From Part 4 ...
Lois forced herself to stand and walk past the caskets. She negotiated the four steps and reached the lectern. She turned, carefully positioned her notes, took a great, shuddering breath and looked up – searching for Clark, desperate for his reassurance and understanding.
His seat was empty.
Stunned, she looked to the far end of the church – just in time to see the back of Clark Kent disappear out of the church.
ADRIFT
Part 5
He’d left her.
Gone.
Lois’s control disintegrated.
The heads and shoulders of the seated people blurred into an assortment of blobs. She drooped against the lectern, heaving, as huge tears teemed down her cheeks and plopped onto her notes.
She registered the collective gasp as she began to weep and the uncomfortable shuffling as it became obvious she would not be able to speak one word.
Perry materialised beside her and pushed a large, clean handkerchief into her hand. He ushered her back to her pew, sitting beside her in Clark’s empty place.
With a monumental effort, Lois straightened and forced her unseeing eyes to the minister. She knew he read her words, but they floated over her as if unrelated to the searing pain inside her. The cloud had darkened, thickened, congested.
When the funeral finished, Perry shepherded her down the aisle in the wake of the caskets. They emerged from the church and the bright sunshine stung Lois’s waterlogged eyes. She slumped forward. Perry’s arms tightened around her shoulders.
“I can’t do it,” she sobbed. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Lois, just a few more minutes, darlin’,” Perry said. “I’ll stay with you.”
That’s what Clark had promised. She searched for him; scanned every face, daring to hope he was here, waiting for her, waiting to surround her with his support.
But Clark was not here. He’d gone.
Perry put her in the Jeep and drove them to the cemetery behind the gleaming black hearse. Lois closed her eyes and concentrated solely on curbing the aftershock convulsions that jangled through her body.
They arrived at the cemetery and in an unworldly void, Lois watched as the two white caskets containing the bodies of her parents were lowered into neighbouring grave sites.
When it was done, she looked up at Perry and gathered every scrap of available tenacity. “Either you take me home now,” she said, low and indisputable, “Or I call a cab.”
“I’ll take you home,” he surrendered.
Once in her apartment, she faced Perry. She had never seen him so ashen. “Thank you for bringing me home,” she said stiffly. “Please leave now. I want to be alone.”
“Lois –“
“Perry, if you care about me at all, please leave. I have to be alone. I can’t take any more.”
He hesitated, clearly undecided.
Lois turned from him, walked to her phone and took it off the hook. She went into her bedroom and firmly shut the door.
She lay on her bed and finally let go. Her tears came, relentless and terrifying in their intensity.
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It was dark outside when the last of her sobs squeezed from Lois’s rigid throat. Her head felt like it had been split with an axe. Her face was hot, her body shivery. Every muscle ached. Her breathing was coarse and irregular. Her lungs hurt and her eyes felt like her eyelids had turned to sandpaper.
Her isolation throbbed through every heartbeat.
A muffled knock sounded on her door.
Lois released the covers from one side of the bed. Slowly and painfully, she crawled between the cool sheets and covered herself completely.
She curled into the smallest ball she could and shut out the world.
She wanted one thing only. To never have to move again.
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Clark, in the Suit but without the cape, lay flat on his stomach, chin wedged against the floor as he reached forward, under the bed.
His fingers stopped just short of her – the little girl cowering into the corner.
He spoke to her – a few words of comfort and reassurance, but she couldn’t hear him over the roar.
He considered wriggling forward, taking hold of her, and hauling her out. But that would frighten her more. And if she resisted, she'd hurt herself against the bed.
Clark stood and dragged the triple bunk bed away from the corner. He hurried to the now-uncovered girl and squatted beside her.
She was tiny – little more than a baby, probably not yet three. She had soft, dark curls and black eyes - red-rimmed from the smoke. Clark smiled and held his hand towards her.
She considered him, solemnly, but didn’t move. She had the cutest rosebud mouth.
Clark spoke again, hoping she would sense she had nothing to fear from him. But fear or not, he had to get her out of here, and he had to get her out now. The smoke was closing in on them and the building could crumble at any time. He reached towards her. She didn’t flinch. He scooped her into his arms, surprised by how little she weighed.
