From Part 13:
She was about to leave the room when the window was opened from the other side. Clark stepped into the room, dressed as Superman. Something about the sight of him in the suit still took her breath away. He was still the world’s purest symbol of hope. He was, in every conceivable way, her hero.
“Hey,” he said quietly, his tone so unlike the one Superman used.
“Hi,” she replied. “Everything go okay?”
“I guess.” His tone was non-committal. He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t think this is going to work,” he said flatly.
She looked at him, puzzled. Lois couldn’t read the expression on his face and it frustrated her. She used to know her husband so well. “I can’t tell Dr. Friskin what’s wrong unless I tell her about us.”
It made sense. Granted, the way he worded it made it sound to her like what was wrong was them. “So tell her,” she replied.
“Tell her what, our secret?” he asked skeptically.
“You don’t have to tell her everything,” she replied.
“If I tell her about my invulnerable wife, she’ll know it’s you and from there…she’s smart enough, she’ll probably put it all together.”
“I know.” Lois knew it was certainly possible, but Dr. Friskin already had more than enough information to destroy Ultrawoman, if that was what she intended to do. Of course, nothing the good doctor had ever done even hinted at the possibility that she would betray Ultrawoman’s confidence. If running this risk was what it took for Clark to get the help he needed, so be it.
“I don’t want to do this,” he confessed. She walked across the room and pulled him into her arms.
“I know, sweetheart,” she whispered.
“I just wish there were another way,” he murmured as he held her tightly. Lois closed her eyes and hugged him just a little tighter.
********
Part 14:
<<….I know there’s a lot going on in your life right now, but the book’s official release date is next week…>>
Lois frowned as she held the phone against her ear. She didn’t really want to speak to her editor, but she could only avoid the other woman’s calls for so long before it would be considered a breach of her contract. “Can’t we push it back?” she asked, exasperated.
<<Are you kidding? The media buzz around you will probably double the first week’s sales.>>
Lois scowled severely even though the other woman obviously couldn’t see her expression. “Are you honestly telling me to use my husband’s ordeal to sell a few more books?”
<<No, of course not.>> Joan seemed to be backtracking from her initial position, which didn’t surprise Lois in the slightest. <<You don’t have to say a word about Clark, you don’t need to answer any questions about him.>>
“That’s condition number one for any interviews or panels or talk shows or whatever. My family is absolutely off limits,” Lois replied emphatically.
She could hear her editor sigh on the other end of the line. But Joan really had no choice but to agree. <<We’ll make that clear.>> Lois didn’t much care if she got a reputation as a prima donna guest on the morning talk show circuit. She had an obligation to promote the book. She did not have an obligation to provide fodder for the tabloids.
“I’d still prefer to push the release back a few weeks…”
<<Lois, I wish we could, but the books have already shipped. Sellers are going to go nuts if we make them sit on the inventory any longer.>>
She looked up as Clark walked into the kitchen and sat down beside her at the table. Lois put her hand over the receiver. “I’m trying to see if they’ll push back the book release,” she told him.
He gave her a puzzled look. “You don’t have to do that on my account,” he said.
“Are you sure? It’s hectic enough around here without one of us actively going out and looking for other reporters.”
“It’ll be fine,” he replied. “Besides, at least one of us should probably be drawing a paycheck.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table.
Lois tried not to react, not sure how he would feel about the fact that even if she did nothing to promote the book, she wouldn’t really have to work for a good long time; Lois Lane the columnist and author made a lot more money than Lois Lane the investigative reporter had. He’d been subtly and sometimes not so subtly measuring her accomplishments while he was gone, probably comparing them to his own. She took her hand off the mouth piece of the phone, this still felt like a bad idea to her, but she wasn’t sure she had much by way of alternatives. “All right, Joan, let me know what next week’s schedule looks like.”
She made note of the morning shows she was supposed to do, along with the radio spots and the book signings. Even though she’d be able to fly herself to all of these events—under the guise of Lois Lane being difficult and preferring to make her own travel arrangements—it would still take up so much time that she would have preferred to spend at home.
“So what’s it like?” he asked after she hung up the phone. “All the book tours and being on the other side of interviews?”
