A/N: So...here's a long chapter. And when I say long, I mean...LONG. Hope you enjoy!
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Chapter 2: Looking At You
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“Wait!” Her voice didn’t distract him from his bid to escape whatever new pain she might try to inflict, but the hand that reached high above her head to grab hold of his ankle did succeed in freezing him in place. No matter how many calls for help there were, Clark couldn’t risk hurting her by tearing himself free of her insistent grip.
“I have to go, Lois,” he told her, wholly unable to comprehend what possible reason she could have for standing on her tiptoes and clutching his foot. Maybe if he had spun into the Suit, she would have realized that he was obviously needed elsewhere.
“No,” she said firmly, and there was no hint at all of the disbelief or astonishment he had seen scribed across her features a scant moment before. Instead, there was icy detachedness, as all-consuming as his own, a terrible blankness to her eyes, as if she had disconnected herself from him. And that…that was terrifying.
It seemed The Fountain’s potential for pain hadn’t yet come to an end.
“Lois, I have to go,” he said, but he had already said that, already uttered that same collection of words, and it did no more good this time than it had the last.
“You can’t just say--can’t just reveal--you can’t just do *that* and then fly away!” she exclaimed, tugging at his pants leg until he accommodated her and dropped downward. Stubbornly, though, he kept the soles of his feet an inch off the ground, unwilling to concede defeat so easily.
“People need me.” The statement fell so effortlessly from his lips and yet it was the first time he could remember ever being able to speak it aloud. How many times had he needed to get out of the newsroom or a taxi or an interview or a quiet evening with a friend and been unable to tell anyone the true reason he was leaving? How many times had he uttered feeble excuses and hated lies in place of this simple sentence composed of only three words? It was, at once, incredibly liberating and terribly frightening to finally have the truth exposed to open air.
“What do you mean, people need--” Lois abruptly cut herself off, her eyes widening in realization and her hand dropping away from his sleeve. It was only then, in the face of her slow reaction, that Clark realized she was still processing what he had foolishly told her. The one time in his life he hadn’t held back what he was thinking, what he was feeling, what he was doing--the *one* time, and now she could destroy him with one word, one wrong reaction. It was why he had tried to flee, why he *needed* to get out of there, why he was so afraid to look her in the eye and see what she was thinking.
Because once he saw it, once she said it…then he would know, and there would be no going back, no second chance, no hope that one day she’d accept and love both of him. There’d be only her rejection, her horror, her condemnation, and it was hard enough being Superman when she adored him; he didn’t know how he’d do it when she hated him.
“There’s a cruise ship sinking in the Pacific,” he said woodenly. “And there are three muggings occurring within twenty city blocks of here that the police won’t get to in time, and tornados are about to touch down in Kansas, and a tidal wave is going to be hitting Indonesia in a couple hours.”
“Stop, just stop!” Lois held up a hand as if to ward him off and another surge tremored through that ocean held within him. Did she really think he’d attack her? Was she afraid of him? Disgusted? Or, worst of all, *disappointed* in him? He wished he’d left, wished he hadn’t let her pull him back to the earth, wished--for the thousandth time--that he had never admitted anything at all to her, not about his heart and not about his alter ego. A sense of urgency overtook him--because she was thinking this through right now, reordering her thoughts and perception to fit with reality, but he knew that if he wanted to protect what was left of his heart, he had to leave before she finally accepted this truth, this fact, this revelation, and lashed out at him.
“Lois—”
“No!” Lois took a deep breath and then looked straight at him. He felt the breath in his lungs compress into a lump of lead in his chest, felt his heart cease beating, felt the entire world pause on this threshold between his truth and her reaction. “You need to help people? Fine. But I’m coming with you.” And she stepped right up to him and put her arms around his neck, and Clark thought he might literally burst into flames right then and there, might spontaneously combust from the contradictory pleasure and pain searing its way through him from the warmth of her against him. She raised her eyebrows impatiently, and under the weight of her expectation, he found himself lifting up into the air, moving more out of habit than anything, his arms automatically closing around her even though a moment earlier, he wouldn’t have bet even a dollar on his chances of ever getting to hold her again.
Lois stared at the ground disappearing beneath them, then back up at him, a maelstrom of emotions and thoughts playing across her face. “This is crazy, Cl--Super--argh! Who *are* you? You…you’re not…” She shook her head angrily and let out a frustrated growl. At least there was emotion on her face, in her voice; at least that blankness had seemingly been banished from her. Clark only wished he could similarly fight back the numbness engulfing him in its abstract embrace.
“I’m Clark,” he said, and for all that it sounded inane, he so desperately wanted that to be the truth, so fiercely fought to ensure that that statement remained the honest-to-God truth at all times, no matter what he wore. He couldn’t imagine being anyone--anything--else, couldn’t imagine a day when he could no longer be the man his parents had raised him to be. Clark was a human, a man who belonged here, a man who could have friends and family, a regular, *ordinary* man who wasn’t feared for spectacular powers.