He curved his shoulders and dropped his head forward to ensure she was protected as they flew through the broken window. Once outside, he took her beyond the reach of the menacing heat and carefully stood her on the lush grass. He knelt next to her and checked for injuries. There was nothing obvious.
She was the last one.
The last one of at least eighty Honduran children he had rescued from their burning orphanage. He’d lost count after about fifteen.
Two children, he knew, were already dead when he’d laid them on the ground. There hadn’t been time to grieve or even pay respect – not while other children were still trapped amidst the flames.
Clark looked from the little girl to the blackened buildings. Flames curled from two of the second floor windows and smoke clustered thickly, but the fire fighters had the blaze under control. He doubted the combination of fire and water would leave anything that could be salvaged.
He x-rayed into the ravaged buildings, doing one final, careful sweep to ensure no one was still inside. Another ambulance arrived as two others shuttled away, taking burned, scared, traumatised children to the hospital.
Clark looked back to the little girl and noticed her shiver, despite the warmth of the late afternoon sun. He darted to the crumpled red heap that was his cape. He’d removed it and tossed it onto the ground before his first confrontation with the fire.
He placed the cape across the girl’s shoulders and tucked it around her little body. He picked her up and held her against his chest. With a soft sigh, she laid her head on his shoulder and eased into his neck, causing a surge of protectiveness to rise within him. She was so defenceless, so young, so alone. There should be a mother’s arms straining towards her with tearful relief. Instead ... he elevated slowly and flew her to the hospital.
A nurse greeted him, showing no surprise at his Suit. She’d probably already heard about the strange flying man who’d rescued children from amongst the flames consuming their orphanage. She reached for the little girl and Clark felt a sudden reluctance to let her go. He lifted her gently from his shoulder and relinquished her to the nurse, still bundled in his cape.
He left the hospital, flew back to the orphanage and dipped below the suspended smoke cloud. Only the fire crews remained and the final wisps of flame were stagnant and unthreatening. Confident his part was done, he flew back to Metropolis.
In his apartment, Clark showered, lingering long in the stream of almost-boiling water. He scrubbed his hair, unleashing the clinging smoke. He wished it was as easy to expunge the heaviness - the heaviness which had pervaded his heart the instant he’d chosen to desert Lois.
He relived again the moment he’d reached the door of the church. The moment he heard Lois’s quick intake of breath. He’d wanted so much to turn – to meet her eyes and attempt to transmit something of his wretchedness at leaving her.
But he’d known that had he turned, had he seen her pain at his betrayal, he would not have had the strength to leave.
So he hadn’t even turned. He had simply walked out. Run out.
He had heard her every sob, every wail. Even as he’d systematically worked through the orphanage, dodging the flames and the water, finding and saving numerous children, his hearing had been tuned to her. To Lois.
Clark dried himself and slowly dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He should go to Lois. He *had* to go to Lois.
She would be angry, confused, hurt. And who could blame her?
He didn’t have the heart for the confrontation he knew was inevitable. He wanted to drop into his bed, empty his mind and sleep off the horrors of the day. Instead, he walked, disconsolately, to Lois’s apartment.
At her door, he hesitated. He could hear her crying. He could feel her desolation. He wanted to hold her. So much. To pull her against his body and feel her arms tighten around his neck. To feel her breath on his face. To have her heart beating in tandem with his – soothing away their pain.
He knocked. She silenced for a moment, then he heard smothered movement. Her sobbing continued, more muffled now.
Clark collapsed down the wall and hunched, elbows on his knees and head slumped into his hands as he tried to think clearly.
He could knock again. But she’d heard his first knock and refused to respond.
He could break down her door. But it wasn’t the physical barrier of the door which kept him out.
He felt destitute, barren. He had nothing left to give Lois, no support, no comfort, nothing.
He flinched as his memories lashed him. Memories of the small, unresponsive bodies of the two children he hadn’t saved. He could still feel their lifelessness in his arms, against his beating heart.
He’d carried dead calves before, little creatures born too early, or too weak to make it through the first few days of life, but never a dead human. A dead child.