“It’s not really for me,” she admitted with a shrug. “You were always much better about interviews as Superman. Trust me, the press likes you a lot more than it likes Ultrawoman.”
He shook his head. “I doubt that.”
“That’s because you haven’t tried interviewing me,” she said with a slight smile.
“Was it tough to give up investigating?”
“Honestly, it was the least of my concerns,” she admitted. “I knew I needed help with the baby and I missed you so much. Moving out here made sense. Even if Smallville didn’t need any investigative journalists.”
He looked at her with haunted eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you,” he said.
She took his hand in hers. “I know,” she whispered. “But it wasn’t your fault.”
Clark turned his gaze downward toward the surface of the table. “I abandoned you. And I abandoned him.”
“If you hadn’t left, we wouldn’t have gotten married that night. We would never have had Jon. According to Bernie, we might never have had children,” she said, remembering how the scientist had explained to her that it was probable that the only reason she’d been able to become pregnant with Clark’s child was because she’d had his powers.
Even though he didn’t look up she could see him frown. “He told me that, too.” Clark looked back up at her, his mouth set in a thin, hard line and his brow knitted. “Are you saying you think all of this happened for a reason?”
She shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “I’ve seen too much—too many awful things that couldn’t possibly be justified—to believe that things happen for a reason. But even if we could change the past and give ourselves the lives we thought we should have had, we couldn’t do it without giving up things we’d rather die than lose. I just think you can’t always untangle the good from the bad.”
********
Clark dreaded going to the therapist the way other people dreaded the dentist. He lay on the couch, feeling ridiculous in his cape and tights. He now only wore them to go the shrink, which made him feel even more like an imposter—a fake superhero who didn’t even fill out the suit very well. Taking a deep breath, he tried to figure out how he should begin. “You asked me about the people I left behind and I said I didn’t want to talk about them,” he began. “But I’m not sure this is going to work if I don’t, so here goes. There are people here who’ve been part of my life ever since I arrived on Earth. They’re my family." he began. "…And then there’s my wife."
More scratching. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at Dr. Friskin. "I hadn't realized you'd gotten married since we last spoke. Congratulations."
Clark nodded. "Thanks."
"So I take it the reason you don't talk about your wife, don't wear a wedding band, is because you want to protect her?"
He should have known that one was coming so soon. He tried to think of a way to respond quickly. His first thought was to lie blatantly. Lying to a shrink wasn't like perjury. So maybe it wasn't so bad. Then again, Superman wasn't supposed to lie and it wasn't as though he had to protect his secret. Dr. Friskin had already had plenty of opportunities to divulge information about either him or Lois and had done no such thing. And would this therapy thing actually work if he wasn't honest? So maybe he could just leave out some specifics. "My wife is invulnerable," he said at long last.
"I see," Dr. Friskin replied.
"It's more to protect our privacy," he added. "The more people think that Superman is just a set of powers in a suit who spends all of his time doing rescues, the easier that is."
"And so you had to leave your wife behind?"
"Yes," he replied.
"How did she react to your decision to go?"
"It wasn't just my decision," he replied. Lois's words from what seemed like a thousand lifetimes ago: 'If you have to go, I will be here. I will wait as long as it takes and I will be here when you come home to me.' And she had done that. She'd waited through years, without a single word from him, or a shred of evidence to let her know he was all right. Without reason to hope, she'd kept hoping nonetheless. "If she'd asked me to stay, I think I would have. It wasn't exactly her blessing, but I went with her acceptance."
"And how are things between the two of you now?"
"It's complicated," he began.
"It always is."
"I love her more than anything. Sometimes the only thing that kept me going was the hope that I might be able to come back and be with her. I thought that as soon as I got back here, everything would be fine. And it isn't and I don't know how to fix that."
"You're taking the first step, Superman," Dr. Friskin assured him. It felt so odd to have her calling him that when he'd dropped the Superman façade long ago.
"That's largely my wife's doing. She practically begged me to talk to someone."
"Am I right in assuming that you saw some terrible things during that war?" Dr. Friskin asked, still scrawling on the notepad. He could feel her gaze and he found himself wanting to shrink away.
"Yeah," he admitted. "It was awful."