A man who put on an incredibly tight Suit to use those powers without sacrificing his life. A man who loved the woman now staring at him with an expression he dared not interpret.
“I’m Clark,” he repeated--a vow, a prayer, an impossible dream.
“No, you’re not!” Lois snapped, loosing an arm from his neck to wave toward the far-away ground. “You’re not Clark! And you’re not Superman. You’re…you’re a liar. I don’t know you at all. You’re just like the rest.”
Something broke inside Clark, something precious and fragile, something that had been hidden deep within him since he’d first found out he was different. It shattered into a million pieces at Lois’s last whispered statement, and Clark mourned it, this loss of hope, this severing of his dreams, this lumping in of his face with Claude and Paul and Lex--consigned to her past, banished from her future.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it was true. He was sorry for disappointing her, sorry he couldn’t really be two different men, sorry he had so rashly let loose of the truths boiling within him, sorry she hated him.
“No, Cl--Sup--” Again, she snarled in frustration, but her glare never wavered from him, and he shrank before it, looking away again, out toward the cry for help he was rushing to answer. “Don’t apologize,” Lois ordered him coldly. “I don’t need apologies. I want an explanation. So explain it to me--make me understand.”
“Understand what?” he asked, and flinched from the dullness of his own tone. He tried to summon the mental image of his parents, tried to remember the hopeful optimism of their advice and acceptance, but they shimmered liquidly in the clouds above and disappeared with the ripple of a passing breeze. He tried to concentrate on all the cries for Superman, but they shrank away into the distance, drowned out by the sound of his heart stubbornly continuing to beat in his chest despite its wounded condition.
“Understand *you*!” Lois didn’t even seem to notice that he had set her down--a block from the crime he was about to stop--didn’t let her arms fall from him even though he had dropped his own hands away from her as soon as his feet touched the street. “You’ve been lying to me the entire time I’ve known you--both of you--and I think I deserve an explanation! About you *and* about Lex! An explanation and *proof*.”
Before, something had broken in Clark, but now something different, something more volatile and dangerous and strained snapped inside of him, and white-hot sparks leapt to encase his mind in a glittering burst that dazzled his vision and turned his voice harsh. “Oh, I get it. Now I understand. Because Superman is *me*, he’s suddenly prone to suspicion, and because I’m *Superman*, I’m suddenly worth listening to? You know what, Lois? I don’t have time for this. I warned you about your fiancé, and I already tried at Perry’s retirement dinner to give you the evidence I had against him, and you heard him talking about Kryptonite on your own--you’ve investigated people and companies for far less than that, but it’s your prerogative what you do about it now. I’m done, okay? I’m just…” The brittleness in his tone made his voice crack and he had to stop, had to look away, had to close his eyes, had to direct his hearing to anything other than Lois’s pounding heart. “I have to go,” he said quietly, not even waiting for the tremulous words to be fully uttered before he was rising into the sky and darting down a block to spin into Superman in the shadows and step out into the light to stop a common criminal.
It was what he had always wanted, the ability to help others without hurting Clark Kent, but something must have gone wrong because Clark Kent was hurt now more than he’d ever been before in his life and there didn’t seem to be a cure for this pain.
It took only a moment to turn a cry for help into a grateful call, only an instant to turn Superman back into Clark Kent, only a heartbeat to find himself in front of Lois again. She didn’t look happy, but for once, Clark almost didn’t care.
“There are other crises,” he told her succinctly. “I have to go.”
But once again, as if he were stuck in a never-ending cycle, as if his actions were as circular as his thoughts, Lois reached up, this time grabbing hold of his sleeve to haul him back toward her. “Stop running away from me!” she demanded, anger blotting out anything else that might have touched her features.
“Right,” he said derisively, striking out because there was nothing else for him to do, no hopeful goal, no beautiful dream of a future spent with her to keep his hurt and anger and despair from spilling out on the ground all around them. “Because *you’ve* never ran from anything in your life.”
“Why are you mad at me?” she cried, releasing her grip on him and stepping back.
She no longer held him to the earth, but Clark stayed where he was anyway, a foot in the air, trapped by the force of his astonishment, frozen in place, gaping down at her.
“I mean,” she looked away before tilting her chin defiantly and staring him straight in the eye, “I know why you’re mad about Lex. But *you’re* the one who lied to me! Why are you mad at me for believing the lies *you* told me?”
His shoes sank onto the sidewalk, his weight an almost physical burden as the power of flight left him, leaving him alone and vulnerable and unable to escape. “I’m not,” he said so quietly it was almost inaudible. “I’m not mad you believed I was two people. I’m not mad at all. I’m just…”
Hurt. And sad. And disappointed. And so terribly exhausted. And wholly, utterly destroyed. Because he knew she couldn’t have known Clark and Superman were the same man, but why couldn’t she have loved Clark as much as she idolized Superman? Why couldn’t she have given Clark the same chance she’d given Luthor--was seemingly *continuing* to give to Luthor? Why had she so easily been able to dismiss the real parts of him when he couldn’t, for the life of him, tear himself away from her?