On the other side of the closed door, Lois was still weeping, softer now, but no less torn. Her breathing was serrated; each in-breath barbed with suffering.
Sometime in the future, he was going to have to explain to Lois why he had left her. He was going to have to tell her truth. No other explanation would suffice. From the moment he’d known he loved her, he’d wanted to tell her, but he’d temporised, hoping for the ideal moment.
Now, he would have to do it in the worst possible circumstances.
Clark groaned. He couldn’t do it right now. He *really* couldn’t do it now.
He stood and shuffled away. Back in his apartment, he took the Superman suit from where he’d tossed it to the back of the closet. He washed it, heat-vision dried it and hung it, alongside several others. He closed the closet, feeling as if he was shutting the door on a part of his life.
He walked to the shower again, thinking it might cleanse the despair from his soul. He turned on the faucet and watched while steam clouded the glass. Then, on sudden impulse, he turned off the water and spun back into the Suit.
Minutes later, he was back in the hospital in Honduras. He found the nurse who’d taken the girl from him. “Could I sit with the little girl?” he asked in Spanish.
The nurse hesitated for a moment, then nodded her consent. Maybe she understood the trauma of little lives that couldn’t be saved.
The nurse led him to a flight of stairs. Under them, the little girl lay on a thin mattress on the floor, covered by his cape. She seemed to be peacefully asleep. “We have no other beds,” the nurse explained.
“Is she all right?” Clark asked.
“She is just sleeping. She will be fine.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Rosa,” the nurse replied.
Clark almost smiled. Of course it was. With a mouth like hers, how could she be called anything else?
Clark sat on the floor next to the mattress. Through the long hours of darkness, he watched Rosa sleep and listened to Lois’s tattered breaths. In the depth of the night, the nurse brought a cup of strong, bitter coffee and hesitantly offered it to him. He smiled his thanks, appreciating her gesture.
Rosa stirred and woke as the first rays of early morning sunlight crept through the window high above the stairs. She sat up and her dark, solemn eyes settled on Clark for a long moment.
He wondered if she’d remember him.
She crawled out of his cape and towards him. She reached for his chest and touched his ‘S’ with tiny, enquiring fingers.
“Bonito,” she said gravely.
From nowhere came a smile Clark didn’t know he had. Rosa smiled back at him, with the irresistible simplicity of the very young.
The nurse came, smiling at them despite her obvious fatigue. Clark stood and with a final wave to Rosa, left.
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An hour later, Clark stepped from the elevator at the Planet and stopped abruptly. Lois was at her desk. He hadn’t expected her to be here.
He’d known she’d left her apartment. He’d flown by on his way home. He’d assumed she was with Lucy or maybe Uncle Mike. While flying back to Metropolis, he’d turned off his superhearing, aware his continuous monitoring invaded her privacy way too much.
Clark knew he would have to see her, would have to talk with her, but he really had hoped their first encounter wouldn’t be this public. However, he couldn’t turn around and retreat into the elevator, so he approached his desk, surreptitiously studying her.
He couldn’t walk past her. Couldn’t pretend the events of yesterday were of no consequence. Couldn’t pretend he hadn’t ripped out her already tortured heart. He forced himself to detour to her desk. “Lois?” he said uncertainly.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were red and puffy, despite more make-up than usual. “Clark,” she said, totally devoid of expression.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said, trying to douse the hopelessness in his voice.
“It’s OK,” she said dismissively. She looked back to her monitor.
“It’s *not* OK,” he said brokenly.
“Yes, it is,” she said, without taking her eyes from whatever she was working on. “Best I find out now.”
His heart crashed somewhere near the floor. “Find out what?” he dared to ask.
“Find out how it is with us.”
Words in his own defence sprung into his mind and nearly out of his mouth. He clamped them just in time. “Lois, there were reasons.”
“What reasons?” she said, her disinterest smouldering.
He crouched beside her desk. “I can’t tell you here,” he rasped. “Come with me now. Somewhere we can be alone. I’ll tell –“
“Clark,” she said coolly and distantly. “Before you say anything else, you should understand this - whatever might have been between us is over.”
