From Last Time:
“Can you imagine from Clark’s perspective how the last four years look to him? How he’s come home to find that his wife is, professionally, as successful as possible? That she’s admirably taken over a role he was once uniquely qualified to fill? That she’s established a parenting routine that didn’t depend on him?”
“But he saved a whole planet without the benefit of powers!” Lois exclaimed. “And since when was a marriage a competition?”
“I agree, it shouldn’t be one,” Dr. Friskin replied. “But you yourself were quick to dismiss your own accomplishments, Lois. I think that, while you and Clark approach problems differently and bring different life experiences to every issue, you’re really not that different from one another. Neither one of you wants to let the other down, but we can’t hide the things that bother us from the ones we love for very long. The old saying, ‘communication is the key to a successful marriage,’ there’s a reason why it’s a cliché.”
********
New Stuff:
“Okay, into bed,” she announced as she lifted her son up and deposited him on the bed. He scrambled under the covers and situated himself on the bed, waiting expectantly for his story. “What do you want us to read tonight?” she asked.
“I want Daddy to read the one about the dinosaurs!” Jon exclaimed. Clark felt the corners of his mouth turn up into a smile as he walked from the doorway toward the bed. He picked up the book they had written and drawn together about Tyrannosaurus Max and Doggy and sat down beside the bed. They read the story, punctuated by Jon’s explanations of all of the drawings. They finished the story and he and Lois kissed their little boy goodnight. He flipped off the light as they retreated silently from the room.
“A few months ago, I was afraid I’d never get to do that with him,” he admitted quietly.
She took his hand as they walked down the hallway of the farmhouse back toward their bedroom. “He adores you,” she said with a simple smile. “And I think you’re better at reading stories than I am.”
“I had a little bit of practice, reading with my lawyer’s niece, Thia”
“That was your lawyer, in the wheelchair?” She stopped walking and turned to face him. Off what he assumed was his confused expression, she continued. “She left you a message, on the globe.”
“I didn’t watch the other messages,” he said.
“There was one from Zara and Ching, and one from Tao Scion, too,” she said. “They all wanted to thank you.”
He merely nodded and was silent for a long moment. “Watch them with me?” he asked at last.
She smiled. “Of course.”
Back in the bedroom, he found the globe and activated it. He joined his wife on the bed, putting his arm around her as they sat facing the globe’s projected images. Clark glanced at Lois out of the corner of his eye. He could see her smiling as she watched the message from Lok Sim and Enza. Standing up, he stopped the globe just as the message from the young couple was ending.
“Was she injured during the war?”
He nodded tersely. “There was an attack on the main colony. She was evacuating her niece’s school. Enza got all of the children out and stayed behind to keep the rebels from following. She lost her right leg in a grenade blast and probably would have died had her husband not found her.”
“That’s awful,” Lois said softly.
“She never felt sorry for herself. She seemed to know how lucky she was just to be alive. Enza lost her entire family. When her brother and his wife were killed at the beginning of the war, she adopted their daughter. Thia was a year old. She was seven when I left.”
Lois stood up and walked toward him, slipping her hand in his. “They seem like wonderful people.”
“They are,” he agreed. “They’re the reason I’m hopeful for New Krypton’s future.” Clark turned his attention back to the globe’s images. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the anxiousness settling on Lois’s face. He skipped over the next message, knowing she was probably in no hurry to watch it again. “I’ve already seen this one,” he said. He had no idea what else was on the globe, but there were other recordings.
The scene that unfolded before them was a familiar one to him. It was strange to do so, but he watched himself walk down the aisle in a crowded Council chamber, dressed in the somber black uniform of the First Minister. From this perspective, it wasn’t hard to imagine he was watching someone else.
Shai stood at the front of the Council. In his loud, booming voice, he announced the First Minister. “Esteemed members of the High Council of Guardians, I present to you Kal El, son of the union of the Houses of Lo and El. Minister Par Excellence, Defender of our Civilization, Commander of the Armies of New Krypton, Servant of the People, and Guardian of a Sacred Trust.” He’d almost forgotten how embarrassing all of the pomp and circumstance was.
“When was this?” his wife asked, her eyes transfixed on the image.
“Exodus Day,” he said. “The anniversary of when the colonists left Krypton.” He wondered whether it was Tao Scion’s idea to include this recording on the globe, or if Zara had had a hand in it.
They remained silent, watching as he gave his speech.