“Clark.”
He almost collapsed then, almost lost all density and strength in every part of his body, almost turned incorporeal and ghosted away. She had called him Clark. Not Superman, not some amalgam of Superman and Clark, not liar, not any of the names she doubtless was thinking at him. Just Clark. And when he had only moments earlier given up all hope of ever being Clark to her again, this seemed a touch of grace he hadn’t even dared hope he’d be given.
But when he looked at her, he didn’t see the understanding he yearned for. Instead, he saw a brick wall that hadn’t been there since before he’d sent her on a wild Godzilla chase, a coldness that had disappeared after he’d failed to spread her secrets around, a distrust that had never truly been directed his way at all. And it hurt. It hurt almost as badly as any of the other capitalized events.
“You finally told me your secret,” she said neutrally. “Finally. So…why now? Why this moment?”
Clark’s heart sank even deeper into his chest cavity, carving out a black hole that threatened to turn everything inside him into a vacuum. Because this wasn’t Lois-Lane-his-friend-and-partner speaking; this was Lois-Lane-prize-winning-investigative-reporter. *Ruthless* investigative reporter.
“Because…” He paused to search for an answer he didn’t have. It was crazy to have told her knowing that she’d hate him--hate Clark Kent *and* Superman--knowing she’d want some means of vengeance for the lies he’d told her, knowing she could go straight to the one man who could apparently do no wrong in her eyes. He’d known it was crazy even while he told her, and he could no more explain it now than he could then.
But Lois wouldn’t accept that non-answer, and he knew it. Knew he was trapped. He needed an answer, one that made sense, one that was true, and one that didn’t make her hate him any more than she already did.
But what kind of answer could accomplish all that?
“You needed to know,” he finally said, and it was as much the truth as it was an evasion. He had dreamed of her knowing, had held it to him like a bright, golden fantasy of better-days-to-come, but it had always been far in the future. Now…now that future had arrived to engulf him in gold that turned to dross and light that faded into shadows.
The murmur of a nearby fire leapt into focus with the crash of a falling support beam. Clark’s head snapped toward it, seeking the incident with his telescopic and x-ray vision, zeroing in on the sound, peeling away every wall and building and car between him and the danger.
“I have to go,” he said suddenly, his need and haste apparent in his voice and every line of his body.
Lois narrowed her eyes as she watched him, and even without x-ray vision, he could see the thoughts in her head--see her thinking back to every other time he’d turned his head and immediately made a quick excuse to disappear. But instead of ranting about his deception, she simply stepped close to him again, took firm hold of his sleeve, and said, “Not without me. You’ve lied enough--to me, to your friends, to the whole world. For once, let me see who you really are.”
Her demand hurtled from her lips to hit his heart like stones, beating at him, battering against his insufficient defenses, breaking whatever hold on his emotions he still retained. Anger flooded through him like outreaching waves from that ocean of emotion within him--anger because he had spent eight months showing her more of his true self than anyone other than his parents had ever seen, had just revealed to her the secret that could completely ruin his life and decimate all that he was, had *told* her he was Clark…and she didn’t see it. Had never bothered to look past his façade in the way he saw past hers. And he knew it wasn’t her fault, knew he had intentionally fooled her into thinking Superman was a man apart from Clark Kent, knew it was wholly irrational to blame her for her blindness…but he had just stripped himself bare and still she wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t believe him, wouldn’t give him even the merest sliver of a chance.
She wanted Superman? Well, he could be Superman. She wanted to see what he did on rescues? Well, he’d show her. She wanted to understand him? Well, he didn’t know if she would, didn’t know if she would set aside her anger long enough to see him, but he’d try to make her understand. He’d show her Superman on rescues, and he would let her see that Superman without Clark Kent was nothing, nothing at all.
So he stepped away from her and spun into his Suit--ignored her open-mouthed shock--moved nearer her and swept her up into his arms--pretended he didn’t wither inside at the sight of her flinch--and flew upward, this time able to attain the skies without being halted--dismally aware that he was bringing all the pain of The Fountain with him, protected within the shelter of his arms.
The three muggings, four robberies, and two fires he dealt with in Metropolis took less than an hour despite the fact that he kept detouring to drop Lois a safe distance away each time. They had no time to exchange any words, which Clark viewed as a blessing. He had said too many things he shouldn’t have today, heard too much in the past several hours that he had hoped never to hear from her. The heavy, overwhelming silence was better than that, even though he knew he’d probably regret it when Lois finally got a chance to release everything she was doubtlessly composing in her head.
He just hoped he alone heard whatever words she was preparing for him--an infinitely better option than hearing them broadcast from every television tuned to LNN.
Days before, he would have sworn that no matter how she found out his secret, Lois would never betray him. But that was before. Before Luthor had proposed. Before Lois had actually seriously considered accepting his proposal--even gone to his gleaming tower to take his ring. Before she had turned into a stranger he didn’t know. Before *he* had lost all sense of the rational and the sane. Now Clark didn’t know what Lois would do, couldn’t even begin to predict her actions.
