This popped up in my head several months ago but then I forgot about it.
Thank you to Female Hawk for beta-reading this again and again. You are great!
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‘… Dr Klein told me Superman’s physiology and that of an Earth-woman are incompatible for reproduction…’ We lie in our bed while my words roll around in my head. Before I came to you I flew around the world several times.
I needed to find the right words.
Are there any good words for this message?
Do doctors feel like this when they have to tell someone their beloved one has died or is going to die? Do Police officers feel like this when they have to destroy the happiness of a family because they have to report a crash?
Being Superman I have been in the same situation – telling someone I wasn’t fast enough to save their friends or family – I know it isn’t easy. It never is.
Or is this worse because this is my own family? But I haven’t lost anyone, have I?
But I have lost the hope – and that hurts just as much.
I needed the time to compose myself, to calm down.
To try to save you from the full force of the blow I’m about to deliver…
Destroying the dreams we had only just begun to dream…
Today was the worst day of our life. Our dreams of building a family were shattered. A few days ago Doctor Klein told me - as Superman - the tests seemed to indicate that we could conceive, but today…
Telling you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I feel as if I had failed you, honey. It is my fault.
I know you’ve thought you never wanted children, but when we forgot … and were confronted with the possibility that you could be pregnant, I noticed a change in you.
When you began to think about having a child your behavior changed.
I caught you in front of our mirror looking at your profile. Sometimes I saw you putting a hand on your stomach as if your thoughts had wandered to another place… or another time, maybe. I knew what you could see. Knew what you were thinking about. Knew that both our hearts wish for the same thing.
I could see it in your gaze; I hoped we would be there one day – together. Hoped that someday you would put your hand on your pregnant belly to feel our child growing in there.
There are so many little things … little things that told me that you would like to be a mommy.
We have talked about it and you told me you’d love to have my kids because you knew I wanted to have kids.
I know you better than that. Of course you wanted to have kids ‘for me’ but you also wanted a child for yourself – for us.
You felt ready for a child.
You finally felt ready for having your own family. The maternal instinct, you insisted you didn’t have, awoke.
Yesterday when we walked to a diner to have lunch we saw a child, a little boy. He was crying because he had lost his mother in the crowd. You went to him, wiped his tears away and pulled him into a short embrace to comfort him – you didn’t even think about it, you just reacted. He stopped crying and soon his mother reappeared and thanked you for taking care of her child.
And you always said *I* was a natural with kids …
You told me about your family - your absent, cheating father, your overstrained and alcohol-addicted mother and the little sister you wanted to protect from all these things, but couldn’t. You were only a child; no one expected these things from you - except yourself – you always wanted to be perfect, you had to be.
The less perfect your family was, the more perfect you wanted to be.
I can understand your distrust of familial bonds and your fears that you would make the same mistakes.
It took more than three years to soothe your pain; to heal the wounds inflicted by the carelessness of your parents. It took another year to help you believe what a wonderful wife - and perhaps mother - you would be.
But for me you were always perfect.
When we talked about children, we also discussed what we called the *adoption-option*. That option has been taken from us because some heartless superficial social worker thought you were an adrenaline-junkie obsessed with Superman … Of course you are obsessed with him … me, we are married, but we couldn’t tell her. Even if we could, perhaps the only result would have been that I’d have lost some my ‘points’.
Adoption is also not an option for us and that is also my fault.
What does this woman know? You are the most compassionate, kindest person I’ve ever met, your heart is so full of love, and you have so much to give. Any child would be blessed to have you as mother.
We were desperate enough to tell your father about our problem but that only resulted in more trouble … his companion Misha drugged him and made Sam tell everything he knew.
Even worse was that Sam’s partner gave our secret away to Klaus Mensa … a criminal who wanted to control Metropolis with the power of his mind … with telekinesis.
Fortunately Mensa’s own greed for power combined with a machine invented by Sam and Misha saved us by deleting not only Mensa’s but also Misha’s, Ellen’s and Sam’s memories concerning Superman and his other life as Clark Kent.
But Sam had already confirmed Bernard Klein’s diagnosis.
For us children are not possible.
Perhaps it is better if we stop hoping … who knows how a semi-kryptonian pregnancy would affect you. Even pregnancies without alien influence are not without risk … what if our child needed too much of your energy, raised your blood pressure, broke some bones while moving inside you? Could he or she kill you? Your body seems so fragile to me. I still can’t forgive myself for bruising you when I was under the effect of the red kryptonite … I can’t believe I didn’t notice you were hurting when I hugged you.
Tonight we talked about all of this … I told you my feelings, poured out my heart. I said making love together is creation of life for me – and I meant it. Every time we love each other you fill me with new life. Life which has been drained from me by seeing what people do to each other.
But there is something I don’t understand … I remember H.G. Wells telling us … Utopia was founded by Superman’s descendants … How can there be descendants if both biological and adopted children are impossible for us?
You roll over into my arms and I embrace you. We both lie awake. I hold you tightly and hope I can make our pain fade away. I would do everything for you but I can’t give you what you – we – want.
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‘Lois, I want you to hear me. Really hear me, okay? Every time we make love, we make love.’
I can still hear your words; you were a great support for me as always. You were hurting as much as I was and tried to make me feel better. Until you were called away for Superman duties we embraced and shared our warmth and strength … the bed seems too big and cold without you. You held me just minutes ago and for the first time since … you told me I relaxed a little bit. I feel as if I had cried the whole day but I haven’t spilled one drop since we left the conference room. The Mad Dog Lane in me refuses to cry in front of any person other than you; I still have a reputation to maintain.
… I know you didn’t come back immediately after leaving STAR-Labs. You flew around, sorted through your feelings, perhaps you cried a little bit before coming back to me to devastate my hope and be there for me. I wish we were told together – I wish I would have been there for you.
