Thanks to Tahu for betareading and kicking my butt to write this. wink

Usual disclaimers apply.

TOC

From Part 13:

“You could at least look at the suit, Clark! After all you washed and dried them. Maybe they could help you get back your memory,” Lois said angrily and threw the suit on the ground, turning her back on Clark. “I just want to help you, but you won’t let me! I wanted to help you understand why all this might have happened to you, but you just keep telling me that you can’t face it, Clark. Superman tried to tell you something, but you listen to him no more than you listen to me.” She didn’t know why she did it, but she stormed out of the room. Her hunger was forgotten for the moment, all she wanted was to get as far away from Clark as possible.

* * *

Separate Lives or Till Life Do Us Part

Part 14

Clark stared at the suit on the floor. There was something familiar to it, like there had been something familiar to flying. He didn’t really want to look at it, because it could only raise more ugly memories. He was afraid of them, maybe even more afraid than he had been when he had woken up in the alley. But his eyes seemed to be glued to the fabric and Clark stepped away from the stove. Slowly he knelt down next to the suit and touched it, carefully.

The door flew open and the suffocating feeling that the small room had caused started to fade gradually. Clark heard steps approaching and then he saw dark shoes and a leg in dark trousers, both barely lighted by a greenish glow and a bit of light that came from the outside. The man who entered the room was tall and smiled, obviously unaffected by the waves of pain that were swapping over Clark.

“Good evening, Mr. Kent. Or shall I say good morning?” the man asked. His accent was English and his manners those of a gentleman. Only his smile certainly belonged to a demon. He stepped closer to Clark and the wave of pain got even more intense. “It’s not easy to tell the time of day down here, is it?” The smile on the man’s lips became even broader.

“What do you want, St. John?” Clark asked, gritting his teeth. “Kill me? Or are you gonna make this a surprise?”

St. John laughed and shook his head. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, almost indignantly. “There would be no fun in doing that, would there? No, Mr. Kent. Thanks to the late Mr. Mazik and his amazing book I know you’re secret...” He smiled broadly. “And I’m going to take advantage of that.”

“I’m not going to do it, whatever you want from me!” Clark retorted and looked up at Nigel St. John, panting from the effort. “So kill me right away!”

“I said I wouldn’t kill you and I’m not going to.” St. John said dignified and Clark heard something fall shut. Suddenly, the pain was gone and so was the greenish glow. “I’m intending to give you a hard time – very hard – don’t be mistaken about that. Um, I guess I better show you what I mean. Mr. Kent, may I introduce you to – Superman.”

In the dim light the man was barely visible, but Clark could see the shades of red and blue that had appeared in the doorway. A tall man stepped into the room, smirking and glancing at Clark, one of his eyebrows raised. Clark gasped as he looked into the others eyes – the resemblance was striking, shattering.

“How...?” Clark breathed in shock.

“That is the famous Superman?” he asked disbelievingly. “You cannot be earnest! I mean, look at him – he looks like crap. There’s nothing super about him.” He folded his arms in front of his chest, but despite the familiar stance, he couldn’t imitate Superman convincingly. The smirk on his lips gave him away.

“Well, of course not..,” St. John replied, rolling his eyes. “I took care of that. Without your suit and powers, you’d look just like him.” He flashed the lead case in his hands an almost loving glance. “Thank you, I guess we made our point.” St. John gestured towards the door and the fake Superman nodded to Clark. He smiled and went out again. Then St. John looked back at Clark. “Mr. Luthor still owes you one, Mr. Kent. He decided to finally settle his depts. Our Superman is already eager to confess his love for Lois Lane. Don’t you think that she’ll be... well... over the moon?”

Nigel St. John fell silent and watched Clark’s expression with delight. He played with the box in his hands and Clark thought that he was going to open it again. But he left the lit shut and kept staring at Clark, intensely. A faint smile was on his lips, barely visible in the darkness and well hidden by his beard. But it was unmistakably there.

“Lois can’t be fooled so easily,” Clark said hoarsely. He failed to sound convinced and St. John shrugged. “Who did you ask, St. John? A look-alike? Lois won’t think for a second that he’s real.” At least Clark hoped she wouldn’t fall for the imposter. He knew that she desperately wished that the hero would confess his love for her. But she would know the difference, she couldn’t be that blind...

“But he is real, Mr. Kent, at least to some extent. We created him, cloned him. There is almost no difference between you and him. I have to admit, though, that he is not the best actor. But you can rest reassured that he will play his part perfectly well,” he said. “In fact it’s your performance Mr. Luthor is a bit worried about. He thinks that you might spoil the fun.”