"We have overcome tremendous difficulties, especially in these last few years. Through the blood and the tears of this planet's children, we have won our survival, but every day, we must earn that survival. We must be worthy of the life we've been given. We must learn to rise above our fear and hatred, to embrace forgiveness and compassion. We cannot build a future for this world on mistrust. So I am asking you, on this most somber of days, to remember not just what we have sacrificed, but what we believe. Look inside yourselves and ask, why do we deserve to survive? Why are we a people worth saving?" It was so odd to listen to his own voice, delivering the words in English, even though he’d done no such thing. But the words were exactly the ones he would have used, the speech pattern mimicked his perfectly. It required no effort to imagine himself giving the speech just as it played out here. His short remarks were quickly wrapped up and the audience rose to its feet to deliver thunderous applause. Had his speech really been that well received? All he could remember of that day was the dryness of his throat and his preoccupation with whether he could keep his hand from shaking while he delivered his speech.
Lois squeezed his hand gently. He looked at her and smiled. “Wow,” she said. “I knew, intellectually, that you were their leader, but watching you, seeing how they responded to you. I was so afraid that they took you for granted, that they weren’t grateful enough for what you did for them, what you were willing to sacrifice for them.”
The image faded and was replaced by yet another ceremony. It was the very last one he attended on New Krypton. Again, he saw himself walking down a long path to the front of the colony’s largest gathering hall. He watched as Zara placed a medal around his neck and as Ching thanked him graciously for his service. And then, almost as one, the entire audience fell to its knees before him. He could see the discomfort on his own face as he asked them all to stand. With just a few words, he’d made his last public statement and said his goodbyes. Hours after that ceremony had taken place, he’d left New Krypton for Earth.
He could see Lois silently brushing away tears. “I wasn’t a hero,” he said flatly, short-circuiting whatever thoughts she might have been having to the contrary. “That was for them. They needed their leaders to be heroic.”
“These people loved you. They were thankful for what you did for them. And it wasn’t just your friends. All of those people who couldn’t have known you, they knew what you did.”
He looked away as he dropped her hand and crossed his arms over his chest. Her words made him angry. There were few things worse than undeserved praise. “I should have done more. I could have ended it a lot sooner.”
“Clark…”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t understand. You can’t know what it was like.”
She stared at him, defiance burning in her eyes. “You think I don’t know how awful it is to have people call you a hero when you feel like a failure? You think I don’t know what it’s like to have a medal you didn’t deserve hung around your neck? You think I don’t know what it’s like to be absolutely certain you’re about to be uncovered as a fraud? I know that those ceremonies were for them, not you.”
“Then why does this mean so much to you?” he said as he gestured toward the image.
“We lost things in the fires of war. Things we’re never going to get back,” she said soberly. “We made choices between bad and worse and we have to live with the consequences. But those ceremonies, they were about the things we sacrificed for. About recognizing that there’s still something good to build upon.”
He looked away again, knowing she was doing the best she could to understand him, but how could she when there was so much about what had happened that she didn’t know?
********
They flew side by side over Hobbs Bay, slowing down as they approached the docks and skyscrapers of Metropolis. The island was so crowded with immense buildings, jammed close together all the way to the water’s edge, as though they were elbowing and jostling and fighting one another for space. Their second appointment with Dr. Friskin was in a few minutes and she could feel a nervousness approaching dread settle in the pit of her stomach. She knew these sessions were necessary and she hoped that they would help Clark, but if the previous one had been any indication, they were going to be anything but easy.
<<Please, somebody, help me!>>
Lois stopped short, her head snapping toward the source of the cry. It sounded like a young boy. All of a sudden, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clark drop suddenly. He tumbled downward and like a bullet, she tore through the sky, intercepting his fall.
She flew them back upwards, terrified by the fact that he seemed unconscious. His heart was racing, thundering totally out of rhythm. “Clark!” she shouted.
He gasped as he opened his eyes, wide with fear. Clark gripped onto her tightly with both hands, his pulse still frantic and uneven. “Honey, are you okay?” she asked.
“I have to go,” he said breathlessly. “Someone needs me.”
“Clark, please, go to Dr. Friskin’s office, I’ll meet you there,” she said, hearing the agitation creep into her own voice.
“I need to go,” he said, more urgently this time. She could tell that he was trying to project confidence, trying to cover up the quiver in his voice and the shaking of his fist. Her husband pulled away from her.