*Over*. With one word, his life shattered into tiny fragments around his feet. “You can’t forgive me?” he asked, knowing his agony lay bare in his tone.
She looked at him then, hard and cold and almost unrecognisable from the Lois he loved. “It’s not about forgiveness. It’s about who you are and what I need. They’re not compatible.”
“Lois,” he begged. “*Please* let me explain.”
She turned back to her work. “It’s over, Clark. Please make this easy for both of us and accept it.”
His hand ached to touch her. Her shoulder, her arm, the very tip of one finger - anything to make a connection. “How are you?” he asked softly. “And please don’t tell me you’re fine.”
“Exactly how you’d expect for someone who lost both parents a week ago. I’m exhausted, drained, numb, grieving and in physical pain. I’m angry and I’m sad and I’m confused. I can’t sleep, I can’t think. Sometimes I struggle just to breathe. I can’t imagine ever feeling normal again and I’m frightened that I can’t do this and I miss my parents more than I would have thought possible.” She glared at him. “Is that enough detail for you?”
He dropped his head. “Lois,” he breathed.
“Do you want to help me through this?” she asked.
His head jolted up, hope birthing. “Anything, Lois. I’ll do anything to help you.”
“Then stay away,” she said. “Stay right away from me. I want to be alone.”
Feeling as if every single part of him had shattered, Clark receded to his desk, head low, shoulders sagged.
He’d lost Lois.
It wasn’t the funeral. It wasn’t the deaths of her parents. It was his differences. The unfathomable things about him which meant he simply didn’t fit into this world. Could never fit.
He should have told her. Better yet, he should have stayed right away from her.
By grasping for the one thing he craved more than anything else, by pretending he was just a normal guy, he’d had them both chasing impossibilities.
Back at his desk, Clark noticed the morning edition of the Planet. He picked it up, not out of interest, but so he could hide behind it and avoid having to look at Lois.
The front page was dominated by a huge photo. A photo of him, in the Suit, holding Rosa, wrapped in his cape. It must have been taken just before he’d flown her to the hospital.
She looked so small against his chest. So vulnerable.
The headline read, ‘OUR SUPERMAN SAVES ORPHANS’.
Clark speed-read the story, written by a foreign correspondent. The unadulterated praise and appreciation for what Superman had done sat raw in his gut. The two dead children warranted one line.
Clark folded the paper and took it with him as he strode out of the newsroom.
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Lois purposefully stayed at the Planet as late as she could, despite not managing to write one usable word all day.
Her confrontation with Clark had been as strained and as difficult as she had feared, but there was solace now that it was done. She’d sighed with relief when he’d left and had been grateful that he hadn’t returned. She heard someone mention he’d phoned in a story.
On the way home, she bought Chinese carry-out. Before she could sit down to eat, there was a knock on her window. She didn’t have to draw back the curtain to know who was there.
“Superman,” she said, as she opened the window for him. “How are you?”
He stepped into her room almost hesitantly and folded his arms before answering. “I actually came to find out how you are.” His voice seemed a little quivery. Smoke inhalation, perhaps?
“I’m OK,” she said steadily. She stepped forward and tentatively put her hand on his forearm. “Are you all right?”
When he took a moment to answer, she quickly removed her hand. He probably didn’t like being touched. “I’m OK too,” he said.
“You should be better than OK,” she told him staunchly. “Many of those children would be dead now, if you hadn’t been there.”
“Two did die.”
His wretchedness leaked through his usual inscrutable composure and Lois couldn’t resist returning her hand to his arm. After all, he was strong enough to flick it off, if he really didn’t want it there. “They were dead before you got there,” she reminded him softly. “They didn’t have a chance.”
He said nothing.
Lois backed away and picked up the morning edition of the Planet. She gazed at the photo. “Have you seen this?” she asked, showing him.
He nodded, with no discernable reaction to the photo, and she wondered what emotions hid behind the cloak of his static veneer.
“It’s a beautiful photo,” she said. “So poignant.”
“Her name is Rosa.”
She was surprised he knew. More surprised that he shared the information with her. “Is she going to be all right?”
“Yes.” He looked down to his boots and then swept the room, managing to avoid her eyes. “I went –“
Lois put her hand on his arm again. “You went ...” she encouraged.