I’m sorry, Clark. I am sorry that I couldn’t help you to fulfill your – our – dreams. You are always helping everyone as Clark and as Superman but no one can help you. I am sorry I failed you.
I wish I could give you what you desire … until today I thought I only wanted a child because you wanted one … but when you told me about our … incompatibility, I realized I also wanted one … for us. Is this how life is going to be from now on? There is emptiness in my heart that not even you can fill.
I want to be a mommy; I want to know how it feels to expect … how does it feel when a child is growing under my heart, when he or she moves inside me? How would it feel to have my - our child in my arms for the first time? I’d love seeing you as the proud father, soothing our baby when he or she cries, feeding him or her in the middle of the night and changing the diapers. I know you would love those tasks, just because they are normal.
All these tasks are granted to many humans but for you it is just another proof of being a stranger from another planet.
And to know that *my* child is also *your* child, how would that feel? To see a person who is a part of me and part of you, how wonderful would that be?
What would he or she look like? Would a child of ours have your eyes? My nose? With your genes the baby would be absolutely gorgeous!
If only …
I feel as if I have failed you.
Which character traits would he or she inherit? Being noisy and reckless like me or gentle and caring like you? Someone who would do everything to achieve a goal and afterwards apologize for being rude?
Perhaps she would have been a little Martha or Elisabeth or a little baby boy, John or Michael? It is nice to think about names. Lucy and I did that when we were children, thinking about how we would name our children… that was before our parents divorced.
Before I stopped wanting to marry and have a family.
You try to convince yourself that a pregnancy would be too dangerous for me … I know why you do it … It is easier for you to deal with the truth if you can find a good thing in it. You try to convince yourself you are protecting me.
As much as it hurts, I have to admit you’re right - we have to stop thinking about babies. We have to accept that having children isn’t possible for us. We have to learn to live as a two-person-family.
But how do you stop thinking about your heart’s desire?
How do you stop feeling …
I missed my period this month … because of the stress of the previous days. I have experienced amenorrhea before when the stresses of my life get too much. I also didn’t eat much which could be another cause for it. If I was a woman with a ‘normal’ husband (I hate to use those words even though I just think them, because I think you are normal!) I would consider the possibility of a pregnancy. I have learned enough from my parents to recognize possible early signs. But I also know those signs are not reliable.
I can’t tell you, I don’t want you to think I’m getting sick. When our lives calm down a bit I’m sure everything will be normal again.
I am extremely tired; the previous days have drained me completely. It seems I’m getting old; a few years ago I took stress in my stride. Hopefully the next days will be a bit calmer.
Maybe it is also the lack of coffee today … it just didn’t smell and taste right today … it might have been stale.
I’ll try to sleep now – perhaps it’ll hurt a little less tomorrow … I don’t think you’ll be back soon, from what you told me it seemed Superman will be needed for at least another hour or two.
‘Good night Clark, my love’, is the last thing I think before I drift off to sleep.
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‘*You* fill me with life.’ I said it today but only now do I realize the double meaning in my words. You do! Every time I am with you my heart is beating twice as fast … or so I think. But I can’t fill you with life, not in the way we both want.
Coming home - back to you - is enough to restore me after the hardest of rescues. I can only hope that you feel the same. Sometimes when I come back in the middle of the night, I sit on the chair in one corner of our bedroom and look at you while you are sleeping. Sitting there I often remember the many occasions where we came close to losing each other and how we always managed to protect the other’s life.
It reminds me of how lucky we are to have each other. It really is like Mr. Wells said. Most people walk alone through their whole lives but we will always have each other regardless of what happens to us. He told us to remember this when life tries to challenge us again.
Part of me still doesn’t want to accept the truth … this part still hopes for a miracle to happen, looks for a way to do what seems impossible. It hopes that the two doctors were wrong or something happened to the samples before Klein and Sam could examine them…
I said once that being with you is stronger than me alone. This vow helped us to overcome every obstacle which presented itself; my sickness during the Christmas holidays in the year before our wedding, our breaking up due to my great idea or the time when I was away on New Krypton … I have considered trying to find a way to contact Zara and Ching to ask them for help. But what could they do? I can’t ask them to take a child from somewhere and give him or her to me just because we want a child… they have a whole planet to rule and probably they are still struggling to avoid a civil war. They have their own problems.
No, I can’t ask them.
It makes me mad. I am the strongest man in the world and yet there is nothing I can do to give my wife the desire of her heart.
Usually if there is a problem Superman flies in and ‘saves the day’. I’m used to being a part of the solution – not a part of the problem. There is so much I can do, things no one else can do, but I fail with this seemingly easy task.
I am the strongest and fastest man on earth and yet all my powers are futile.
I would trade all of them to alter my genes, to make us ‘compatible’, to be … human.
But I know I am not the only one suffering. You are, too. You refused the coffee I brought you, that is very unusual – Lois Lane never refuses a cup of coffee. I think it is a sign of how upset you really are. I know coffee always calms your nerves and after breaking the bad news and the threats to our families from Mensa in the two previous days I went to fix you a freshly brewed coffee exactly the way you like it …
After standing next to the bed for several minutes I give myself a quick glance of heat vision to heat my skin so I won’t wake you up when I slip into bed next to you. When our bodies come into contact I feel yours relax before you snuggle as close to me as possible, I drop a quick kiss into your hair before I close my eyes.
My arm comes around your waist until my hand rests on your stomach. I can’t help but imagine how it would feel if a little arm or leg were to move in there.
With this pleasant thought I finally drift off into sleep. ‘Good night Lois, my heart.’
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To be continued...