“Listen to me, please,” she pleaded. “I can handle this, but I need you to go to Dr. Friskin’s.” Lois glanced back toward the source of the cry for help.
“I’m not a child, don’t tell me what to do,” he said angrily.
“I’m not treating you like a child, but until you’re sure you’re ready to go back to being Superman, you have to let me do this.”
<<Please, help!>>
She didn’t have time. Without another moment’s hesitation, she bolted toward the anguished cry. It killed her to leave Clark like that, but there was a life at stake.
********
The sound of the second hand of the desktop clock, ticking incessantly, echoed loudly in his skull. He stared straight ahead, his jaw grimly set, his arms folded across his chest. Dr. Friskin sat in her wingback chair, with a patient smile on her face. After what seemed like an eternity, the door behind him opened and his wife entered the office.
“I’m sorry for keeping you,” she said as she sat down in the armchair beside Clark’s.
“Is everything all right? Clark mentioned there was a call for help,” Dr. Friskin asked.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” she replied distractedly. His wife crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap.
“But this brings a rather critical question to the forefront for us. Clark, you seemed rather agitated when you arrived, I take it you’re not comfortable with remaining on the sidelines while Lois maintains the role of Ultrawoman.”
“I’d like to feel useful again,” he admitted. “There’s something I can do to help people, something other people can’t. And I’m not doing it right now. People are suffering because I’m not doing my job.” Clark flexed his trembling fist, willing it to stop.
“Do you feel ready to go back to being Superman?”
He closed his eyes. “No,” he said simply. “I heard a cry for help and I blacked out. I fell out of the sky like rock.”
Dr. Friskin removed her glasses as she leaned forward. “What happened?”
“We heard a cry for help on the way here. It was a boy. He was young. And then, nothing. I heard Lois yelling my name. She was flying us back upward.”
“Can you think of why the sound of the cry for help caused you to black out?”
He gripped both armrests, his entire body tensing like a coil. “There was an attack on a distant settlement by Nor’s forces. It wasn’t a military target, just a civilian outpost at a mining facility. The rebels massacred the population and leveled the settlement. It was a bloodbath.
Clark looked up at the ceiling, trying not to let his mind’s eye get flooded with the horrible images of that day. “I was helping evacuate a collapsed building. There were only a handful of survivors. One was a little boy. He was crying for help. It took forever to get him free. I cursed and begged and would have traded my soul in that moment for my powers so I could have gotten to him faster. I finally got the rubble out of the way. He was clinging to the dead body of his father. He’d died sheltering his son.
“I picked the boy up. He was crying hysterically. He wanted his father. I kept telling him it was going to be all right. It was a stupid thing to say. I knew it wasn’t going to be all right. It was never going to be all right. The boy was alive, but I’d failed him. I didn’t prevent the attack. I didn’t save his father.
He blinked away tears, knowing that his voice was wavering. “By the time we’d finished evacuating the survivors from the building, it was almost dusk. Fires were still smoldering and ashes fell to the ground like snow. The smoke and the late afternoon sun turned the sky the color of blood. I helped soldiers stack the dead like cordwood because they hadn’t had time to create a clearing on the ground large enough to lay all the bodies out properly.
“It was cold. The wind stung like needles against exposed skin and the chill seeped into your bones and buried itself there so it seemed like there was nothing you could do to leech it out and ever be warm again. Even the gusting wind couldn’t get rid of the stench of death that hung over the settlement like a pall.
“I heard that call for help today and it was like being back in Silban, surrounded by smoke and ash and dead bodies. I was helpless. I couldn’t do anything. All these powers, and I couldn’t even stay conscious.”
“But you want to go back to being Superman?”
“Of course I do,” he said.
“So that will be our goal to work toward. But progress in this area may not come quickly,” his therapist explained gently.
“I know,” Clark replied.
“Until you’re ready to go back, how are you planning to deal with this sort of incident?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think I can move back to Metropolis if I keep hearing calls for help that I’m not going to answer.”
“Lois, how do you feel about this?” Dr. Friskin asked.
Clark turned to look at his wife. There were tears glimmering in her eyes. “I knew it was going to be hard for Clark, but I was so afraid today. I want to support him in this. If we don’t move back to Metropolis for a while, that’s fine.”
“Have the two of you discussed your plans?”
“Not really,” Lois replied. “We were talking about coming back to the city, but I don’t want this to be harder for Clark than it has to be.”