Superman seemed undecided as to whether to continue. She deepened her touch on his arm and looked directly into his eyes. “I went back ... later,” he said. “Rosa woke up and said my ‘S’ was ... pretty.”
Lois smiled, even as her eyes flooded.
“I have to go,” he said and turned away. Her hand slipped from his arm.
“Superman?”
He turned back.
“When you came before ... I was upset. I’m sorry if it sounded like I blamed you for not being there for my parents. I don’t think that ... I never did. I don’t know where it came from.”
“Thank you.” He stepped quickly out of the window and flew away.
Lois stared out of the window, deep in thought. Somehow she knew Superman felt responsible for the deaths of those two children. For not being able to save them. And for not being there to save her parents.
She wished she’d hugged him.
But trying to hug someone around those tightly crossed arms would be like trying to hug a brick outhouse.
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Clark patrolled as he flew home – as had become his habit. He rescued a woman about to be robbed by two young men, but other than that, everything was quiet. Which meant he had no choice but to go home and face his indecisiveness.
In his apartment, he spun out of his Suit and into pants and a shirt and sat on his couch.
He could not remember ever being so unsure about what he should do. He knew he had to go to Lois, but when? Now? Tomorrow? Next week?
He decided to do it now – although the thought of it twisted apprehension through his insides – simply because he would see her at the Planet tomorrow and it would – perhaps – be marginally easier if they had already talked.
He certainly couldn’t do this at the Planet – or anywhere public.
And he knew she was home now.
So ...
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Lois had eaten less than a quarter of her carry-out. She pushed the rest into the fridge, knowing even as she did, that it was unlikely she would ever finish the meal.
Lucy had left this morning. She was driving home with Aaron. Lois dialled her number, but Lucy didn’t answer.
Lois replaced the phone, wondering what to do now. She could go to bed, but didn’t feel sleepy at all. She turned on the television, flicked through at least ten channels and turned it off in disgust.
A knock sounded on her door and she tensed.
Clark?
He *would* come, she knew that with certainty. He wouldn’t ... couldn’t leave things between them so ... unfinished. But *now*? She looked through the peephole. It was him. Her insides convulsed and her heart accelerated.
She wanted to ignore him, to sneak into her bathroom and turn on the shower and hope he’d go away. But this had to be done. And the sooner it was done, the sooner she could shut down her old life and begin to reconstruct whatever was possible in her new life.
She opened the door and her traitorous heart began to gallop. She saw his trepidation and almost capitulated. She force-fed her mind with the image of him running from the church and waited until he spoke.
“May I come in?” he asked quietly.
She stood back to let him in. Once he was in, she shut the door and backed against it, still waiting.
“Lois, I’m sorry,” Clark said, his voice not quite steady. “I’m *so* sorry.”
The depths of his brokenness almost caused her to cave again. Her tears sprung and escaped down her cheeks. “Why did you leave me?” she asked bleakly.
“I had to.”
She eyed him with undiluted scorn. “You *had* to?” she sneered.
He stared at the floor, hands deep in his pockets. “I’m S-“
“I *know* you’re sorry, Clark,” she cried. “You could say it a thousand times and it won’t change anything. It won’t change that on the worst day of my life, the man I thought loved me walked out exactly when I needed him. It won’t change that you promised we would do this together, only for me to discover that your together wasn’t quite as together as I had imagined.” Her breathing was rough and laboured.
Clark slowly raised his eyes from the floor. He looked like a man facing his execution. “Lois,“ he grated. “I’m S-“
“Clark!” she screamed. “You just don’t get it, do you? *Sorry* means absolutely nothing except you’d like me to get over being hurt. What happens next time, what happens when I need you next time? Can you promise me you won’t walk out again?”
He stared at her, dumbly.
“Can you?” she demanded, her voice grim and unrelenting.
“No,” he said, defeated.
Her eyes flooded. “I need more than that.” She moved forward and opened her door. “Get out, Clark.”
For a moment, he seemed too dumbfounded to move. Then, with despair beyond description, he trudged out of her apartment.
She slammed her door and collapsed against it, weeping uncontrollably.