Before Clark was able to say something another wave of pain hit him. As it receded St. John was gone and Clark was once more alone in the darkness.

Clark opened his eyes and was back in the kitchen. His breath came in panting gasps. The suit had fallen from his hands and lay next to him, the blue spandex hidden underneath the red cape with the yellow family crest. Bits and pieces of memory coursed through his mind but he couldn’t get a grip on any of them. He had learned something about himself that seemed to be impossible. He reached for the cape as if touching the fabric would end the strange dream he was having, the dream in which he was...

“Clark?” Lois asked carefully. He flinched, startled. “I heard you mutter something about Luthor. Are you okay?” Her expression was soft, worried. She didn’t seem to be angry any more. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lash out at you. You were right! I shouldn’t have asked you to be someone else. These changes in your life – they’d be too much for me as well.”

She had made it no farther than to the stairs leading up to Clark’s front door when second thoughts caught up with her. In her need to get back to normal, to push away the pain the loss caused in her she was asking too much of Clark. Lois had to face it – the sun would not rise again, lighting up the world as she had known it. The past would not return, no matter how much she wished it would. Perhaps one day Clark would be able to use his heritage in order to make the world a better place. But she should give him the time to regain his memory and to make him understand that he was not to blame for the terrible things that had happened.

Clark was having the far away look Lois knew so well. He didn’t say anything, maybe hadn’t even heard her. He got up and took the cape and suit with him. Besides his obvious distraction Lois saw deep confusion in his features. His eyes wandered from some spot on the wall to his hands and Superman’s suit. He blinked, confused and slowly made the first step out of his kitchen. Irritated, Lois followed him, stopped and returned to the stove and removed the pot of pasta. Then she ran after Clark.

He had made it into his bedroom and right as Lois entered it, she saw him vanish in a whirl. But he was gone for only a second. When he stopped again, he no longer was Clark. Lois gasped and sank onto the bed, not sure her legs would support her any longer. She had to have fallen asleep without realizing it. This could only be a dream, because in real life things like this did not happen. Lois pinched her arm, but that didn’t make the ghost disappear.

“Superman,” she breathed.

* * *

A little later, Lois was sitting at the kitchen table. Clark stood in front of the stove, wearing his usual clothes again. He was fumbling with the food, trying to put the pasta on a plate. At the same time he watched Lois, nervously. The thunderstorm of her rage hadn’t yet hit him, even though Lois knew now what he had been keeping from her from the very beginning.

“I can’t believe you kept this from me!” Lois said unsure if she was angry at him or relieved that his memory had finally returned.

“I wanted to tell you, Lois. I really did. But the prospect of confessing this to you scared the hell out of me.” Along with the realization that he was Superman most of Clark’s memory had come back to him. “First I didn’t know if I could trust you and then – I don’t know, I guess the right moment had passed without me really noticing it.”

Clark put the plate with pasta in front of her and sat down at the other end of his kitchen table, looking down at his hands in shame.

“I can’t believe you fooled me with nothing but glasses!” Lois shook her head and took her fork, picking at her food. “You made my life a living hell when you let everyone believe you were dead! You let me think that I had fallen in love with two different men. I thought I was getting crazy when I was forced to decide. And when I finally had chosen you, you were gone! Do you have any idea what you did to me?” she asked, a tear threatening to roll down her cheek.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Lois. I knew I couldn’t go on lying to you. It took me days to work up the courage to tell you and I spend hours in front of the mirror working on my speech. I would have asked you out for dinner that evening, but then I got that call. Someone told me that he knew I was Superman and that he would tell everyone if I wouldn’t meet him in an hour. I had been darn stupid to go without telling you, but I was scared that my life as Clark Kent would come to an end. I was afraid this meant that you and my parents were in danger. I didn’t keep this from you just for the sake of having a secret. I wanted to protect the people I love.”

Clark told her about the masked man he had met in Suicide Slum. He had had kryptonite and had rendered Clark helpless before he had been able to think about running away. When he had woken up again, he had been in a small, dark room. The kryptonite had been gone, but thanks to the lack of light his powers had refused to return. He hadn’t known how long he had been sitting there, waiting for something to happen. He told her about Nigel St. John and the clone who were now both dead.

“Maybe St. John somehow managed to get hold of Hamilton’s notes before you managed to destroy them,” Lois muttered as Clark had ended. “Lex wanted him to create a clone and kill him so that you would be sentenced for murder. But how did he manage to make you forget all about it?”