Or maybe he was just afraid to do so.
“There are tornados touching down in Kansas,” he said as he swooped down to land before her--so much closer to the site of the fire than he had originally placed her--soot staining his cape and making him feel gritty and brittle.
Lois’s chin tilted defiantly. “You’re not leaving me here.”
“Lois…” he began, but then, inexplicably, he just ran out of words. Ran out of any arguments, any momentum, any reason to argue with her. He had told her he was done fighting with her, and despite the anger rolling within him like the tide, that was still true. So, feeling his shoulders slump, he nodded. “Just make sure you stay where I put you--tornados are dangerous.”
He thought she might have rolled her eyes, but she ducked her head as she did so, so he couldn’t be sure. Regardless, he determined to put her down even farther back from the danger zone than he had originally planned so that she wouldn’t reach it before he could disperse the twisters. He had never felt more disconnected from Lois, never felt so resigned concerning her, but that didn’t mean he could envision her hurt or worse.
Before, every time he’d picked her up, he’d been intent on the sounds of whatever crime had been occurring, focused on deciphering which incident needed him first, distracted by trying to figure out where he could leave Lois so she wouldn’t get hurt, preoccupied in formulating his plan of action. But now, with no alarms to capture his attention, he had nothing to protect him from the feel of Lois in his arms, from the scent of her hair and skin so close to him, from the sound of her heart beating and her even breaths and her small shifts, from the sensation of her warmth seeping into him, threatening to melt that haze of numbness that cloaked him in what little protection it could offer. Now, with her in his arms, he had only a trip that stretched out an eternity between Metropolis and Kansas, with nothing at all to keep him safe from Lois’s soft proximity.
And with her so silent, with her face so near to his, with her arms so trustingly looped around his neck, with her expression quiet and relaxed…well, suddenly he was having a hard time remembering that the anger hidden beneath his invulnerable surface had been ignited by her, that the very real pain lodged like concrete in his chest had been inflicted by her, that the multitude of memories starting with capital letters and boiling within him had become off-limits to his own recollection because of her part in them.
“Lois.” Her name had emerged from his mouth before he’d even realized he meant to speak it, and though the wind loudly rushed past them, he could tell Lois had heard him because she tilted her head to meet his eyes, her blue sweater a bright patch of color amid the midnight sky. Her dark gaze was intent on him, pulling even more words from him. “Lois, why are you doing this? What do you expect to learn about me by coming to these rescues?”
Her eyebrows rose and she gaped at him much as he had done to her when she’d asked him why he was mad at her. But that question had had an oh-so-obvious answer while this…this was a mystery to him.
“You’ve been to rescues before,” he pointed out just to show her why his question was perfectly reasonable.
“Yes, I’ve been to *Superman* rescues,” she said, and her frigid tone made Clark imagine the cold night air was actually affecting him, pebbling his flesh and sliding icy drops down his spine. “But that was when I thought Superman was a selfless man who had chosen to devote his *whole* life to helping others. Now…”
That anger--growing much too familiar within him--stirred, trembling on the brink of explosion as he awaited the rest of her answer. But, he reminded himself, she was in the air right now, completely vulnerable, wholly dependent on him, so Clark put a lid over his simmering emotions, knowing he didn’t have the luxury of expressing them as thoughtlessly as everyone else could.
“Now,” Lois continued obliviously, “I know that that’s not true. I thought I understood you--understood *Superman*--but apparently he’s a liar, not at all like the man I thought I knew. So, I want to see who you really are.”
He clenched his jaw, the only outlet for his hurt and fury he allowed himself. “You really think I’m going to do these rescues differently?”
“I don’t know!” she cried, and the undercurrent of frustration in her voice snapped outward to slap him. “That’s why I’m coming with you. I don’t know you--Clark--Superman. You’re not what I thought you were--it turns out that apparently no one is--and I…I just want to--*need* to--understand just how much everything has changed. You’re not the Superman I thought, but you’re not Clark either. I mean, Kansas isn’t even your home!”
“Yes, it is,” he said quietly, his anger beaten back by the despair encroaching along the edges of her voice, his heart so greatly attuned to her that he couldn’t help but soften at this sign of her distress. For the first time, he cursed himself for telling the truth--not for his sake--but for hers. “I was raised in Smallville, Lois. This is my home.”
“So you say,” she scoffed. “But I can’t believe anything you say, can I? Or Jonathan and Martha, apparently, because they lied too!”
“You’re right,” Clark said, and now the chill of the air, climbing up from his spine to enter his throat, had taken root in his voice, freezing it and turning it bleak and barren. “I guess lying is only acceptable when you do it.”
