Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic From the Ruins 6/11

From Part Five:

“Clark.” Unfortunately my voice was too husky and he misinterpreted my cry as he whispered my name in response. I tried again. “Stop. TV.”

“Huh?” He pulled away and sat upright, looking at the news report. Then he gave me a brief longing look, before he flew away.

Seconds later he was gone, halfway across the world. I leant back onto the couch, wishing it was actually comfortable. It was a peculiar experience, to watch Superman saving lives and being hailed as a hero when only moments earlier he had been here, kissing me senseless. I could only hope that when the danger was over, he would return and we could carry on from where we had been interrupted.

*.*.*.

Part Six

*.*.*.

The trial against Baby Rage went with only a slight hitch, caused by Martin Snell, but Clark and Drake managed to find the evidence that proved he was working with Intergang. Of course, his exposure didn’t long precede his death.

Luckily the fire at the cafe hadn’t caused too much structural damage. Uncle Mike used his insurance money, as well as some funds from Church, to rebuild. I tried to caution him against accepting Church’s money, but like his niece before him my uncle was a stubborn man and having already decided on the man’s generous nature, had refused to listen to my warnings. I could only hope that Church’s new stake in the business would be enough for him to leave Uncle Mike alone.

*.*.*.

Days melted into weeks and weeks became months. Stories came and went, and the war between Luthor and Intergang continued with the innocent residents of Metropolis remaining caught in the crossfire. There were very few meetings between the four of us, who were still desperately trying to find something to pin on either of them. Most of the times I had contact with them, it was through Henderson. Whether it was Clark or Drake who had decided to keep me at arm’s length I was never sure, but I knew from what Henderson said and the odd snippet of almost-conversation from Clark that the three of them had regular meetings regarding Intergang without me.

I think it was for three months altogether that our affair continued. I admit that during that time I stopped focusing on my job and spent my days wondering if Clark would visit me that night. Stories like the cyborg built by LexCorp out of my sister’s loser boyfriend held no interest all of a sudden. He was obviously intended to be some sort of weapon against Intergang, but as the cyborg had his brain he had followed his own agenda which ultimately led to him being melted down into scrap by Superman.

Someone even came to Drake and Henderson from Intergang, searching for protection in return for information about their top assassin. Luthor offered to help finance their protection, but his aid was declined. The informant didn’t leap out of the frying pan just to end up in the fire. The assassin was revealed to be TV celebrity Diana Stride, and Henderson even managed to manufacture it so that I got the exclusive on her arrest. Something that Drake didn’t seem too pleased about, but then anything that was beneficial for me seemed to annoy her.

Be that as it may, it was Clark who had become the centre of my life. He didn’t come to me every night; some nights he was too busy helping people in need and some nights he was neither in my bed nor on my TV. If more than two nights passed without me knowing where he was I began to wonder if I was the only woman he visited; there were so many reports on television and in magazines of other women sleeping with the hero, but I didn’t really believe them. Perhaps it was naive of me to think so, to think that I had his fidelity. He had assured me that I wasn’t the other woman, but that didn’t necessarily follow that he didn’t have some other lover and that *she* was the other woman. There was small comfort in being his lover if he still had another woman. But I had no official claim to him and dwelling on these matters proved no help and so I didn’t. Or at least, I didn’t as much as I could have.

Then it all ended as suddenly as it had begun.

It had been four days since I had been with Clark, the longest break yet and I was worried about him. There had been nothing out of the ordinary happening in the world to cause his absence, although that didn’t mean that something hadn’t happened in his family or something, but even that would probably have made it into the news within that length of time.

He just hadn’t come.

Then, on the fifth day, as I was beginning to get really worried and was considering contacting Henderson to see if he knew anything, he appeared.

“Lois,” said his dark voice. I hadn’t even heard him come in, although that wasn’t unheard of. The man could match me for stealth.

“Clark!” I exclaimed and checked the impulse to run over and hug him. That sort of intimate contact wasn’t part of our relationship. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“No,” he agreed, his voice sounding frightening in its lack of emotion. I was used to him sounding angry or lustful, and rarely I had heard glimpses of happiness in his voice, but I would never get used to hearing him sound detached and yet every so often he did. Probably just to remind me exactly what his feelings for me were. “I’ve been busy. Thinking.” He amended after seeing my disbelieving look.

