It had been a great lunch. And since no other stories were pending, it had been a long lunch. And because Lois was feeling a bit frustrated by the events of the past weeks, it had been, for her, a liquid lunch.
Lois wove a bit unsteadily on her feet while Clark kept a firm hand on her elbow.
“Overdid it a little, I guess,” she admitted sheepishly.
“Maybe just a little.” Clark grinned, pulling her heel from a street grate for the tenth time on their walk back.
“Sorry, Clark,” she giggled.
“I don’t mind, Lois. You were blowing off some steam. The last few weeks have been…” He sighed, his voice trailed off. What had they been? For him they’d been spent in an epic wrestling match with himself; his desires, his worst fears, his needs. And in the end, he’d finished exhausted, and no closer to putting the pieces of his life together.
If Lois noticed Clark had dropped out of the conversation, she didn’t comment. They continued making slow, forward progress down the sidewalks of Metropolis. Clark glanced around appreciatively. He loved it here. Something most folks from Smallville would never understand. He loved so much about his life. Loved that a slightly tipsy Lois was letting him see her home. Loved how she was the perfect blend of velvet and steel. So tough when it was called for, so kind when it was needed. And when had he needed it more than these last weeks?
She’d dropped off the balcony during a really nice dinner. He’d caught her in time, but still, when you couldn’t even leave your date alone for a few minutes without her coming to mortal peril… well, that was Lois. He’d known that from the start.
Then there was that fall down the manhole. Lois had taken that like a trooper. In fact, she hadn’t even mentioned his disappearance during that incident. He’d expected to have to defend himself, and he had no idea how he would have. That she was so accustomed to his running off was telling. Lois had learned not to count on Clark Kent being there. She’d had to. He’d given her no choice.
And the STAR Labs thing. Superman’s files? He’d spent some sleepless nights sweating over that one. Lois, for her part, seemed to have dropped the whole idea rather easily. Which was alarming, because when did that ever happen? He cast a glance over at her now. She looked so harmless, head resting on his shoulder, slightly hiccupping her way home. Was she, even now, building a secret laboratory dedicated to the study of Superman?
Lois frowned a little as her heel once again found a grate.
No, Lois wouldn’t. He was being crazy. Again. Clark bent down and once more tugged on her ankle.
“Lois, are you building a secret laboratory dedicated to the study of Superman?” he asked her shoes.
“Yes, Clark,” Lois replied very seriously, and almost soberly. “Just need to (hic) get the (hic) funding.”
“Oh.” He righted himself, took her elbow. They set off once more, grinning at each other.
“Cool, huh? My own secret laboratory.”
“Very,” he agreed, giving her arm a squeeze.
And the Oswald fiasco this morning. He’d rushed her into an unreliable situation. Something he’d never believed possible of himself. The height of irony, when you counted all the times he’d tried desperately to talk her out of stuff like that. But he had wanted to- no, needed to- show off in front of her. Him. No tights. No cape. He had wanted her to see…so he wouldn’t have to tell her. And in doing so, he’d put her at risk.
“Lois.” Clark stopped them both, turning her towards him. “I’m so sorry about this morning. If anything had happened to you…” He couldn’t finish the thought, couldn’t bear to. “I’m just so sorry.”
“Hey…” She shushed him. “Hey, Clark, it’s ok. I’m ok. No harm done.”
“But there might have been.” He felt sick with the thought.
“That’s your problem, you know, Clark.” Lois was stroking the lines in his face. “You think way too much about what might have been or what may be. And you don’t just let yourself…be. You’re looking forwards, backwards, sideways, always worrying.”
“Oh, please, Lois. You are the serene one in this partnership?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve found your center? Inner peace…”
“Maybe.” She turned the mega-watt smile on him, raised up on her tiptoes, grabbed the back of his head, and kissed him fully, resoundingly on his still moving lips.
He froze.
“Shut you up,” Lois stated with satisfaction.
He exhaled.
“Lois, I was talking. I…missed that…didn’t see that coming…didn’t get the full effect…So, I wondered if…you could…again?”
“We’re here, Clark.” Lois nodded towards her building. He’d never noticed they’d arrived. “You could come up?”
Oh, he was definitely going up. Bridges could collapse and villagers might flee mudslides, but he was so going up. She’d kissed him. Kissed him…kissed him.
“I…You’re…um…a little tipsy, Lois.”
Who said that?! Horrible, horrible good manners, hard-wired into his psyche! Darn them! Darn them to the fiery cellars where Lex Luthor dwelled! Lois was only the tiniest bit drunk. He didn’t care. He’d go up and just watch her sleep it off. That would be enough for him.