Before she could respond, he swooped downward and set Lois down on the ground beside a public shelter. He opened his mouth to tell her to be careful, noted her features set in stone, and closed his mouth over the useless warning. As his hands slipped away from her, he wondered at the conflicting feelings of regret at losing that contact and impatience to flee her painful, turbulent presence. The wind swirled strongly all about them, pushing him toward Lois one moment and tugging him away from her the next; he stood stolidly, refusing to move an inch before its insistent influence. Lois’s hair danced wildly about her head, but her expression never wavered, refusing to let him in behind her walls.
With a last long look at her, Clark turned and took a step away so that the wind called up in his wake wouldn’t buffet her, but he was stopped in mid-motion by the sound of her voice softly saying, “Wait.”
Unwillingly, unhesitatingly, he looked over his shoulder at her, already bracing himself for whatever last parting shot she had ready to throw his way.
“You’re coming back, aren’t you?” she asked, and though she tried to make the question sound casual, the tremor running through her voice gave her away.
“I could never leave you, Lois,” Clark said, and wished that for once he *was* lying. But he already knew he was speaking the unvarnished truth. No matter what she said to him, what she did to him, no matter who she married, he didn’t know that he’d ever be able to leave her behind and put her out of her mind, ever be able to escape the piercing quality of those capitalized words--knew that no matter where he was, every park would remind him of The Park Bench, every window would bring to mind The Window, and every time he caught the sound of water, he’d remember The Fountain.
“You’re flying away,” Lois told him, as if he didn’t know that, as if she didn’t believe his assurance, as if his impending absence actually affected her.
“I told you, I’m always a call away. Call my name, and I’ll come to you immediately.”
And before she could ask him what name to use--before he was reminded that she didn’t know him at all anymore--he employed his superspeed and flight to leave in a burst of primary colors.
As soon as he took to the air, the wind assaulted him with all the force of a cosmic storm, tearing ruthlessly at him, shrieking accusations in his ears, pulling and pushing him in a hundred different directions all at once, embracing him even as it sought to tear him to pieces. He ignored it all, kept his flight path steady, never let his gaze waver from the forming cyclone before him, stretched out his hearing past the screeching gusts to the towns and settlements below, ready to swoop down and haul anyone out of the path of danger should it be needed.
Tornados were common in Kansas and even before Superman was a glimmer in the back of his mind, he had already faced and fought back dozens of twisters, so many that his mom had jokingly referred to him as Smallville’s very own champion. Back then, he had felt guilty about not helping when the tornados had touched down anywhere outside a hundred-mile radius of Smallville, had worried that he wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t doing all that he could. And now…now it was still the same. His playing field was oh so much larger, but there was still so much he didn’t do, so many he couldn’t save, a multitude of crimes he never stopped. His parents told him he did enough, but…did he, really? After all, if he didn’t insist on remaining Clark, didn’t cling to the sole bastion of his humanity, didn’t refuse to even picture a life empty of all that the ordinary man offered him, well, then he could be Superman all the time, could double--triple, quadruple--his effectiveness.
But then he’d be lost. And selfish or not, he could no more bring himself to set aside his glasses than he could cut Lois out of his heart.
Only…even now, he didn’t think he *wanted* to rid himself of his great and awful love for Lois Lane. It was painful, yes, but it was also beautiful and uplifting and sometimes the only thing that kept him going, that kept him putting on his cape to be stained in yet another fire or drenched in a storm or almost pierced with a hail of bullets, the only thing that made it worth everything he did and endured. His love for her was an ocean that could so easily pummel him and drown him in dark depths, but it was gorgeous, too, and touched his very soul and gave shape to the contours of his inner self and brought vitality and light and purpose to his life after a long famine of useless drifting and uncertain wandering. She gave him a home, which was something he couldn’t help but be grateful for even when that home was shaky and weak and agonizing.
His thoughts went around and around, aiding and abetting his movements to turn back the force of the wind and rain and stormy elements.
And there in the heart of the storm, as he increased his speed to an increment that no human eye and few human technological achievements could follow, Clark let out a mirthless laugh. Only hours earlier, he had imagined himself as a brightly colored cyclone spinning across Metropolis’s sky, and now, in Kansas, he really was spinning there like an absurd top, corralling the tornados and the wind and the clouds into a funnel that he directed upward until it all fizzled with a last sullen gray mutter and disappeared into skies suddenly blue beneath a sun smiling down at the revealed patchwork earth.
Clark himself looked down at that chessboard of fields and houses and roads. It was a view that illustrated clearly just how disconnected from Earth he really was, and countless times in his past that had troubled him, had worried him that he could so easily be cut loose from the only home he’d ever known.
But no longer. Because now Lois was down there, waiting for him, probably looking up at the sky in anticipation of his return. And yes, she was furious with him, and in all likelihood she hated him, and she had already told him she could never love him even a fraction of the way he loved her…but still she was there. And because she was there, he had something to return to, a tether that kept him grounded, that *connected* him more surely than any other known material could manage, with a strength that rivaled and dwarfed his own.
So, no longer a top but now an arrow, he plummeted back to the ground, a ribbon of blue and red spiraling out behind him as he zeroed in on the woman who could both destroy him and build him up with no more than a glance.