"Then your wife couldn't have given you better advice. You said your relationship with her now is complicated, what did you mean by that?”
Clark sighed and closed his eyes. For a long moment, he remained silent and still, just listening to his heartbeat and trying to slow it down. “I guess I expected to just pick things up as though nothing had happened. But everything is so different now. We’re both so different. I’m always misinterpreting things, things I never would have gotten wrong before. But it’s like we’re not in synch anymore. And I can’t help feeling like…” he trailed off.
“Like what?”
“I’ve always known that she’s the most capable person in the world, but I guess I was just kind of humbled by everything she’d done while I was away. I knew she missed me, but it was like she didn’t really need me. Not the way I needed her. I was barely holding it together for four years and here she is, trying to work me back into her life, when she was doing just fine without me.”
“Have you talked to her about this?”
“Sort of,” he replied. “I mean, she always tells me how much she needs me and how badly she missed me. And that she needed help to get through the last four years. But it’s hard not to feel like I don’t measure up.”
“To her expectations, or yours?” Dr. Friskin prodded gently.
Huh. He should have expected the analytical jujitsu. “I don’t know, both I guess,” he ventured.
“Well how much have you told her about your experiences?”
He shrugged. “Practically nothing,” he admitted.
“So why do you think you’d be falling short of her expectations?”
And there it was. The submission hold. The diminutive therapist was out to make him cry uncle. “Because I’m a basket case,” he admitted bitterly. “I can’t sleep because the nightmares are so bad. And when she asks me what’s wrong, I yell at her. I’m always in a bad mood. I’m always spoiling for a fight. And this isn’t me.”
“How is she handling this change in your behavior?”
“She’s trying to be patient. I know that. But she also asks me to talk to her, to tell her what’s wrong and I don’t know how to do that.”
“Why?”
It was the simplest question in the world and yet, the damnedest. Why? Why couldn’t he talk to his wife? “Because it was bad enough living through it once. And if I tell her what happened, I won’t have to worry about not living up to her expectations. We’ll both *know* that I didn’t measure up.”
********
“You’re it, Daddy!” Jon squealed as he tagged his father and turned around to quickly run the other way. Clark chased after his giggling son through the tall grass. The light was fading as day descended into twilight. He scooped his little boy up in his arms and Jon laughed in delight.
“The tickle monster’s got you!” Clark exclaimed as he tickled Jon. His son squirmed and laughed as Clark carried him back toward the farmhouse. Lois was waiting for them on the porch, a contented smile on her face.
“Ready to go to bed, little man?” she asked.
“I’m not sleepy,” Jon protested, even as he yawned.
“Come on, let’s go brush our teeth,” Clark announced, carrying Jon into the house. He helped his son get ready for bed, happy to have a role in Jon’s nightly rituals. When Lois came in to read Jon’s bedtime story, he hung back in the doorway. The bedtime story was still a mother-son bonding experience, but he no longer felt the need to retreat from it. The story finished, both Clark and Lois tucked Jon in.
“I love you. Goodnight, sweetheart,” Lois said softly as she kissed her son’s forehead.
“Goodnight, buddy, I love you.” Clark bent down to kiss his son goodnight.
“Goodnight Mommy, goodnight Daddy. I love you.” Jon murmured sleepily.
Clark followed his wife out of the room, turning off the lights and closing the door softly.
“You’re it,” she said, swatting him playfully on the arm. Clark regarded her curiously. Had she just ‘tagged’ him?
As if to answer, she raced to the other end of the hallway in a burst of superspeed. “Last one to the Pacific is a rotten egg,” she declared.
“Lois, you can’t be serious,” he said as he shook his head.
“I’m serious about kicking your butt. Don’t tell me you forgot what a race is,” she taunted him mischievously. She seemed surprised when, in a burst of speed of his own, he caught her at the end of the hallway and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed his wife, enjoying the moment of contentment.
“You’re it,” he said with a slight grin before racing out the door and rocketing into the night’s sky with her close behind him. Flying westward toward the setting sun for no reason except the pure joy of it was an exhilarating experience. He watched as she dove toward the water below, plunging headfirst into the bracing waves of the Pacific. Clark followed her, feeling the cold water sluice over him as he careened through the ocean, dodging a pod of startled dolphins. She surfaced and hovered over the water, smiling almost impishly at him. He drifted lazily up toward her, invigorated by the crisp water and the feel of the breeze over his wet skin.