“Not that you couldn’t trust me, Lois…”
Clark’s words were interrupted by Lois’ explosive yawn. “Never mind,” she sighed wearily. “Tired, anyway. Walk me up?”
He’d settle for a kiss at the door. That would be good. Just lean in for a soft, warm…Was she actually snoring on his shoulder?
“Lois!” He jostled her not quite as gently as he could have. “Are you sleeping? On your feet?”
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Here, Clark, keys.”
She handed him a silly amount of keys and returned her head to the pillow of his shoulder as he navigated the mind-boggling collection of locks. After a time, he pushed the door open, put both arms around Lois, and lifted her over the threshold. She snuggled up to him for just a moment before lowering her legs to the floor.
“Thanks, Clark.” She gently shut the door between them.
On her side, Lois stood perfectly still until she heard the sound of his retreating footsteps. Even then, she hardly dared breathe until the loud echo of the lobby door’s closing confirmed Clark’s departure.
“Superman has left the building,” Lois whispered to herself as she crossed to her window.
For sometime she only stood there, waiting, watching him move out of sight. She noted the soft sonic boom.
***********
Lois Lane had known for a long time who her partner really was. On a level well below conscious thought, in some sub-terrain, deeply buried place, she had known the truth. She just hadn’t exactly been aware of it. Hadn’t realized how much she truly knew, until she had looked right at Superman’s scar. Lois was able to admit to herself, much later, that the only reason she had looked directly at his scar was because she had known it would be there.
The balcony had been softly lit, and having just escaped certain…discomfort after plummeting through the planetarium’s space, her head had still been reeling. So, she shouldn’t have seen. There couldn’t be any good reason for her to see then what she never had before. Other than she had simply looked. As if confirming something, really. As if one could confirm what one never consciously suspected. Well, one could, she knew, because she had.
And furthermore, if she hadn’t already made the connection in some unexplored part of her, wouldn’t she have been surprised? Lois grimaced. “Surprised” was such a weak word for what she would have been. In the days that had followed, she had tried a few more on. Flabbergasted? Outraged? Dumbfounded? She still couldn’t find the right one. She just understood that if, on some previously established fundamental level, she, Lois Lane, had not known who He was, she would have been all those things, and more, and entirely unable to hide it from him.
Satisfied that Clark was truly gone, Lois moved quickly to her bedroom, dropped to her knees, and from under the bed wrestled the heavy lead-lined box she’d paid too much for. In her heart she knew it was a silly precaution. He would never take advantage of her privacy. Lois was almost wholly sure of this. But then again, if she was the one with the x-ray vision, what wouldn’t she look at?
She pondered this as she dialed the combination. The man who had sold her the box had offered her the heavy duty special lock, guaranteed “unbreakable.” She smiled at the memory. The one for whom this box was intended didn’t know the meaning of such a word.
The box now open before her, Lois scooped out its only contents, a yellow legal pad. Humming tunelessly, she ran her finger down the list on the page. By her rules she was making excellent progress. “Open manhole” and “STAR Labs break-in” had already been checked off. “Held at gunpoint”, which had seemed like a pipe dream when she’d written it, had been made possible by Clark, himself. Lois checked it off with no small satisfaction.
“Next up, man-eating shark.”
Now, realistically, Lois knew this couldn’t be done within the city limits. And, too, there was intrepid and there was just plain stupid. But didn’t the Metropolis Aquarium house a shark exhibit? And while the specimens there might not be the type that devour, they could maim couldn’t they? Once, on a rare day off, Lois had enjoyed the seahorse exhibit. Perhaps Clark could be lured there under such a pretense? How hard could it be to accidentally stumble into a giant fish tank? Since witnesses could be a problem, maybe she’d ask the management for a behind-the-scenes tour for the city’s hottest reporting team.
“Buckle up, Farmboy.” She grinned, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
She carefully replaced the notebook in its box. Grunting and groaning, she struggled to fit the box back in its hiding place. She reached underneath her bed, flinging various things aside as she tried to make a bigger space. Her hand brushed up against what had formerly been a gun. Her gun, given to her by Lex Luthor, from before, way, way before. Superman had squashed it like a ripe tomato, stopping her from using it to avenge Clark’s murder. Now, Lois pulled it out, held the cold, twisted steel in her palm, and let herself remember the night she’d seen Superman for who he was.
After the planetarium dinner she and Clark had bid each other their usual goodnight at her door. The one they always hoped would somehow end in a kiss, but which inevitably ended in a warm hug. Lois had reassured Clark for the thousandth time that she hadn’t been hurt in her free fall, that Superman had been his usual prompt self, that she would lock the door and call him if she felt uneasy. His face had then taken on that odd, distant look, which had suddenly made sense to her. Clark had declared himself exhausted, squeezed her into a fast hug, and hurried off.