Clark shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“You can go,” St. John said and put the kryptonite back into the lead box. As the pain was gone, Clark looked at him in confusion.

“What did you say?” he asked, wondering what Nigel St. John was planning.

“You can go, Mr. Kent. I’m not going to keep you here any longer,” the Englishman repeated. “What I have in store for you is waiting outside.” St. John smiled. “Since you won’t remember what we were talking about, I can tell you that. You see – I asked Mr. Asabi to hypnotize you or something like that. I don’t really care about the details, but I’m pretty sure it will work to my satisfaction.

“But I...” Clark objected.

“You don’t remember, do you?” St. John laughed roughly. “Well, that exactly is the point, don’t you think? Mr. Luthor was tired of being alone in prison and he’s looking forward to get company. I have no idea why he is insisting that this company has to be you, but that really is not my problem.” St. John stepped to the side, and pointed to the now free way outside. “It was my pleasure to have you as my guest, but I think you need to go now.”

The English man snapped his fingers and continued. “You’re lucky that I found you down here, Sir. You shouldn’t stay there, come on, I’ll take you to the police.”

“Um, thank you,” Clark replied confused and looked around. He had no idea how he had ended up in a place like that and was glad to get out of it. He went past the nice man who had apparently saved him and walked out of the dark room which had to be in some cellar. Outside, he could see some broken windows, faintly silhouetting against the dark walls. It had to be night and Clark was almost relieved as he felt the firm hand of his savior on his shoulders, who guided him outside.

A second snap of fingers resounded in the darkness and Clark was alone. He staggered to the flight of stairs that let up to the abandoned street. He had no idea where he was and how he could get away from this scary place. Rain was falling, running across his face and drenching his clothes. He started to shiver. Suddenly he heard a soft whoosh and the sound of feet touching the ground.

“Superman!” Clark whispered as he saw the hero, who approached him in the darkness.

“Clark,” Superman replied. “Getting yourself into trouble again?” Something about him was different, Clark thought. He looked angry, furious really. “Some kind of friend you are! What kind of feeling is it to know that you got Lois all for yourself? You betrayed me! You stole the only woman I ever loved. You bastard!”

Clark blinked and gasped with fear as Superman closed in on him and grabbed his sleeves, shaking Clark that his head banged from one side to the other. Then he pushed Clark off, watching as he fell into a puddle. Clark choked as water came into his mouth and nose and he coughed to get rid of it. He turned around and got to his feet as quickly as possible.

“Run away, if you like. You can’t escape me, anyway,” Superman shouted after him as Clark made the first few steps away from him, getting faster by the minute. He had little hope that he would be able to run off, but he had to try.

* * *

Metropolis, Clark’s apartment, a couple of weeks later

Clark still couldn’t believe that the nightmare was actually over. As soon as he and Lois had figured out what had truly happened in the alley, they had called Dr. Klein. He hadn’t been too thrilled to hear that he could stop his investigation on kryptonite. But obviously, proving that the dead Superman had been a clone had seemed to be interesting enough.

Right after that, Clark had flown to Henderson’s office in order to turn himself in. With the suit underneath his clothes, it hadn’t been too difficult to convince Henderson that Clark and Superman were one and the same. He had told the inspector that the dead man the police had found in Suicide slum had been a clone. Fortunately, Henderson had been more than willing to help them find the last pieces of the puzzle they had needed to see the whole picture.

Nigel St. John had been the third man in the alley. Not only one, but several homeless men had witnessed St. John killing the fake Superman. Right after committing the murder St. John must have snapped his finger and knocked Clark out, using Asabi’s posthypnotic instruction and thus making him forget that he was Clark and Superman.

The police had been supposed to find Clark next to the dead Superman, provided with more than enough evidence to nail him as the hero’s murderer. Clark would have been sentenced for his ‘crime’ and Lex had probably thought that he would kill himself in despair before he could regain his memory or his powers. Obviously Lex hadn’t accounted for Lois to help Clark, considering the circumstances.



By some twist of fate, or maybe by Luthor’s instrucion, St. John had been killed and pushed into Hobbs River by a man who had only a little later died in a fire. Lex Luthor had well covered his tracks and neither Henderson nor Lois and Clark believed that they would be able to prove that he had set up this trap. Asabi was nowhere to find, but Henderson had promised to keep looking for him. So far, there wasn’t much they could do. At least they had enough evidence to convince the police that Clark had only been the victim of a vicious conspiracy. Henderson had released him earlier that day.