“Lois, are you planning to continue being Ultrawoman when Superman returns?”
She ducked her head. “We haven’t talked about that, either,” she admitted.
“Clark, have you given this any thought?”
He bit his lip. “I’m fine with whatever Lois wants to do.”
Lois turned to face him, concern etched into her expression. “These are your powers, I was just borrowing them. You wouldn’t feel like I was taking something away from you?”
“I’m not going to take Ultrawoman away from the world,” he said quietly.
“To hell with the world, Clark, what about you?” she asked, the earnestness of her tone taking the sharp edge off her words.
He shook his head slowly. He’d already resigned himself to this. There was no other way. “Could you ignore cries for help just to make me feel better?”
Lois arched a brow, and he knew she wasn’t following him. “But if I didn’t have your powers, I wouldn’t hear them.”
“We can’t transfer the powers back,” he said decisively.
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? Bernie did it while I was in labor, it’s not a problem.”
Clark stood up swiftly. “I mean you can’t give up the powers,” he said, his tone emphatic.
“Why?” she asked as she too, rose to her feet.
“I would have killed you that night!” he said agitatedly. “If you hadn’t been invulnerable, I would have pulverized you. I still have nightmares like that all the time.”
“But it won’t be that way forever…” she countered.
“That’s a load of crap and you know it!” he said harshly. “Just one time, Lois, that’s all it’ll take. I have one more nightmare like that and you’ll die. I won’t take that chance. I will not sleep in the same bed as you if you’re not invulnerable. But that’s your choice.”
“Let’s calm down,” Dr. Friskin said soothingly, but Clark didn’t care to listen to her.
Lois shook her head in amazement as she stepped back. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“Don’t patronize me!” he said. He could feel his face growing hot, his heart thundered in his ears. “I know I’m irrational, I’m angry, I don’t think straight, but I’m right about this and you know it.”
“Clark, Lois, please sit back down so we can discuss this calmly,” Dr. Friskin repeated herself, her tone still even and tranquil. His breaths came in shallow rapid gasps. Slowly backing up, he retook his seat and stared straight ahead. “I think you both need to consider this carefully. You’ve both raised very valid concerns, but you haven’t really communicated those concerns to each other. Lois, how do you feel about continuing to keep Clark’s powers?” Dr. Friskin put her glasses back on.
“The first time I became Ultrawoman, I wasn’t ready for it. I wanted to get his powers back to him, because Superman is what he was born to be. I got used to the powers this time. Ultrawoman’s part of my life and I’m okay with that. I like being able to help, but I don’t want to do it if it’s taking something away from Clark.”
“Clark, you want Lois to keep the powers?”
“It’s not about what I want,” he said. “It’s about her safety. I had a nightmare and I threw a punch at her. If she hadn’t been invulnerable, I would have killed her.”
“So you’d expect to sleep in separate beds if she gave up the powers?”
He frowned grimly. “It’s not what I want, but yes.”
Dr. Friskin pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “I take it this bothers you, Lois?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her shake her head. “Of course it does. I love my husband; I expect to share a bed with him.” Her voice wavered as she spoke.
“And how do you feel about Clark’s concerns?”
Clark turned to look directly at his wife. She looked down to avoid his gaze. “I understand why he feels that way.”
His tension eased ever so slightly. At least she was listening to him. Silence settled over the room as Dr. Friskin scratched away at her notepad. Finally, she looked up. “Lois, I want you to take some time to think about what keeping the powers will mean and whether you feel like you’re willing to do that. This is a momentous decision, and you shouldn’t take it lightly. I don’t think I need to tell you what a burden being Ultrawoman is and how it can’t be something that you commit to if you don’t feel emotionally able to handle that burden.”
“I know,” she replied.
Clark sighed. He hated the thought of burdening Lois with this if it wasn’t what she wanted. But what choice did they have? He knew he was right. He couldn’t risk her life on the hopes that for the next fifty years, he’d never again have another bad nightmare. If she didn’t want the responsibility of being Ultrawoman, he would respect that. But there was no way in hell he’d risk her life for that. If he had to spend the rest of their married life sleeping apart from her, so be it.