“About?”

“Us.”

The word sent a delightful shiver down my spine. There wasn’t really an ‘us’, I knew, but the idea of it pleased me in an unexpected yet wonderful way... “What about it?”

He started pacing around the room, steadfastly not making eye contact with me. “This... arrangement of ours. It was supposed to be a way for you to make up for writing your article on me, correct?”

“Technically.” I replied, hesitantly.

“Technically,” he repeated, but neither one of us had made it sound realistic. The truth of our agreement was easily forgotten by me as I allowed myself to revel in the pleasure it brought and ignore what had made it possible. “I made a promise to myself that it would stop as soon as I had forgiven you. This whole thing, it’s so wrong. I don’t like myself for it.”

“You don’t enjoy it?” I asked sadly. No, of course he didn’t. I wasn’t a good lover, I knew that, but he was. I enjoyed having sex with him; I never had before. I didn’t think I would after, either. If there ever was an after.

He stopped pacing to shake his head. “Of course I enjoy it; I wouldn’t come if I didn’t. But I don’t want sex to be just sex; I never did. I’ve always seen it as an expression of something more, a joining of souls rather than bodies, and yet I allowed myself to do it anyway.”

“Even though you don’t love me?”

It was as if I hadn’t spoken. I don’t think he could have not heard me, he could hear people crying for help on the other side of the city, he could surely hear the speech of the only other person in the silent apartment, and I didn’t say it particularly quietly. A normal person would have heard it clearly enough, but if he had heard it, he completely ignored it. “So I’ve decided to forgive you.”

“You don’t sound as if you’ve forgiven me,” I told him angrily. “It sounds like you’re just saying it as a way out.”

“I’m not,” was his feeble response.

I walked over to him, glaring into his eyes. Even I was surprised at how badly I was taking this. “If you want this to stop, then just tell me so. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’ve forgiven you, Lois!” he yelled back. “OK? That’s it, that’s what I want, a clean slate. We can treat each other as if we’ve never met before. We can pretend that we’ve never worked together, that you never wrote that article.”

“That we never slept together? We’ve been through too much together to be strangers, Kent. We have to deal with it; we can’t just sweep it under the rug.”

He glared back at me, his breath heavy as he fought to contain his boiling rage. “I’m sure you can cope, Lane. You must have ignored all that when you wrote that article!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry I doubted you. You’ve obviously forgiven me,” I taunted him, sarcasm dripping from my tongue.

He stepped back from me, trying to use distance to soothe our heated fury. “I didn’t want this argument. I wanted us to put the past behind us and get on with our lives. Neither of us have been happy, admit it. The first step to getting past all this was always going to be me forgiving you. I have, OK. Now you just need to forgive yourself.” And with that he flew away, without waiting for a response from me.

“Fine,” I yelled out of the window into the clear and empty sky. “I will!”

I stepped back from the fresh air that flooded into the room and hugged myself to try and offer some form of comfort. I felt empty. My apartment looked empty. I walked over to my awards cabinet and stared at my Pulitzer. He was right, I *did* need to forgive myself and I needed him to forgive me first, but I didn’t believe that he had. He just didn’t want to see me anymore and that was completely different matter. Maybe things between him and Drake were getting serious. He had promised that I wouldn’t be the other woman.

No, I was certain that he would have told me if that was the reason for that very fact. He obviously just couldn’t stand to be near me anymore.

I sniffled as I realised I was close to tears. Why was the affecting me so much? So I wasn’t going to get great sex anymore, so what? It wasn’t like I was Cat Grant or anything. I didn’t need sex. I didn’t need Clark ‘Superman’ Kent either.

So why was I crying?

*.*.*.

The alarm surprised me as it woke me up in the morning. I had been tossing and turning all night and I hadn’t realised that I had actually managed to fall asleep. My body felt like it was made of lead as I hauled it out of bed and into the bathroom. My eyes were red and puffy from crying and my lack of sleep had left two dark circles beneath them. I splashed some cold water onto my face and when that failed to freshen up my face, I sought out my makeup with a resigned sigh.

