From last time:
“Please,” he whispered, his arms tightening around her waist. “Please.” She felt him trembling in her arms and her own body absorbed the shiver. It rippled through her, seizing muscle and bone, eating away at her soul, wrapping its icy hand around her heart, threatening to hollow her out. To leave her brittle and insubstantial and frozen. But she had to absorb as much of this pain as she could. She had to let it wash over her and engulf her. She had to let it fill her lungs and race through her veins. She had to draw the poison out of him. He’d borne it silently for so long.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” she murmured. “You did the right thing. You came home to me. I love you. I love you.” Lois repeated the words, a furtive prayer offered in the quiet and desperate hope that what connected them was the same thing that could heal them. She repeated them because it was all she could do to keep from cursing that monster Nor and everything he’d done to Clark. Everything he’d taken from her beloved. That tiny little benediction was the only shield she had against the white hot point of rage that lay poised to pierce her soul.
She rocked gently, her body swaying with him in her arms. Their breaths came as heaving, labored sighs, drawn shakily in and shuddering out in unison. “Oh god, Lois,” he sobbed.
“It’s all right, I’m here, I’ll always be here,” she said, reaffirming the most sacred vow she had ever made.
‘I will love you ‘til the end.’
********
New stuff:
He stroked her hair as he stared up at the ceiling above their bed. The feel of her body pressed against his side had never felt so wonderful before. Maybe because this was so unexpected. Every different way he’d played this conversation out in his head, he’d imagined her pushing him away, making space, letting a physical gulf open up between them to match the emotional rift he’d created. But he felt the warmth of her skin. Her small hand covered his heart, her touch a balm to his wounded soul.
Clark swallowed roughly around the boulder in his throat. It felt like he’d been talking for hours, and he probably had been. Dawn was still some ways off, but neither one of them was going to sleep tonight. The words didn’t want to form in his mouth, but he didn’t know how else to ease the vise-like grip around his chest. “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” he began. “But after Nor was dead, all I could do was blame myself…for not killing him sooner. Those people didn’t have to die, Lois. Which means they’re dead because of me.”
He felt her hand slip from his chest as she propped herself up on her elbow. He’d known this was coming. She couldn’t stand to be touching him now. Trying to brace himself for it, he couldn’t help but feel terribly bereft. This couldn’t have turned out any other way. No matter how much she loved him, no matter the depths of her patience in dealing with his troubles, he couldn’t have expected her to be okay with this. He closed his eyes and fought the tears that were forming there.
She touched his cheek, a gentle caress that startled him. Opening his eyes, he was equally surprised by her expression, by the depth of the love and the sadness he saw there. He placed his hand on top of hers, turning his head to drop a kiss in her palm. “You know that isn’t true,” she insisted. “Nor and his men are the only ones responsible. You spared his life when he didn’t deserve it because it was the right thing to do. And because you don’t have a vicious or vindictive cell in your entire body. You can’t let him make you regret the best part of who you are.”
His wife pressed her lips gently against his. Closing his eyes, he pulled her closer to him, relishing the feel of her body against his. He listened to her heartbeat, steady and strong. She withdrew ever so slightly. “You are Clark Kent,” she whispered. “You are the man I love. And the best man I have ever met. Never doubt that.”
Her words pierced his heart. “How can you know that?” he asked, his voice a harsh whisper.
She put her head on his chest and he brought his arm around her. Lois took his hand in hers. “Because I know you better than I know myself. And because I know what it’s like to be terrified by how much you can hate another person. I know how hard it was for me, I know it must be so much worse for you.”
“I was awful to the people who cared about me,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t let anyone help me. I was consumed by my anger.”
“Clark, the people of that world loved you. They were thankful for everything you did for them.”
“I let that place change me,” he insisted.
“Yes, it changed you. But the important things—the things that made me fall in love with you—are the same. I love you with everything I am, Clark Jerome Kent. I love you, Superman. I love you, Kal El. That’s never going to change.”
He knew what she was trying to tell him, but how could he believe it? “When you first fell in love with Superman, I know it wasn’t because of the cape and the flying. You loved what he stood for. But I can’t be what he was. For the last six months, I’ve been pretending. Pretending I’m still him. Pretending I didn’t destroy everything that was important to him.”
“My god, you are such a lunkhead, sometimes,” she said, smacking him in the face with a verbal two by four. “If you’d killed Nor out of vengeance, that would have destroyed Superman. When it was you or him, you didn’t just kill Nor to save your own life, you did it to protect a people you’d risked everything for. That is what Superman is all about. Yes, he doesn’t kill, because he has a choice. You didn’t. You did what needed to be done. You ended a war. You came home to be a son to your parents, a husband to your wife, and a father to your son.”