********
With thoughts of the previous night’s session with Dr. Friskin fresh in her mind, she slipped quietly into the farmhouse. She couldn’t get out of her head the vivid mental image her husband had painted of a gruesome attack and the frustratingly heartbreaking rescue effort that had followed. It took no work on the part of her imagination to see in her mind’s eye, her husband in the bombed out wreckage of a building, comforting a crying child in the face of a reality too terrible to be put in words. Clark’s strength, in no small part, was his deep and endless capacity to be moved to ease the suffering of others. No matter how much hurt he saw—and he internalized damn near all of it—he couldn’t stop helping. She loved that about him, but she also knew it was tearing him apart now.
Seeing him fall from the sky like a stone had stopped her heart from beating. She’d raced to catch him, terrified and fearing the worst. What could have possibly felled Superman like that? And when she’d seen the haunted look in his eyes, she knew there was nothing physically wrong with him. He was being pulled back to the ground not by gravity, but by the weight of specters that still tormented him. He’d bared his soul to Dr. Friskin—she knew that he wouldn’t have told his wife what had caused the blackout if there’d been any way to avoid it—she was just a bystander to that confession. It struck her in that moment, just how much they didn’t know about each other anymore. There were things she should have known about her husband—things both basic and transcendent—that she just didn’t comprehend.
And then he’d dropped a bombshell on her. He was still terrified of physically hurting her. Her husband truly believed that if she wasn’t invulnerable, he would kill her one night in an agitated fit in the throes of a nightmare. She wanted to believe that the fear was without cause, but at least a few nights each week, she found herself having to wake him from the night terrors that seized his sleep. And there were nights when he wouldn’t wake and she’d have to restrain him to keep him from physically lashing out. There was no way she could do that without the powers. Thinking of her husband as a danger to her was making her sick to her stomach. Her insides were turning themselves into knots. Clark was the best man she knew. He’d die before he hurt her. But he didn’t control his dreams. They controlled him. When she’d refused to listen to him yesterday, all she was doing was dismissing his very real fears.
Floating a few inches above the steps, she ascended the staircase and made her way to the bathroom. Peeling off the suit, she turned on the taps, letting the water run until it was scalding. She stepped into the shower and let the hot water stream over her. It ran over her invulnerable body in rivulets, rejuvenating muscles weary with something other than physical exhaustion. She washed off the soot and ash, scouring it away methodically. Closing her eyes, she turned her face upward toward the spray of the showerhead. A long while later, she finally shut off the water and stepped out, wrapping herself in one towel and using another to dry her short hair. The smell of smoke, which had clung to her skin, was replaced by the scent of lavender and she felt clean again. Wearing only the towel, and carrying the dirty suit in one hand, she walked quietly down the hallway to the bedroom. The whole house was silent, save for the sounds of deep breathing only hearing like hers would notice.
Lois slipped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her, not bothering to turn on the lights. Her husband slept peacefully, blissfully oblivious to the waking world. She quietly put the suit, still reeking of smoke, in the hamper in the closet, away from where Jon might accidentally stumble across it. Crossing the room silently, she stood in front of the dresser, trying to rub away the tension in the muscles of her neck. Her fingers brushed against the silver chain still hanging around her neck. She began to fumble for the clasp to the metal strand that held both her engagement and wedding rings. After stripping away the suit, this was the final step in the transformation back into a regular person – a married woman and mother, not a distant superhero of epic proportions, with no personal life to speak of.
Her husband’s strong, warm hands covered hers, and he gently lowered her arms back to her sides. He massaged her shoulders, drawing the faintest of sighs from her. She closed her eyes and relaxed into his touch. A shiver ran down her spine as he pressed his lips to her neck. His hands skimmed over her shoulders and down her arms as he kissed a path up to her ear, before capturing the soft lobe between his lips and sucking on it gently. The most delightful charge of electricity spread over her skin everywhere he touched her. She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding in, feeling the way her body shuddered at the exquisite sensations his touch could evoke. Hooking one finger over the top of her towel, he gave it a gentle tug, causing it to unwind and fall softly to the floor. His fingers delicately lifted the chain and unfastened the clasp. He deftly caught the two small rings and dropped the chain on the dresser. She turned around to face him and he took her hand in his much larger one. His thumb slowly traced the length of each of her fingers before he replaced the rings where they belonged. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the rings he had just placed there.
“Thank you for bringing it back to me,” she whispered.
His thumb traced the nicked and scratched little gold band. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep it safer,” he said softly.
Lois shook her head slightly. “What you went through, it’s amazing you were able to hold on to it.” In depths of his eyes, a profound sadness seemed to settle. He looked away from her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. She placed her hand on his cheek, gently turning his head so he was facing her again.