The familiarity of getting up and going into the Planet offered me no comfort. It was a day just like every other, as if nothing momentous had happened the night before. Which, in fairness to everyone that I passed, it hadn’t. Not to them. Not to me either, really. I didn’t understand why it hurt so much that Clark no longer wanted to see me, my reaction was almost laughable. We hadn’t even been friends; we’d just had sex together. I supposed that no matter how many times it happened, my heart would always be hurt whenever a man left me, whoever he was to me and however inevitable it was that he would go.

As soon as I stepped off the elevator into the newsroom, Perry shouted out at me that he wanted to see me in his office. I trudged past the mainly empty desks and ringing phones. I shut the door to his office as soon as I was inside.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Murder, last night. A bomb was placed in the car of the Assistant D.A. Superman wasn’t able to get there in time, which means there’s no reason why you can’t handle it, right?”

“No,” I said and Perry handed me a file of the information he had already accumulated.

He started to give me more details but my sleep-deprived brain was urging me to realise something that I wasn’t paying any attention to. Finally the penny dropped. “Wait a minute. Did you say the Assistant D.A?”

Perry looked at me, concerned at my lack of concentration. “Yes. Lois, you OK? You didn’t look too good when you walked in. Are you ill?”

“No,” I exclaimed but my denial only caused him to scrutinise my appearance more thoroughly and disbelieve my statement. “No, I’m fine. But, it was Mayson Drake that was killed?”

“Yes. Did you know her?”

I sat down on the comfy couch that Perry had installed in the corner of his office, surprised that I actually felt sorry for her and was, in my own small way, experiencing a molecule of grief at her passing. “Not really. I’d been working with her and Henderson on something. We never really got on very well. I wouldn’t have wished that on her, though.”

His face became sympathetic and his voice lost its edge of harshness. “No, but if it’s any consolation, it was quick. What I need you to find out--”

Another thought hit me and I felt my mouth go dry. I tried to swallow but found it almost impossible. “When?”

“Last night. Lois...”

“No, Perry, when last night?” Clark had broken up... no, broken off our agreement last night and he hadn’t made it in time to save her. Oh, please don’t let him have been arguing with me while Drake lay dying. That was a guilt I couldn’t see me being able to live with. How many more lives would I ruin out of my own selfishness?

“Late.” I gave him an exasperated glare at his response; I needed a better answer than that. “I don’t know the exact time, it’ll be in the report.”

Well, late was an indication, at least. I wasn’t entirely sure when Clark had come but I dimly remember looking at the clock afterwards and was surprised to see that I still had most of the evening to get through. It had felt so much later than that.

Needing to know, for sure, I took the proffered police report from Perry and realised that she had died at least two hours after our argument. I couldn’t believe how relieved I felt that I wasn’t the reason Clark hadn’t been there, and for a brief moment it almost made me feel something close to happiness.

I paused for a moment, then handed him the notes back. “I can’t take this story, Perry.”

“Why ever not? I told you, no Superman. I know you didn’t like the woman but that doesn’t make any difference. It’s not her obituary I’m asking you to write; I’m asking you to investigate her murder”

I scooted across so that I sat on the chair closer to his desk and leant forward. “If I tell you something, can you keep it secret?”

“You know you can trust me, honey.”

“Drake and Clark, were sort of.... You know. Close.”

Perry raised an eyebrow. “She was his girlfriend. Oh, no. The poor lad...”

“No. I don’t think they were together. I think that she cared more for him than he did for her, although he certainly did care a lot about her. Even so, I don’t want to be poking my nose in. He’ll be hurting enough without me getting involved. Give it to someone else.”

Perry let me walk to the door before he called out, “Sooner or later you’re going to have to get over your fear of talking to Superman, otherwise you’ll not have much of a career left at this paper. I’ve been letting it slide but if you don’t pick up your game I might have little choice but to find a new reporter for the city section.”