And she was there--again, not in the same place he’d left her--and she was looking upward at him and she calmly met his eyes when he alighted on the ground, as if he were nothing more than a bird trained to return to its master after completing its task. That was something he could have easily resented, but he chose not to, chose instead to look at her and hope--still, unceasingly, ever and always--that he could change her mind. That he could, through sheer persistence and wishful thinking and powerful, desperate hope, make her love him.
Except he didn’t want to have to *make* her love him; he wanted her to love him freely, wanted to *be* someone she could love, wanted to get down on bended knee and beg her to just for a moment *try* to love him.
Dizziness, he concluded, not inclined to be honest in his thoughts even if he did strive for truthfulness as much as possible. He was dizzy from clearing up the cyclones, and that was the reason for his disjointed, random thoughts, the way they--he groaned inwardly to have to use the word again--circled round and round each other, the irrationality and yet fierce yearning inherent in them.
“The cruise ship or the tidal wave?” Lois asked without even mentioning the premature ending of the tornados, without the slightest hint that she saw anything in his expression, without any other words exchanged between them. And though he knew better than to expect anything from her, though he knew it was his own fault they were in this mess, he couldn’t help but shrivel inside at the observation that she had yet to call him by name, had yet to look at him and *know* him, had yet to relax her walls by even an iota.
Shaking his head to rid himself of the extraneous thoughts, he said, “The cruise ship,” and he swept her once more into his arms and took to the skies, and in the presence of her walls, found himself diving back behind the relative safety of his paltry shield, the aura of detachedness that became less *detached* every time he reached for it.
A shiver trembled through her slender frame, and Clark chose to interpret it as a chill. He slowed his speed to hold her with one arm and reached behind him to gather up his cape and wrap its folds around Lois. The cold registered against his skin even if it didn’t bother him, and Lois had yet to lose that pale tint to her cheeks, that touch of blue on her lips, that frozen quality about her.
Lois had stiffened when he shifted her in his arms, but the instant he settled his cape around her and brought her close to his chest, she relaxed. Yet still she was silent, giving nothing away, locking him outside her heart with chains neither Superman’s strength nor Clark’s persistence could break or bypass.
Several times, he opened his mouth to say something, to speak, but each time, he closed it again without letting out a single word. If he hadn’t known better from personal experience, he’d have said this was what being hypnotized felt like, this great gulf gaping between his will and his body, making it impossible for him to put actions to any of his thoughts, separating his mind in two as if it had been split by a serrated blade.
The ocean passed below them, a vista of blue waves capped with reflected moonlight that glittered like fallen stars. Lois looked all about her with a searching gaze, the sea captured in the dark wells of her eyes…but she never once looked at him. And yet, he couldn’t help but think, she was relaxed in his embrace, her own arms twined loosely around his neck. Obviously she still trusted him a little. And no matter that he ultimately wanted so much more, this unexpected trust was like a treasure of immense value handed to him for safekeeping--and Clark would die before letting her down.
But then, as she had repeatedly mentioned, he had already let her down, already disappointed her beyond compare, already broken what trust she had given him before. And now, when she looked at him…what did she see? Was whatever she saw when she turned her knowing gaze on him the reason she refused to look at him now? Did he disgust her?
His relatively slow pace was a curse disguised in the allure of getting to hold her close. His parents had always told him he was too quick to believe the worst of himself--though how could he not when he had messed up so badly?--and these long, torturous moments traversing the Pacific gave him far too much time to realize all the reasons Lois had to never again speak to him, never again bestow one of her quick, intelligent, amazing smiles on him, never again throw herself so trustingly into his arms for a hug, never again want to partner with him. And all because he had dared to dream the impossible, try for the unthinkable, loose that unwelcome truth.
Bright daylight was just visible to his eyes past the curve of the earth when Clark spotted the lead rescue vessel making for the damaged cruise ship. He swooped low toward the waves, focusing his hearing on the waves lapping against the hull to guide him forward, tightening his hold on Lois so that he wouldn’t be thrown temporarily off-balance if she shifted.
Superman, he reminded himself as he descended, and wondered at how hard it was to remember his disguise now that Lois knew it for what it was.
“Superman!” The murmur went through the people on deck, but none of them rushed forward to surround him, most of them falling back so whoever was in charge could step forward to speak to him.
Clark steadied Lois with a hand on her back when the ship pitched beneath them, his cape falling away from her. “Sir,” he greeted the officer, then, noticing the curious gazes directed Lois’s way, he added, “This is Lois Lane, a reporter for the--” A tremor of grief slithered its way through him, diluting the immediacy of the cries for help emanating from the misty sea behind him.
There wasn’t a Daily Planet anymore, was there? It had been destroyed, snatched away from him, along with the pseudo-family he’d found, the team where he’d actually, for perhaps the first time in his life, felt he’d belonged. He still had to remind himself of that fact, still forgot it at odd times, and it still stabbed him to the core every time he remembered.