“When Nor captured me, the chain broke. I lost the ring,” he confessed. “I didn’t get it back until after I was rescued.”
“Who found it?” she heard herself ask.
He looked down. He didn’t have to say it. She felt terrible, senseless tears pricking at her eyes. “Talan found it at the site where we were ambushed. She said it was how they knew where to start searching. This ring saved my life,” he said.
Damn him. Damn him for making her irrational emotionality seem so…irrational. She knew she had no reason to be upset. Hell, she had every reason to thank the gods, the fates, and even—or perhaps especially—Talan for sending him home to her. But she couldn’t do it. God help her, of all the things she felt in that moment, there just wasn’t room for gratitude in the confused, chaotic squall of her emotions. Her husband’s eyes locked hers in a deep and steady gaze. He touched her cheek and she slipped her arms around his neck, closing the distance between them. She buried her face against his neck, breathing in the clean smell of his warm skin. He held her tightly in the darkness, one hand moving in soothing circles against the small of her back.
********
His arm looped around her waist as he pulled her closer to him. She felt his lips brush against her shoulder. Lois placed her hand on top of his, interlacing their fingers. “What if I can’t do this?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a whisper, but the words hung over them in the silence of the dark and still room. “What if I’m never ready to be Superman again?”
Lois screwed her eyes shut. He was reaching out to her; he was making the effort to talk about his fears and their future. And here she was, her thoughts fixated on the past. Her mind was full to the brim with nothing but what he’d said earlier that night. About losing the ring. And about who had found it. How could she care about that? She needed to bury those confused and half formed thoughts. He needed her now. She turned around in his arms to look in his eyes. The pain she saw there pierced straight through her. “I honestly do believe you will be Superman again,” she said. “But no matter what you decide, I’ll be here.”
Clark shook his head. “How do I live with these powers if I don’t use them? And if you don’t want to keep being Ultrawoman…”
“I haven’t decided to give it up,” she responded. “But if you want me to…”
“I don’t,” he interrupted. “When you got the powers, we both thought it would be temporary, but if you’re willing to keep being Ultrawoman, I want you to. The both of us can do a lot more than either of us can do alone.”
She felt the corners of her mouth turn downward in a frown. “You’re sure?”
“I am,” he said. “But I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this. It has to be your choice.”
How could it be her choice? He’d made perfectly clear that he wouldn’t live with her if she didn’t have their powers. At least not in the sense of having an ordinary marriage. They could live under one roof, but not sleep in the same bed. He would be condemning her to a lifetime of sleeping without him. Just like she had for the last four years. Now that she finally had him back, now that she could fall asleep every night to the sound of his heartbeat, and feel his arms around her, how could she give that up again? “I can’t keep the powers and not be Ultrawoman,” she said. “And you’ve made pretty clear your feelings about me going back to being an ordinary person.”
“Lois, if that’s what you want…”
“How can it be what I want? How can I choose to give this up?” she asked as she touched his arm. “I just got you back.”
“It’s not like I’m going to leave,” he interjected.
“I want a real marriage, Clark. I don’t want my husband to be afraid to touch me, to worry constantly that he’s going to hurt me. It starts with where we sleep and it’s just going to get worse. You’ll push me away because you’re afraid of what you’ll do to me.”
Clark shook his head, a pained look on his face. “I’m not going to shut you out,” he said, but she could tell from his tone that he hadn’t even convinced himself of that. But she knew he had a point. The nightmares continued and he physically lashed out in his sleep. He could very well hurt or even kill an ordinary person when he thrashed and fought the demons that haunted his nights.
She closed her eyes. No matter what he said, she didn’t really have a choice. She would have to keep being Ultrawoman. With him back home, she could do this. Lois placed her head on his chest and listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat. “I’ll keep doing it. I’ll stay Ultrawoman, but you have to tell me if you change your mind.”
Lois felt her husband press his lips to the crown of her hair. “Okay,” he whispered quietly.
*********
It was a beautiful night, cold and dark under a clear and cloudless sky. She could smell hickory burning in a distant fireplace. The scent mingled with the smell of cold. Jon had already been tucked in and down below in the farmhouse she could see him sleeping peacefully. Despite the tranquility below, she was disquiet, her mind racing. Clark still wasn’t home from his appointment with Dr. Friskin. For the last two weeks, they’d been working on relaxation techniques, trying to find ways to keep his anxiety from spiraling out of control. Lois knew the brutal irony of his situation was tearing him apart. Superman spent his whole life with one ear listening for signs of distress. His instinctive response was to go whenever and wherever someone needed him. And now, the sound of a panicked cry was enough to bring his world to a standstill. To shut him down.