Lois couldn’t remember ever being so relieved to be rid of someone. LNN’s bulletin confirmed that Superman had been needed in Suicide Slum. Not really news, but then it had been a quiet night. For the rest of the world.
Shaky and a little sick with her new knowledge, Lois had made her way into her bedroom. On autopilot she had removed the new dress, the too-high heels, and sat down on her bed. She didn’t know how long she had sat there, just that the silent numbness in her mind had been welcome, sweet, even. Made all the more so by her understanding that it was temporary. Lois didn’t dare move, hardly dared blink, for fear of bringing forward the leaping tiger of her mind. The one that wanted to claw its way out, to tear, to scrape, to hurt.
“Why?”
Her anguished question had caught her off guard, but once asked, once out of her mouth, she’d known she couldn’t stop the others that would follow. She’d swallowed hard, willed them all back into the numbness.
It had been the sight of her own reflection in the bureau mirror that had brought her to her feet. Lois couldn’t look at that woman. She had eyes so full of pain, so full of agony, so full of other things she didn’t want to identify. She had to move, get out of her line of sight.
Lois had hurled her shoe at the woman in the glass. The resulting crash had been so satisfying she’d indulged herself. Overturning the bedside table, smashing the lamps, ripping the linens off the bed. She hadn’t been able to tip the bureau over, but the struggle with it had felt good. She had let the black blanket of anger cover her completely, and in so doing had wiped out the horribly sad woman in the mirror. But that, like the sweet numbness, had been only temporary.
The same anchor on LNN had then assured her that Superman had finished his work and headed off to “who knows where.”
He could be home, already, she’d thought. She was going over. But she wouldn’t go empty-handed. No. That would be rude. Superheroes deserved thanks, didn’t they? And she had certainly used his super services often. A token, then. Something that symbolized the depths of her feeling for…both of him. Where was it? Where had she put it?
Lois had ransacked her room still further, though this time with a single purpose. She had dropped to her knees beside the bed, begun to drag out the boxes and odds and ends that seemed to collect underneath. It was still there, still in its original box, the gun paperweight. Made for her especially by Superman the night Clark was killed in front of her. And it really was special. A special reminder of the lie their lives were. She would take it to him, she’d decided. Pound on his door. Bounce it off that scar in the middle of his forehead. And never, ever in a thousand lifetimes, ever speak to him, again.
Plan formed, Lois had moved to get dressed. She had given considerable consideration to wearing the red dress over to Clark’s, wondering if he’d even recognize it. He had certainly held her in it long enough for it to have made an impression. With shaking hands and a furiously pounding heart, she had pulled the wrinkled, discarded dress from under the bed. It’s shade was an exact match of his cape. That is why she had bought it. How pathetic was that? She was so stupid, so stupid, so unbelievably stupid.
Dropping the red dress she had sagged to the floor, all her energy completely drained. Laying there in the mess she had made, she saw the other dress. The beautifully made testament to her now well-established stupidity. Lois Luthor’s wedding dress, a satin and imported lace construction of treachery and heartache. Years had passed since she’d seen it last. Lois had pulled it into her lap, fingering the buttons that were still undone. She’d never done them up, just pushed the whole thing under. Out of sight, out of…well, she couldn’t deny that Clark Kent had saved her that night, in a way Superman never could.
Lois sat up suddenly. In a flash she put it all together.
Clark Kent had been in the kryptonite cage.
Dear God. Lois closed her eyes, drew a deep breath that bordered on a sob.
She had seen that cage. On a tip from Bobby Bigmouth she had stolen her way into the police’s evidence lock-up. She’d been on a mission, then. Had needed to see it with her own two eyes. It had disappeared soon thereafter.
Once, she had asked Clark what he knew about it. His easy smile had vanished and for a moment, before it returned, he had looked…scared.
Clark had been in that cage. Lex had trapped him because of her. Clark had been in that cage, and she, Lois, had put him there. No wonder he’d been so drawn, so tired when he and Perry and Jimmy had returned her to her apartment that long ago day. He had tried to leave, but in the end, his… goodness hadn’t allowed him the luxury.
“Oh, Clark.”
Lois had buried her face in the rich material of the wedding gown and cried for them both. The anger, the leaping tiger, the gun paperweight all dissolved into irrelevancy. She had hurt him as deeply and completely as a person could be hurt. They were even. But for one unfinished promise between them. The vow that she had made to him on what wasn’t her wedding day. Standing in the folds of this dress, she’d taken his hand and promised:
‘One day, Clark, I want to free you, so you’ll know how it feels. Just tell me when. I’ll let you out, pull you up, and put you back together. I owe you. I mean it.’