“She’s a reporter,” he tried to recover, wincing over the discernible stumble in his introduction.
The officer nodded a short greeting to Lois, but the bulk of his attention was on Clark. “Thanks for coming, Superman. It’s a nasty situation we’ve got here. The fog’s muddying up what intel we can get. We’re relatively sure a fire’s broken out in their engine room, but since we’ve lost all communication, we can’t verify that.”
“I’ll go in immediately,” Clark offered. “Is there anything I should look for specifically, any advice you can give me on how to handle this?”
Worry lines creased the older man’s brow before he rubbed them away with gnarled fingers. “It’s different than that ocean liner you pulled out of the Atlantic several months ago. From what we can tell, this ship won’t stay in one piece so don’t try to move it. Put the fire out, then pull us in so we can off-load the passengers and crew, then probably guide us out of this fogbank. Unless you’d prefer trying something--”
“Whatever you think is best, sir,” Clark interrupted, hesitant to hear any deference, impatient to reach the people he could hear whimpering, crying, shouting for help, calling out frantic orders, murmuring farewell messages to each other. “However, instead of leaving the ship to come back for you, I might try to clear the fog so you can make your own way in.”
“Sounds like a plan, Superman. Do what you have to do--there’s well over a thousand people onboard that ship!”
“I’ll do my best,” Clark promised, inwardly shrinking away from the immensity of that number of helpless people depending on him. He was about to fling himself into the air when he felt a palpable presence behind him, the tangible sensation of someone watching him. He was Superman right now, of course, and Superman attracted an audience everywhere he went, but this was different. More imperative, less impersonal, wholly intimate.
He turned to look behind him and met Lois’s eyes, the contact so real and unexpected that it sent a tiny jolt through him. She was standing near the crew, separated from them by a tiny space, watching him with dark, unreadable eyes. Her hands were hanging at her sides, but they were clenched into tight fists, white with the damp cold pervading the air. Lines crimped her mouth, as if she fought to hold back what she was thinking as she regarded him so pensively.
Suddenly, Clark felt as if he were stripped naked before her, as if his every thought had been ripped from his head and placed on an examining table before her, as if his heart had been opened and dissected and set to be weighed on whatever scales she demanded. Superman had always been a refuge for him, the perfect opportunity to help all the people he heard suffering on a daily basis without giving up Clark, a chance to employ the powers he had, for whatever reason, been granted--and sometimes, Superman had been the chance for Clark to get away from the constrictions placed on him by his constant deceptions.
But now, for the first time, someone knew him for who and what he really was. Someone looked at him and knew he wasn’t a hero, knew he wasn’t infallible, knew he wasn’t invulnerable--and conversely, knew he wasn’t ordinary, wasn’t normal, wasn’t *human*.
And not just anyone--Lois Lane.
Lois Lane, reporter.
Lois Lane, his partner.
Lois Lane, his friend.
Lois Lane, the woman he loved.
Lois Lane.
Terror attacked his every cell, attached itself like slippery oil to every drop of blood in his veins, hazed every thought he had. He had never felt so exposed, never been so afraid of the future, never felt guiltier about his lies. Because no matter how much he tried to avoid speaking outright lies, just standing here in this Suit was a lie. Talking to the rescue crew the way he had, adopting the superhero pose, speaking in a deeper voice, holding himself so aloof--all of it a deception.
And she knew it. She was looking right at him, at this moment, and she knew just how much of a lie he lived in either guise, knew just how unqualified he was for both of his lives, knew just exactly who he was even if she wouldn’t admit it.
And so he did what he always did when he was afraid, when he didn’t know what to do, when anyone looked too closely at him.
He ran.
The sky enveloped him, embraced him in its silken, liquid atmosphere, offered him entrance as it did no one else--acceptance of a kind. The fog turned the dark night into a pitch black void filled with the moisture in the air, the slap of the waves, the echoes of people crying for help or in despair or with unadorned panic, the scent of acrid smoke merging with the mist that cloaked him in its pall and hid him from the sharp sight of a certain reporter.
The officer had been right--the cruise ship was on fire. Flames pierced the air, turning an already messy situation into pure chaos. People were in the water, hanging on the sides of the ship, spilling over the lifeboats--*everywhere*, crying and screaming and whimpering. The scent of saltwater and gasoline and fire and smoke and sweat blended together into such an astringent scent that Clark gasped and chose to hold his breath rather than breathe it in.
There was an uproar when the first few people saw the blur of his familiar colors and began calling out his name. Suddenly, Clark was awash in a cacophony of voices raised to him, begging him for salvation, demanding his intervention, sobbing their relief, all of it drowning out any other noise. He waved to them all--and there were so *many*--in what he hoped was a reassuring manner but didn’t stop, simply darted straight under the water to look at the ship from below, his vision stripping away all obstacles to search for weak points in the ship’s hull and the origin of the fire, hoping it would be easily containable.