He was almost at the same altitude she was when she suddenly took off again. He could do nothing but follow her as they traced the familiar features of a planet he’d spent so much of his youth exploring. He chased her across the painted sky over expansive deserts and through the sunrise over mountains half a world away from home. Clark stilled for a moment in the Arctic Circle, awed by the early demonstration of the Northern Lights over an otherwise desolate landscape. The swirls and streams of green, blue, and red light never failed to capture his imagination, no matter how many times he’d seen it. Lois paused as well, hovering not too far from where he was; but he couldn’t tell if she was watching the lights or him.
It was evening in the South Pacific when he overtook her. From the corner of his eye, he could see Lois flying just below and slightly behind him, her face set in a contented smile that matched what he felt. He swooped down suddenly, catching her in his arms. They spun around in a dizzying circle from her momentum and slowed to drift aimlessly, high above the Earth.
“You caught me,” she murmured before he kissed her again.
She sighed softly and it was almost his undoing. He felt them drop a few feet, but she slowed their descent and floated them back upwards. “Actually, I think you caught me,” he replied, his voice husky. “You always do.”
“And I always will,” she promised. Lois took his hand in hers. “Come with me,” she whispered. He nodded and allowed her to lead the way. They flew over the deep blue waters wordlessly, hand in hand. He could see the last rays of light as the sun disappeared behind the curve of the Earth. They finally descended over an atoll near Micronesia. There were thousands of uninhabited little islands scattered like crumbs throughout the Pacific. Places inaccessible to everyone except the two of them. He scanned the island Lois had selected, secluded and peaceful.
As they floated down to the beach, he watched as she suddenly lit the hundreds of candles strewn over the beach. They landed softly in the sand, in a small clearing amidst the sea of flickering and dancing lights. A blanket had been spread across the ground. A curious picnic basket sat nearby, as though it wasn’t remarkably out of place here, hundreds of miles from anything resembling civilization.
He smiled at her, his heart feeling lighter than it had in years. “Are you trying to seduce me, Ms. Lane?” he asked as he removed her mask.
She gave him a wicked grin as she leaned in to kiss him. “You better believe it,” she whispered against his lips. Lois wrapped her arms around his neck as his hands settled on her waist. The expression in her eyes suddenly softened. “I thought it would be a nice surprise, you know, a way to celebrate all those anniversaries and birthdays we didn’t get to share with each other.” Her tone was almost wistful.
“I didn’t get you a present,” he said sadly.
“Yes you did,” she whispered, her voice unsteady. “You came home to me.”
He caressed her cheek and kissed her again, feeling almost intoxicated by the sensation. In the background, small waves crashed on the beach, but the sound faded into oblivion. All he could hear was her heartbeat and the soft sigh that escaped her lips as he broke off the kiss. “I love you,” he said in a harsh whisper, his voice thick with emotion. They fell to their knees on the blanket, still in each others’ arms.
********
Lois stared up at the dark canopy, strewn with glittering stars, overhead. The moon was slung low in the sky, its light reflected on the water. Her beloved slept beside her, their bodies covered only by his cape. A soft breeze stirred, extinguishing some of the candles. Only a few continued to flicker and burn. She listened to the sound of his breathing, steady and even. As if of its own volition, her hand reached out to stroke his dark hair. He murmured something she couldn’t quite make out, but the tone of his voice told her that her gentle ministrations soothed him.
Her heart nearly burst in her chest with love for the man lying beside her, so peaceful, so seemingly content in silent repose. She wished for the power to freeze this moment, exactly as it was. She wanted him to know nothing but this kind of easy, drowsing, redolent happiness. The sort of bliss that wrapped around you like a warm blanket.
But tomorrow night she had her first promotional engagement for her book. And no matter how much she wanted to, they couldn’t keep flying away from the rising sun, trying to keep the night from ending.