Clark’s reply had matched her seriousness. ‘I accept, Lois. I’m holding you to it.’
Lois had once despaired of ever keeping this promise to Clark. She had wanted to be his hero, as he had been hers. But how did one go about saving someone as level-headed, as well adjusted, as good as Clark Kent?
But then, Clark had shown her the scar. He had chosen to show her. Lois knew this was important. In showing her the scar, he had shown her what trapped him And he had, also, given her the key. Lois would free him; from the isolation that had to be stifling, from the
uncertainty that had to be chronic, and from the fear that stayed with him. The fear of being found out, the fear of rejection, the fear of her rejection of him once she knew.
This she could see clearly now. When he’d caught her at the planetarium, he had been holding himself steady by sheer force of will, by self-discipline, by long, long practice. But Superman had been afraid. Had he once shown his true self to someone he’d loved? Had they turned away? With disgust? With fear? With condemnation?
Clark, in showing her the chicken pox scar, had shown her the deeper scars. The ones that haunted him, closed him in, cut him off. But not anymore. He didn’t know it yet, but that part of Clark Kent’s life was over. She was here. And this was a job for Lois Lane.
If the truth really could set you free, she would make Clark Kent proof of that. She would make him tell her the truth, and in doing so, uncage him. The very next day some guys who knew guys loosened the manhole cover, and Lois had gotten the ball rolling.
A tentative knock on her door jolted Lois out of her memories and back into the present. Frowning at the mess her attempts to hide the box had made of her bedroom, Lois shut and locked the door behind her and hurried to answer.
“Hey, Lois,” greeted an obviously nervous Jimmy. “About those numbers?”
***********
Superman was patrolling for lack of anything better to do. The city was just quiet enough for Lois’ shout to have him at her window in record time.
“Aarggghhh!” she was yelling. “Are you kidding me?! This is all there is? I can’t believe it, weeks and weeks of useless fact-finding…”
“Yeah,” Jimmy was answering sympathetically, if not miserably. “Sorry, Lois. I knew you wouldn’t like it, but you wanted everything a.s.a.p.”
Superman hovered alongside Lois’ apartment, relief battling amusement, as he realized the cause of Lois’ cries. She was ok, just taking some of the hide off Jimmy. He floated quietly away from her living room window, lest either one of them see him. Not a good idea for Jimmy to see how closely Superman watched over and listened out for Lois Lane.
He was pulling out of sight, enjoying Lois’ tirade directed at someone other that him, when his gaze fell into her bedroom. The chaos within caught his attention, holding him momentarily still. It looked like someone had searched the place. His eyes made a quick inventory of the mess spread all around the bedroom floor. Maybe she was just…spring cleaning? It wasn’t spring and this looked like the opposite of cleaning. He told himself he was prying. Lois hadn’t called him for help. And her bedroom door was closed, as was her bedroom window, so he had no business…a lead box.
There was a lead box sitting right in the middle of her room, right next to the bed. He went inside. The window had been locked but that hadn’t really been a problem. He would fix it later. Lois’ voice wafted under the bedroom door. She was still just warming up. There was no hurry.
He looked at the box. No doubt about it, lead boxes made him nervous. Nothing good ever came in them.
“Lois would not have kryptonite,” he scolded the box. She had threatened to kill him with it once, but that was different. That was when she’d thought Clark was gone. And it hadn’t really been him she wanted to kill, just Superman, who was trying to stop her from seeking revenge, and who he, of course, was. Right. Ok. But she wouldn’t have kryptonite. That was the point.
Jimmy’s responses had sputtered out and he could only make out the cub reporter’s moans and what he took to be pleas for mercy.
He opened it. Bracing himself, foolishly he knew, for the shock of the green glow. Just a notebook. He laughed softly at himself, relieved. Crazy she would keep it here. Obviously it was valuable, or personal, or both. Nothing he should look at.
Superman sat down slowly on the bed. He studied the notebook that had somehow gotten into his hand. He opened it. Smiled. It was just one of Lois Lane’s famous lists. This was part of her brilliance. Her sharp mind was a whirlwind of ideas. Still, she was able to build a methodical list of possibilities, plans of action…
His mind slowly, unbelievably slowly, processed the words on the page. Superman turned to stone. Frozen completely on Lois’ bed, trespassing and invading her privacy, and utterly unable to move.
She knew.
Lois knew.
No, wait. She knew? Lois knew?
And she’d been doing what? Pushing his buttons? Getting even? Deliberately torturing him? How long had she…?