His heart sank at the sight of flames engulfing the entire engine room, stretching outward to encompass most of belowdecks, adding further stress to a hull that was already disintegrating. For a moment, he felt the familiar panic with his own frailties and limitations, the gaps in his knowledge and the very real knowledge of his own weakness, the things he couldn’t do and the burden of all that depended on him. For a moment, he felt the familiar urge to curl up into a tight ball and shut out the jagged, harsh, painful pleas for his help, to go back to his apartment in Metropolis or his parents’ farmhouse in Smallville and pretend, for just an hour, a day, a week, that he didn’t hold such breathtaking, soul-crushing responsibility on his shoulders.
And then, as he always did, he fought off the cowardice, fought off the exhaustion, focused his every ounce of attention on the emergency before him--and he became Superman.
Time vanished, its importance diminished, swallowed up in the immediate urgency of the situation. Water and flame merged and fought and shimmered to meld together in one long flow of danger and pressure and the fear that he’d miss someone, that he’d be a second too slow, that he’d miscalculate. The wind helped him when he called for it, sent by his breath to wipe away fog, to quench flames, to calm waves. His strength didn’t fail him, sufficient for the task of clearing away shattered corridors, righting life boats, carrying fragile, helpless bodies to the relative safety of the top deck and then to the arriving rescue boats. His heat-vision seared through water, stirred up bubbles, melted hull plates together, bypassed weak points. His speed carried him and his so-vulnerable, so-precious cargo out of the water, through the flames, over gaps.
Thought faded, submerged beneath the importance of what he did, the pathetic gratefulness in the eyes of those he saved, the panicked terror in the voices of those looking for missing loved ones, the wretched anguish apparent in the wounded he uncovered. The battle between Clark Kent and Superman, the exhaustion brought on by walking the line between honesty and lies, his heartache and terrible pain--all of it meaningless for this span of time, this collection of minutes and hours, this blurred, crystal-clear emergency.
And for just a while, drenched in flames, consumed by the waves, he could forget. He could forget his mistakes, forget his fears, forget his hurts, could forget everything he wasn’t and couldn’t do, and he could simply *be*, could *do*, could *succeed*.
And then it all came crashing down on him with the sound of a weak, stuttering heartbeat that slowed…and stopped.
Panic as he spun, everything turned instantly transparent before him.
Terror as he saw additional flames licking through the passenger lounges, the smoke contaminating his nose and mouth and eyes and heart.
Guilt as he realized there was a body hidden beneath the curve of a fallen door, a small, tiny body he had overlooked, broken and crumpled and still. So terribly, horribly still. So awfully, crushingly silent.
Then no time to categorize, no time to define, only time to react, only time to move, only time to hope and hope and *hope* that he wasn’t really too late. Moving so quickly he was a blur as he sped to the victim’s side, slowing with careful precision as he moved aside the debris, so cautious and tremulous as he lifted the body away from the danger and up into open air, flying him--a boy, not much more than twelve or thirteen years old--to the deck of the rescue ship, laying him down as if he were made of spun glass, abstractly noticing that every medic was occupied.
A breath out to rid himself of extraneous oxygen--couldn’t overfill the boy’s lungs--then leaning over him, breathing into his mouth, tapping--so gently, so carefully, so prayerfully--on the boy’s chest, once, twice, again, again, as many times as necessary, breathing into his lungs again, praying constantly, ceaselessly, afraid to breathe himself, taking in only enough oxygen to give back to the boy.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing save debilitating guilt and agonizing fear and familiar despair over the fragility of everyone around him and his own inability to ever, ever be *enough*.
And then…so quietly he would have feared he imagined it save he could intimately hear the respiratory system starting back up, could hear blood beginning to move so sluggishly through the tiny heart, the boy breathed, moved, tried to open fluttering eyes.
For an instant, Clark felt his every muscle turn as liquid as the waves around him…but he was still Superman, and so he straightened, and he shifted his shoulders to better settle the burden atop them and he hid all his pain and fear and overwhelming relief and he surveyed the orderly pandemonium filling this patch of ocean.
And once more, he found himself looking straight at Lois, who was straightening from the side of one of the wounded, her eyes unerringly finding his. Grime stained her cheek and hands, blood colored her sky-blue sweater, the track of tears showed clearly on her delicate features, saltwater overpowered her perfume and soaked her pants, she shivered in the clammy cold, and there was something in her eyes, something soft and new and melancholy.
It was too much, too much atop the burdens he already carried and the pain he already felt, so Clark turned hastily away.
He murmured an explanation to the officer in charge, received an acknowledgment and a distracted thanks, and then he lifted straight up into the air, managed a nod at Lois--carefully avoiding eye-contact--so she wouldn’t think he was abandoning her, and then he was fleeing the empty and desolate cruise ship, the unconscious boy, the fleet of rescue boats. Headed for another ocean, another emergency, another catastrophe cloaked in water.
Fleeing, above all, the pity that had shown so apparent in Lois’s gleaming, all-too-*knowing* eyes.
**