She worried that maybe he’d heard another call for help, but she couldn’t follow him around to make sure everything was all right. He hated being treated like he wasn’t capable. And now, more than ever, he wasn’t going to tolerate it. All she could do was hope everything was okay.
But that wasn’t the only thing that was bothering her and she knew it. As much as she wanted to move forward with her life, her thoughts kept coming back to how much time they’d spent apart and how much it was that she didn’t know about her husband any more. The story of how he’d rescued that little boy still haunted her. It was strange how hearing about that one event made what he went through on New Krypton suddenly seem more real. He may have been a political leader, but he hadn’t been distant from the fighting and the death that war brought. How much more frustrating must it have been for him, knowing all the good that Superman could have done there, knowing how much more he could have accomplished if he’d only had his powers. For months, she’d been frustrated by the fact that she knew so little of what had happened in his life over the last four years. Now, the floodgates had been broken. The dam had been breached and she was being drowned in the chaotic and painful and messy details of all of it.
It was almost two weeks ago now that he’d told her about losing her ring. It was the last thing in the world she’d expected to hear. Clark was larger and more powerful than life. He was a force of nature. And yet, despite his promise, despite doing everything in his power, he’d lost the ring when he was captured. She knew that if there were any way any human being could have held onto it under those circumstances, Clark would have done so. But Clark had never been subject to human limitations. He was a man who’d crossed the galaxy, not once, but twice, to be with her. He’d stopped fires and floods and held up bridges with his bare hands and plucked falling planes from the sky.
She wasn’t angry with him for not being able to hold onto the ring. But it reminded her in a cold and cruel way just how vulnerable he’d been up there. And she hadn’t been there to help him. When he’d needed her the most, when he’d had the least protection against a hostile world, she wasn’t there for him.
And someone else had been.
Someone else had found the ring and kept it safe. Someone else had found him and brought him back when hope was all but lost. Someone else had moved heaven and earth to keep him safe.
Her arms outstretched above her head, she flew straight up, high into the night’s sky. With ease, she found the dim little star closest to New Krypton’s weak sun, itself too faint to be seen from Earth. It had been so long since she’d come up here to do this. She’d had no reason to. Clark had come home to her, which meant she no longer had to preoccupy herself with wondering what was happening on that distant little planet, so far away from this one. But tonight, she needed to be here, as close as she could get to New Krypton. She flew up to the edge of the atmosphere, where the frigid air was stretched as thin as could be.
Her hand went instinctively to the chain around her neck, where she wore her wedding rings when she was in the suit. She fingered the rings absently. “I don’t really know how to do this,” she said, her eyes toward the heavens. “I don’t know you. I’m kinda glad that I don’t. I know that I don’t have the right to hate you, even though I really want to. I mean, your only real crime was having good taste in men, but I hate comparing myself to you. I hate coming up short when I do. I know you loved him. And I’m so glad that you’re a hell of lot more noble than I am, because I would have fought for him. It wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference that he had someone else to go home to. I would have tried. I would have begged him to stay. I would have done anything to convince him that he would have been happier with me.
“So thank you. Thank you for saving his life. Thank you for pretending you didn’t love him. Thank you for thinking about his happiness more than your own. Thank you for being the friend he needed when I couldn’t. I know it’s small and petty of me, but I can’t bring myself to like you. But you cannot imagine how much I respect you. Or how grateful I am to you. My family is together. My son will grow up knowing his father. I’m happy. Because of you.
“So I’m going to stop obsessing over you. And I’m going to stop bursting into tears every time he mentions your name. Or at least, I’m going to try. I’m going to stop turning you into the ‘other woman’ in my head, because it diminishes both of us when I do. And since I’m being honest, I’ll admit there is one good thing about knowing you fell in love with him. He respects you so much, admires the things you stood for, because he stands for them, too. So if you fell in love with him, that means that no matter what he says or thinks about what happened on New Krypton, he was still the good and decent person I married.
“Goodbye, Commander Talan. Thank you for sending my husband home to me.” She tucked the rings back under the collar of her suit and drifted back down toward the quiet little farmhouse, where a thin wisp of smoke rose from the chimney, welcoming her back to the warmth of home.