He closed his eyes. She was right about that. Killing Nor was the only reason he’d survived and returned home to the family he loved. And though it had taken him months to realize it, he knew that the people he loved and needed, needed him, too. But as much as Lois loved him, as much as her natural, instinctive response to seeing him hurt was to surround him with love, could he expect her to shoulder this burden forever? Could he let the ghosts haunting his soul become her ghosts, too?
“Lois, how can I make you live with this?” he asked, his heart breaking.
“I am going to love you for the rest of my life,” she responded in a fierce whisper. “It’ll be a hell of a lot easier for both of us, if you just let me.”
He looked down at her as he touched her cheek gently. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I love you,” he said softly.
“I love you,” she replied. “Now kiss me, and hold me, and just be my husband.”
Clark knew better than to argue with his wife. He did as he was told, closing his eyes, afraid to accept her forgiveness, but knowing he wasn’t going to survive without it.
********
“I told her everything,” Clark said bluntly as soon as Dr. Friskin had closed the door.
“Everything?” his therapist echoed.
“Everything,” he confirmed as he sat down on the couch. “I told her about killing Nor. About feeling guilty over not having done it sooner. I told her how I still have nightmares about it. I told her how ashamed I feel when Jon looks at me and I can tell he’s thinking that when he grows up and becomes a man, he’s supposed to be like his father.” He exhaled a shaky breath and looked downward at the carpet. Clark held his right hand clenched in a tight fist, his left hand wrapped around it to keep it from trembling.
“How did she react?”
He could already feel the familiar sting of tears in his eyes. “She told me she loved me,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. It felt wrong to talk to someone else about what had happened between him and his wife. But for almost a year, he’d needed his therapist to help him make sense of most of what was in his head. “She just held me and listened, and promised we’d get through this together,” he said with a wistful smile.
“That wasn’t what you were expecting, was it?” Dr. Friskin asked gently.
“Not really, but I think I should have expected it. Lois’s first reaction to trouble is to protect the people she loves. I should have known she would do that. But in the long run…” he trailed off.
“In the long run?”
“How can this be fair to her? Or to Jon? I know she signed up for being married to Superman. And for better or worse and all of that. But she didn’t marry a killer.”
“Is that how you see yourself?”
‘Why did his shrink have to respond to every question with a question?’ he wondered darkly to himself. “Is it the one word I’d used to define myself? No. But is it part of who I am? How can it not be? How can a human being take a life and not be forever changed by it?”
“Clark, I want you to close your eyes for a moment,” she said. Dr. Friskin stared at him expectantly until he complied. “Now imagine yourself in that corridor, the day you shot Nor. You can hear the sound of his footsteps as he runs. You know that he’s armed.”
Clark swallowed roughly. He didn’t like where this was going. His heart rate sped up and all the deep breathing exercises in the world couldn’t slow it down. Despite himself, he could hear the loud echo of footfalls on the metal flooring of the corridor. He could taste the bile in his throat and feel the sting in the old scar that cut across his arm. His hands balled themselves into fists as he waited in anticipation for the fiery, searing pain of the shot he knew was about to hit him in the back.”
“There’s nowhere to run, Clark,” Dr. Friskin said.
“Why are you doing this?” he gritted out angrily, his eyes still screwed shut.
“The hallway is a dead end. But instead of you running away from Nor, it’s Lois.” His heart slammed against his ribcage. His eyes snapped open and he leapt to his feet, glaring at his therapist.
“Enough,” he growled.
“What would you want her to do?” Dr. Friskin asked calmly. “In your position, what should she have done?”
Clark turned around and started to walk toward the door. He’d been through more than enough torture for one lifetime. “It isn’t the same,” he said without bothering to turn around.
“It’s exactly the same, Clark,” Dr. Friskin countered, her tone still mild. “You would have wanted her to do anything to save her own life and come back to you. Isn’t it possible she wants the same thing?”
“You can’t know what she’s thinking?” Clark replied stubbornly. The door—and freedom—was just a few feet in front of him. He should have completed his retreat, but his legs refused to cooperate. His entire body was paralyzed. With fear? Anger? Shame? He didn’t know.
“I spoke to her this morning,” Dr. Friskin replied. He could hear her stand up from her chair. “She feels awful about what you’ve been through. And she’s afraid of how this has affected you. But she told me she loves you just the same. This hasn’t changed her feelings for you.” Clark wanted to protest that that was a violation of their confidence, but of course, it wasn’t. The three of them had decided that Lois should keep talking to Dr. Friskin if she felt like she needed to. It made things complicated for the therapist, but they didn’t really have a choice. There was no one else qualified to help them through this.