Neither Lois nor Clark had any idea how Luthor had learned Clark's secret in the first place. The mysterious book St. John had referred to was vanished. Ransacking Luthor's cell hadn't revealed it, either. Of course the excistance of such a book was scary. But so far, Superman's secret identity hadn't become public knowledge and as long as Luthor couldn't prove that Clark was Superman, they were relatively safe.

“Luthor is in prison, anyway,” Martha said and laid her arms on Clark’s shoulders, reassuringly. She was mostly glad that her son was all right and she didn’t really care about anything else. “Thank you, Lois, for believing in him.” She warmly smiled at the younger woman, who returned her look and squeezed Clark’s hand gently.

“It was impossible to think that he would be guilty, given how hard he tried to help the fake Superman back in that alley,” Lois explained and chuckled. “I almost had to knock him out cold to get him into my car.”

They continued to talk about the past days and Clark’s mother wanted to know everything and asked so many questions that Clark started to wonder what there could still be left to tell. Obviously, she and Lois were having a great time. The way Lois told the story it sounded almost funny, at least ironic, when she mentioned how she had asked Clark to replace Superman. They laughed a lot, forgetting about the tension the events of the past days had caused in them.

Jonathan Kent didn’t join their conversation. He sat on Clark’s sofa and read the article that exculpated his son, smiling to himself. Clark went over to his father and sat down beside him. He knew the article by heart and each time he saw it, he felt as relieved as he had been when he had first read it. His world was – unbelievable as it was – back to normal. Maybe it was even better than before, because Lois knew who he was and hadn’t taken his head.

“You owe me a second Honeymoon. Do you know that, son?” Jonathan asked, looking up from his newspaper. “You scared your poor mother.” Clark could imagine that his father had been just as nervous as his mother, if not more. But he left the comment unsaid.

“He scared just me?” Martha asked with a wink. “I kind of remember spending this holiday with an overly nervous husband. Or are you going to tell me that you were just having some delayed wedding jitters?”

“Well, Superman airways could still take you back to Italy. The flies launch whenever you feel like it,” Clark replied, grinning.

“Don’t tell your mother, but I think I prefer Smallville over Italy,” Jonathan muttered and blushed slightly. Then he looked back at the article. “It’s easier to keep an eye on you, when we’re at home.”

* * *

“Lois, I...” Clark joined her on his balcony, a glass of wine in his hands. “I don’t think I ever really thanked you.” They were alone, finally. The older Kents had said good night and had taken a room in some hotel in Metropolis. Clark had offered to fly them back to Smallville, but they had replied that they were tired and that heading home the next day would be soon enough. Lois took the glass Clark gave her and looked at him.

“You thanked me, Clark, I don’t know how many times. But, honestly, I really only want to hear you say one thing,” Lois answered and stepped closer, resting her hand on his chest.

“I love you,” Clark whispered and bent down to kiss her.

The touch of his lips was soft and Lois could taste that he had taken a sip of wine before coming out on the balcony. She felt the soft caress of his tongue that traced the line of her lips, tickling her a bit. He moaned as she opened her mouth and started to nibble at his lips, her tongue playfully flickering against his. He put the glass of wine aside, taking hers as well and then pulled her closer.

“I love you, Lois,” he repeated breathlessly and his hands moved across her back, gently and yet so powerful that Lois knew that no one could ever harm her as long as she was in Clark’s arms.

“I love you, Clark,” she said, her voice muffled by his cheek. She placed soft little pecks on it, inebriated by feeling his soft skin under her lips. She couldn’t get enough of it and hardly noticed how Clark laid his arms around her hips, slowly starting to dance with her. “I have been longing to tell you this for so long.” He smelled so good, masculine and also a bit like coming home, if there was such a smell.

Lois feet were no longer touching the ground and she was dancing with Clark the way dancing was meant to be – weightless and magical. Her dreams had come true, not every single of them, but she knew that this was only going to be a matter of time. For now she was more than happy to be in his arms, a precious moment that she would not let pass.

As certain as Lois had been that Clark Kent was indeed Superman, she had no doubt that Clark would retrieve a small box from his pocket as soon as he had set her down again. He would kneel down in front of her and ask the question that was going to change her life for the better. And Lois also knew what she was going to reply. Yes, yes, she wanted to say, before he had even had the chance to listen to his proposal.

“Lois?” Clark whispered softly into her ear and she felt her feet touch the ground. As she safely stood in front of him, Clark stepped back and looked at her with his deep brown eyes that made her feel dizzy. “Lois? Will you marry me?”

The End

Please review

It's never too dark to be cool. cool