“You’re going to fire me?” I exclaimed in horror. As if my life hadn’t been torn apart enough in the last 24 hours I had to learn that my job at the Planet, which was my entire life, was in jeopardy.

“Not if I can help it, Lois. It’s the suits upstairs that are starting to talk about it. I’ll let this one go but I won’t let you turn down another story without a good excuse. And ‘Superman doesn’t like me’ won’t cut it anymore.”

*.*.*.

I spent the rest of the morning in a rather dreamlike state, nothing felt real anymore. I was still having trouble realising that Clark no longer wanted me. Not only did he hate me as he should, he also found me physically repulsive. And he was grieving. He was mourning the loss of someone who was a close friend, and possibly more. I wanted to comfort him, to touch him and send him into oblivion where he could forget the pain. That’s what I *had* been doing I had convinced myself, only with a much smaller pain. Now I couldn’t even do that for him because of his intense dislike of me.

Not only that, but I was now in danger of losing my job. Work was everything to me. I didn’t have a life of my own, or friends, or anything but the Planet. If I lost that, then I’d have nothing. My days would be as empty as my nights had become.

I was brought out of my daze by a strange man smiling at me across my desk. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I responded.

“I couldn’t help but notice you checking me out,” he said cheekily. It surprised me to realise that he was flirting with me.

Although I hadn’t been ‘checking him out’, I had been staring into the space which he occupied for quite some time. For some reason people never accept that excuse, even when it’s the truth.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I was just thinking.”

“Oh. So it wasn’t mutual, then?” His eyes twinkled and I realised that he was actually quite good-looking. There was a good chance that if I hadn’t been too busy dwelling on my misery, I might have actually bothered to check him out. I would never have gone further than that, my situation with Clark did nothing but prove that men and Lois Lane didn’t mix, but I might have looked.

“You were checking me out?” I asked, half flirting and half incredulous. I was horrible; Clark didn’t want to sleep with me anymore so why would any man find me worth looking at? Maybe one who didn’t know that behind my dull façade lay a horrible person with no redeeming qualities.

“A little. You’ve got beautiful eyes.”

I could sense myself blush and I turned away my ‘beautiful eyes’. “Thanks,” I murmured, really meaning it. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d received a proper compliment. He had actually sounded like he had meant it.

“Agent Scardino,” he offered me his hand, which I shook. He had a firm grip. “But you can call me Daniel.”

“Lois Lane. What are you doing here?”

He took this introduction as an offer to sit and pulled up a chair so he could talk to me. “I’m investigating the death of Mayson Drake and as this is the best paper in the city, I thought I’d offer to team up. Plus, I’m sort of not supposed to be doing this, so I need someone else’s resources to plunder.”

I laughed, liking him all the more as his actions reminded me of me. Or at least who I used to be, who I suddenly realised I needed to become again. “Why not?”

“Personal reasons.” He smiled at me. He had a nice smile, not as dazzling as I remembered Clark’s being, but nice enough. “Any chance I can get you in on the story?”

“No. I was offered it but I can’t work on it.”

“Why not?”

“Personal reasons,” I returned.

“Touché,” he laughed, “but that leaves me in a bit of a quandary. You see, I don’t like to ask a girl out until I’ve spent at least a little time with her beforehand. I went on some really tragic blind dates when I was younger, scarred me for life. Anyway, that means I’m going to have to ask you out liking nothing more than your face, which is a great risk for me.”

I glanced down at myself. “You don’t like my body?” It may not be anything special but it was feminine enough for when I needed it to turn on the charm. It used to be good enough for Clark, although I suddenly realised that I had no idea whether Clark was actually thinking about me while he was with me.

“I don’t know. It’s hidden behind your desk.”

“Oh.”

“So, Lois Lane, would you like to go out for a drink sometime?”

Daniel smiled at me and I could see a little fear in his eyes. He was actually worried that I might say no. It was fair enough, his chat-up technique hadn’t been the best I’d ever come across, however he did seem nice, good-looking and it wasn’t as if I had any better plans. Daniel might prove to be really good for me. And I was in serious need of something good to happening to me.

“Sure.”

To Be Continued...