She knew. She knew and she’d been taking her revenge.
She’d been making him the fool.
She’d been stringing him along.
She’d been…so…so…good to him.
She had. In the last few weeks when he’d been awash in turmoil, he had needed her, her friendship. And Lois had given it at every turn. She’d been kind, generous, supportive. Lois knew? She really knew?
He cast his eyes blindly around the room, still not moving, just trying to keep his thoughts running along one track, trying to gather his wits, to think what he should do next. The detached part of his mind noted some familiar objects strewn about. On the floor, next to his boot, was the gun paperweight. From that night…dear God…
He stood. Spun. And burst out of her bedroom door. He didn’t care how it looked, Clark Kent emerging from Lois’ bedroom, still doing the buttons on his shirt. Heedless of Jimmy’s presence, and since when wasn’t Jimmy present when it mattered, he blurted the question that was the single most important of any warring inside him.
“Have I lost you?”
Two startled faces turned to meet him. For an instant the shocked silence held them all still. Then Jimmy made a snappy about face, his exit so quick he might have been the one who was Superman.
“Have I, Lois?” Clark persisted. He didn’t care anymore who might hear what.
“Guys,” Jimmy begged. “Please, let me out first. Before…just…”
Jimmy was tugging unsuccessfully on Lois’ front door. Having been there himself, Clark took immediate pity on him. He marched over and yanked it open, breaking any number of bolts. If Jimmy noticed, there was no sign of it. His boots beat a rapid tattoo down the hallway.
Closing the door once more behind him, Clark turned to face Lois. “I’ll need to fix a few things before I leave today,” he offered weakly. And then, “I’ve lost you, haven’t I, Lois?”
Lois walked past him into her bedroom. “No, Clark, no. You don’t get it.”
She started packing away the things from under her bed.
“Truer words have never been spoken,” he agreed as he followed her in. “But Lois, you…know.” He gestured to the lead box, to the list still laying where he’d dropped it. He picked up the twisted gun and held it out to her, his face burning with shame.
“Of course I have my suspicions, Clark, but I don’t know anything until you tell me,” she answered easily.
Clark saw the red dress she was folding. It was bunched up and wrinkled, but definitely the same dress.
“Until I tell you?” He frowned. Uncertain how to proceed. Uncertain why she was holding that dress.
“Yes. Until my best friend, the man I trust more than any…being…in the galaxy tells me, then I don’t know.”
Lois moved around to the opposite side of the bed, now vigorously shoving another dress under. The dress. The one with the ridiculous amount of buttons. He didn’t remember how many, just that he’d undone every one of them.
“But, clearly, you do…know, Lois.”
He was trying to stay in the conversation. Watching her put it all out of sight, out of human sight.
“You asked me if you’d lost me, Clark.” Lois stood up to watch him. “It’s the opposite. You’ve found us.”
Clark stopped counting the buttons on the dress. His head snapped up.
“There’s an us?”
“There’s always been an ‘us’, just in an unconventional form.”
“Lois, I’m floundering here.”
He was watching her now, as carefully as she was watching him.
“You need to say it, then. I can keep going with this as long as it takes. Really, I can. Did you read the whole list? There’s more to come. But I’m not sure how much longer you’ll hold up under the strain. I’m not sure how you’ve done it for so long, anyway. And now that you don’t have to, you shouldn’t. Take off the glasses, Clark. Open your mouth, Clark. What more could you possibly need, Clark?”
“I’m Superman,” Clark said, and let out the breath he’d been holding for minutes, for weeks, for a lifetime. “I’m Superman,” he repeated raggedly. “Lois, I’m Superman.”
She smiled at him. A smile unlike any he’d ever seen before.
“A-la-kazam, Clark, you’re free.”
Clark heard the long ago echo of his own voice. He had said that very thing to Lois. In this very spot, on the night that she had shot out of the wedding dress and back into his life. With those words things between them had really begun. It had been the first time he had really known, that the possibility for more between them, truly existed.
“Free,” he repeated, savoring the sound, understanding at last.
“I promised you, Clark. I owed you.”
“You have never owed me anything, Lois.” He shook his head at her, tried to put his heart into his next words. “You have given me everything.”
“No,” Lois corrected him. “But I’ve set you free, so that now everything is possible.”
A future then? Their future? The life he so wanted…with her?
“Everything, Lois?” At her nod, he continued. “Where should I start?”
“No imagination, Superman?” she taunted him softly.
Clark reached for her; across the bed under which so much of their history lay buried, across the space that had always been between them, across the years that had finally led them to this place. And he found her there, waiting…warm…willing…and all his.
The end