Even though it was fleeting, even though the dawn would overtake them soon enough, she had desperately needed this night with her husband. She sensed that he’d needed it, too. For just one night, there was no one to rescue. No ghosts to fight. No haunted memories or cruel reminders of what they’d lost. Leaning closer to him, she gently brushed her lips first against his temple, then his neck, then his shoulder. She closed her eyes and settled beside her husband, allowing herself to drift peacefully into sleep.
********
Whatever patience motherhood had taught Lois, it didn’t transfer easily to the ordeal of sitting through makeup for TV interviews. The makeup artist’s repeated praises for how great Lois’s skin was didn’t seem to diminish her desire to glob on copious amounts of the studio grade foundation and powder.
There was a sharp knock on the dressing room door. “Five minutes, Ms. Lane,” someone shouted from the other side.
One of the techs checked the volume on the microphone clipped to her suit jacket. “All set,” he announced.
“Perfect!” the makeup artist announced.
She was hustled from the dressing room to the waiting area backstage. She could hear the news program’s hosts as they rattled off the highlights of her professional biography. “…author of the bestseller ‘World Full of Heroes’ and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the Daily Planet’s Lois Lane.”
Lois walked across the stage to her seat between the program’s two hosts. “Thanks for having me,” she said as she shook hands with the hosts. Dave Kiley and Maura Madison were fairly well regarded, as TV news program hosts went. They had a reputation for playing up controversies for ratings bumps, but who in their business didn’t? Besides, her book was hardly controversial, at least not by the standards of political sex and embezzlement scandals. So long as they stayed on topic, the interview would be a nice promo for her book’s release the following day.
She sat down at the table. A copy of her book was propped up in front of her. The lights aimed on her probably would have been blinding, had her eyes been sensitive to that sort of thing.
“Thanks for joining us, Lois,” Maura Madison said with the sort of generated warmth that TV personalities seemed to conjure whenever necessary.
“My pleasure,” Lois replied with a smile.
“So your new book, ‘The Shade of a Bitterwood Tree,’ comes out tomorrow?” Dave Kiley began.
“It does.” She nodded and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been working on it pretty much since I returned from my last trip to Kinwara.”
“I got my advance copy a week ago,” Dave said. “For all of you at home, it’s just so insightful, and you should go out and buy it immediately.”
“But I’m sure you know that what we’re all dying to hear about now is that husband of yours, the elusive Clark Kent.”
Lois tried to keep her expression neutral, knowing that she’d probably failed to keep the anger from flashing across her eyes. “Clark’s doing fine, but I’m sure he appreciates your concern,” she said evenly. “And getting back to Kinwara…”
“Come on, Lois,” Maura said in her irritatingly cheerful voice. “Dave’s right and it is an amazing book, so we’ve done our job in giving it a plug on the show, now let’s get down to the real news…your husband reappears, practically out of thin air, after four years. He tells us nothing about the Kryptonians or their supposed war. I mean, does he know when Superman is coming back? People are dying to know. They’d be hanging on his every word, if he would just tell us something!”
“I’m here to talk about the book, about what we can learn from Kinwara, and how we can prevent tragedies like it in the future. My family is off limits. I believe my agent made that perfectly clear to your producers.” Lois could hear the edge in her own voice.
“You’re a journalist,” Dave interjected as though she needed the reminder. “You’d be doing the same thing in our position.”
She blinked hard, taken aback by the comment. “No I wouldn’t,” she countered. “Have you stopped to ask yourselves what the social value of this line of questioning is? There’s no public right to know, no political or social issues at stake. You’re just trying to manipulate…no, you know what? We’re done.” She stood up abruptly, unclipping her microphone and dropping it on the table. Lois turned and walked off stage without so much as a single look back at the hosts or the cameras. She could hear Joan—somewhere in the bowels of the studio—screaming bloody murder at someone, hopefully one of the show’s producers.
What a fantastic way to begin her book tour.
********
Clark watched the television in stony silence, his jaw clamped shut. “Turn it off, please,” he said through clenched teeth. His father wordlessly lifted the remote and turned the program off.
“I can’t believe the nerve of those people…” his mother began.
“I can,” Clark replied. “I’m just another story to them. But now that story is all about how I’m hiding behind my wife.” He got up and walked out of the den.
********
