words he had whispered to her when they sank to the floor together at her apartment on that final night.
<"I'll find a way, I swear I will.">
She had believed him - not just that he meant the words, but that he would - somehow - find a way to come back to her. It was the waiting that was interminable. How long? How long could she go on feeling like her heart had been torn away from her?
Her eyes welled with bitter tears and she wished she could have their final precious moments together to relive, to alter and change. It had not seemed real that he would leave until he was actually gone. It was too late then to call him back, to tell him to be selfish, to beg him to love her more. What did he owe a world that he had never known? How could that mean more to him than her? Than his parents? Than everything he held dear? Than his very life?
What if he was dead already? What if something had happened to him? Would she ever know? Would Ching or someone else find a way to tell her? Or would she simply sense it, feel it in the marrow of her bones, an emptiness even deeper than the one she was now trapped in?
What if he didn't come back?
<><><>
But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee
That will not state its sting.
<><><>
She was losing her mind - that was the truth. She was beginning to see Clark everywhere. He was every man walking down the street and in every darkened shadow that she passed. Her hand trembled as she put the key in the lock and chided herself on her delusions. And then a hand covered hers, the touch stilling her even as every cell of her body came back to life in recognition.
"Oh god," she whispered, turning widened eyes to the apparition that had become flesh and blood.
"I told you I'd come back..."
<><><>
End