“She feels that way now,” Clark said dejectedly as he turned to face Dr. Friskin. “But does she really want to wake up every morning lying next to a killer?”
“You still haven’t answered my question, Clark. How would you feel if it had been her instead of you? Would you love her any less?”
“Of course not,” he bit out.
“You would have wanted her to save her own life. You would have been thankful that she survived. You would have supported her and tried to understand what she went through.”
He closed his eyes and nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache began to form behind his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.
“She wants to do the same. And she desperately wants you to let her,” Dr. Friskin said sympathetically. “For almost a year now, you’ve let your fear of how she would react to this knowledge eat away at you. But instead of running from you, she wants to be there for you.”
“I need her so much,” he confessed.
“And you have to accept that she needs you, too. I know that what I’ve done today was cruel, and I do apologize for it. I just didn’t know any other way to make you confront this fact.”
He nodded weakly and dragged a trembling hand through his hair. Dr. Friskin was trying to keep him from retreating further, from jeopardizing the one thing that gave him a shot at getting back to real life again. But was she right? Was Lois’s love for him strong enough to survive even this?
Mentally indulging the good doctor, he turned the question around on himself. If their roles were reversed, would it have had any impact on his feelings for Lois?
Of course it wouldn’t have.
********
She sighed as she dropped her notepad on her desk and spun the dial on her safe. Clark wasn’t the only one whose equilibrium had been disturbed by today’s session. She’d crossed a line, she knew that. But it wasn’t as though she’d had much of a choice. Dr. Friskin didn’t like aversion therapy as a treatment for PTSD and she knew that continually re-experiencing past trauma on a deep level often made things worse, but she’d needed Clark to try to understand the situation from his wife’s perspective and all of her previous attempts had failed. She’d run out of ideas and was left with an axe where a scalpel was called for.
In the most basic sense, it seemed to have been effective. But it had taken its toll on Clark. It may have also taken a toll on their relationship as doctor and patient. It took none of her well trained powers of perception and intuition to know that these sessions were often extremely difficult for him. That confronting his ethical limitations tended to challenge the very core of who he thought himself to be.
And then there was the fact that they were treading into an area in which she herself brought unwelcomed baggage. In a perfect world, therapists would have perfectly healthy, well-adjusted lives that introduced no complications into their therapeutic relationships. Of course, the world wasn’t perfect.
It had been six years since Joseph had died.
It had been quick and unexpected and amazingly merciless. The cancer had cut him down so quickly they’d never come to terms with it. And even though she had been there with him through the short months of his illness, even though she was with him when he’d died, she hadn’t really been able to say goodbye. What she remembered most about those days was the irony of it. A doctor, married to another doctor, helpless in the face of an illness that originally presented as nothing more than a stomach ache.
Many ambitious, successful professionals dealt with grief by burying themselves in work. For her, that hadn’t been an option. At the time, she’d been in no condition to try to help others through their problems. So she’d taken almost a full year off from her practice.
She’d had twenty wonderful years with Joseph. But she’d needed to find a way to keep that from coloring her view of all of her patients. Not all of them had marriages that could be saved. Not all of them needed to hear that their biggest problem was complacency and that they were guilty of taking the important things for granted. She couldn’t project her own hurt onto her patients.
And so it was that the affection that she’d developed for these two patients was becoming more and more of a liability to their therapeutic relationship. She had to stop seeing herself and her husband in Lois and Clark. Because their problems were uniquely theirs. And though her own life experience often made her a better therapist, she couldn’t illuminate this particular path in front of them. They would need to discover the way themselves.
She put away her notes and locked the safe. They had made real progress. Of that she was sure. She only hoped that she could continue to be the therapist they needed her to be. Though they’d come remarkably far, she didn’t think Clark was ready to put therapy behind him completely. And she knew that trying to rebuild the trust they’d developed with a new therapist would be a discouraging setback, if not downright impossible, given his dual identities.
Dr. Friskin picked up the phone and dialed her sister’s number. She couldn’t talk to anyone about her patients, but at least she could reconnect with the family she still had.
********
His heart thundered in her ears, waking her from a deep sleep. ‘How on earth could a heart beat that quickly without bursting?’ she wondered fearfully. “Honey, it’s all right,” she soothed as she wrapped her arms around him. “I’m here,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his shoulder.
“No!” he shouted. She flinched slightly, telling herself he wasn’t reacting to her, but the dream. His body went rigid in her arms and she felt him shudder. He turned around to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured apologetically as he caressed her cheek.
“Don’t be,” she whispered. “It’s all right.” But it wasn’t. Now that she knew what he was dreaming of, she knew just why he wasn’t at peace. How much longer would this haunt him? Would it always be this way? Was he doomed to relive that particular horror night after night for the rest of his life?
He pulled her into his arms, enfolding her in his strong embrace. She could feel his heart pound under the firm muscle. Silently, he kissed the crown of her hair. Not for the first time, she wished there was something she could do to lessen his pain.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.
“No,” he replied. “It was just the same dream.”
She closed her eyes. “I love you. You know that, right?” she whispered.
“I know,” he replied roughly. “I love you so much.”
Just hearing the pain in his voice, it took all the strength she possessed not to cry. Just like it had the night before, when he’d told her about almost dying in another woman’s arms. Thank god she’d made her peace with Commander Talan months ago, because if she’d been trying to balance her own jealousy with his anguish, it would have been her undoing.
But this couldn’t be about her feelings. It had to be about his. For as long as he needed her to be the strong one, she’d have to find a way to endure.
*******
“Mike, we’re going to miss you around here,” Perry said as he clapped his second-in-command on the shoulder.
Mike Burns lifted his glass of champagne to his boss. “The Planet’s in excellent hands, Chief. Your new managing editor is the best I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s got big shoes to fill, but he seems up to the task,” Perry replied. He looked down from the elevator landing at the party assembled in Mike’s honor in the bullpen. Clark was smiling as he talked to Jimmy and a few of the junior reporters who’d joined the Planet in the years while Clark was away. In his absence, he’d been a legend to them. Since his return, he’d become a mentor. During the last six months Clark had shown he was more than ready to take on the substantial task before him. Perry even thought the responsibility had been good for the younger man.
Jimmy laughed at something Clark said, but his new Managing Editor could barely muster a smile. As much as the serious, no-nonsense Mr. Kent kept the Planet functioning like a well oiled-machine, Perry missed the strangely worldly innocence of the wide-eyed man who’d walked into his office so many years ago. Clark’s eyes lit up and Perry followed the other man’s gaze, already knowing what it was that had captured Clark’s attention. The younger man finally smiled, a smile that reached his eyes and made him stand up a little straighter. Lois approached her husband and slipped her arm around him. He kissed her ever so briefly, the smile never leaving his face.
He’d known almost from the moment he’d assigned Clark to work with Lois on the Prometheus investigation, that Clark Kent would be good for his star reporter. He’d connected emotionally to his very first piece on the razing of an older theater and Perry could see it in his style that the young rookie could soften some of Lois’s rougher edges without ever causing her to lose her edge. And he’d known that Lois could teach the green young reporter more than just about anyone about how to be an amazing journalist. But there was no way he could have known how much Clark would come to depend on Lois. How she would unknowingly help him become the world’s greatest hero. How she would take up that burden in his absence and share it with him when he returned.
Together, they were something he’d never seen before and never expected to again. Having them working side by side in his newsroom warmed the old editor’s heart. He’d always expected to one day hand the Planet over to Lois, but now it was Clark who was being groomed to take the reins. Well, that day was still a ways off, Perry mused to himself. He had no interest in retirement and in the intervening years, they’d figure out which of the two of them wanted the job.
He’d fretted over whether their relationship would be strained or damaged by their new positions, but even though they weren’t officially partners any more, they still worked together, exchanging ideas and feedback. It made their work better and their relationship seemed as strong as ever. It amazed him what they’d been through. What their relationship had survived. And they somehow seemed even stronger for it.
********
“The paper’s been put to bed, chief,” Clark announced as he walked across the deserted bullpen toward his boss’s office. Perry appeared in the doorway.
“Good work, son,” Perry said gruffly. The older man surveyed the newsroom, the domain he ruled over. “It’s getting late; you should get home and enjoy your last weekend of complete freedom.”
“Thanks,” Clark replied with a weak smile.
Perry started back toward his office, but paused and turned back around. “You’ve been doing a hell of job,” he said. “I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
Clark merely shrugged. He’d only been working full time again for a few weeks to transition into Mike Burns’s job. Beginning Monday, he would be the new Managing Editor at the Daily Planet. “I spent years running a planet, chief. It shouldn’t be that hard to help you run the Planet.”
Perry laughed. “Have a good weekend, Clark.”
“You too, chief,” Clark responded.
