Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Man Or Monster? 4/7

A/N: I want to say another huge thank you to my betas! They worked tirelessly on this story for me when I was writing it, suffered through a...ahem...long hiatus, and then dived right back in. So thank you very much, Lynn and Morgana, and Deadly Chakram, who is still encouraging me even though her twins are keeping her very busy! And thank you to the rest of you, reading this story and hopefully enjoying!

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Chapter 4: That Old Name Of Mine
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“Luthor!” Clark didn’t have to entirely fake the surprise in his voice. X-ray vision gave him warning, but it didn’t help him figure out why exactly the man he was pretty sure he hated was standing on his doorstep.

“Kent.” Luthor’s voice gave away nothing besides his seemingly inherent arrogance. The two thugs standing at either of his shoulders towered over both Clark and Luthor and seemed a fair indication of Luthor’s hostility.

Refusing to pretend to fear, and yet cautious not to give away his complete and utter calmness, Clark glanced back and forth between the thugs, then raised an eyebrow at Luthor. “I hope you’re not still upset about that article I wrote on Metropolis Electric.”

A slight tug at his lips was all the emotion Luthor revealed, yet it did nothing to counter the mercenary ruthlessness revealed in his obsidian eyes. “The absence of a newspaper to run your story has somewhat curbed my dissatisfaction with your opinion about necessary rate hikes.”

Clark was forced to step aside or risk revealing just how solid he was when Luthor pushed past him and down into the living room, his hired muscle shadowing him. Carefully, slowly, Clark closed his door and started down the steps, aware of just how precarious his position was at the moment. As Lois had said, Luthor had mainly ignored Clark up to a point, which would have been insulting--after all, Clark had investigated at least as many stories that had hampered Luthor’s criminal activities as Lois had--if it hadn’t also been useful, but this, coming to his apartment and confronting him…this didn’t fit any of Luthor’s normal behavior patterns. Luthor preferred to use subtlety, liked tricking people, loved smiling at them and pretending to comfort them with one hand while with the other he stole away everything that was good and precious.

So what was he doing here now?

“What do you want, Luthor?” Clark asked bluntly, and belatedly realized that his hands had curled into tight fists.

“Not one for basic hospitality, are we, Kent?” Luthor gestured toward the full pot of coffee Clark wasn’t about to offer to share. “But then, what else should one expect from someone such as yourself?”

Cold ice trickled down Clark’s spine, droplets trekking past individual vertebrae to coalesce into a frostbitten pit that weighted him down, tied him to the floor. “What do you mean?” he asked, wary, every muscle tensed. All it would take was one bullet, one blade, one misstep to destroy Clark Kent, to rip through the fragile cobweb of alter egos and half-truths that protected him and his parents and his friends. Clark eyed the distance between himself and Luthor’s thugs, inched back just a bit.

“You know, Kent, I admit that I, perhaps, made a mistake with you.” Carelessly, Luthor turned his back on Clark, took in a comprehensive glance of the apartment, faced Clark once again, eyeing him with cool disfavor. “The naïve, idealistic persona you assume with such ease made me underestimate you, dismiss you as a threat. I mean, of course I had Nigel look into your background when it became apparent Lois was fond of you, but there was nothing there to raise my interest--a country bumpkin with dreams of the big city come to realize his dreams and make his mark on the world he had traveled. And yet…obviously, there is something more to you. Something different.”

Clark narrowed his eyes. “Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t run background checks on everyone I meet.”

“There, you see.” Luthor pointed triumphantly at him, his brow quirked. “That. That’s exactly what I mean--you’re not intimidated. You’re not afraid of me. From the first time we met, in fact, when I placed the blade of Alexander the Great at your throat, you’ve been singularly…unimpressed. That’s quite a feat for anyone, let alone a…provincial…like yourself.”

Luthor’s two thugs closed in on Clark, boxing him in between them. He fought the urge to squirm away from them, or worse, to shrug his shoulders and send them flying outward. Their actions only underscored the menacing quality of Luthor’s tone.

“I’ve never been impressed by bullies,” Clark said, his voice rasping under the strain it took to speak somewhat civilly. “And no matter how much power and money you have, Luthor, that’s still all you are.”

“Nonsense.” The billionaire shrugged aside the insult with a coldly gracious smile. “Your naiveté isn’t entirely an act, I see, Kent. There’s a certain hierarchy that governs men. Most people instinctively recognize and bow to their social betters, but it appears you don’t have that survival instinct.”

“Is that a threat?” Clark wasn’t sure if Lois could hear Luthor’s voice from where she was hidden--it was so hard for him to judge how much everyone else could hear--but he hoped she could. And yet, contradictorily, he almost wished, for her sake, that she could not. Hard enough for her to be told that the man she had considered spending the rest of her life with was a criminal; it would be even more difficult for her to face that fact firsthand.

Of course, she thought Clark was no better than Luthor.

But that wasn’t something he could think about, not now, not when Luthor was standing in his apartment staring him down.

Clark was intimately aware of the men on either side of him, could hear without consciously trying the breath being pulled in and out of their lungs, the blood sliding through their veins, pumped through their heart, the shifting of their weight as they almost indiscernibly rocked back and forth on their heels, the sound of their jackets sliding against the guns they were each carrying. Beyond them, Luthor breathed and stepped, his soles grinding minuscule particles of dirt into the floor, his hands whistling through the air as he made his grandiose gestures. Even farther out came the familiar sounds of Metropolis, cars and planes and buses and people--walking, talking, laughing, crying, partying, sleeping, busy on their computers--and the ocean beyond them, shifting and stirring and rising and falling in tandem with the beat of Clark’s own heart.

All of it surrounded him in its comforting sameness, the melody he’d been listening to in some form or fashion for over a decade, reassuring him even as it reminded him that he couldn’t afford to provoke Luthor into ordering his thugs to attack him. He felt his entire future--his parents’ lives--teetering on a precipice, poised over a drop that could send Clark Kent spiraling into oblivion. At all costs, he had to make certain Clark wasn’t attacked, wasn’t found out, wasn’t unmasked as the superhero Luthor had made into his personal enemy.

“Not a threat,” Luthor corrected. “Merely an observation. For instance, if you had recognized the way the natural order of things worked, you would know that--how shall I phrase this?--inconsequential people such as yourself don’t end up with the girl. Or woman, as the case may be. Men like myself, or even Superman, are the ones who end up winning the hearts and hands of desirable women. Which leads me to the reason I’m here now.”

“I’m not following.” Out of habit, Clark started to cross his arms over his chest before quickly catching himself. Clark Kent slouched and stood in the background and kept his hands in his pockets; he didn’t stand tall and proud with confident or confrontational postures. So, noticing that his hands had once again formed into fists, he slipped them into his pockets.

“It doesn’t take an IQ as high as mine to realize that you possess quite a bit of attraction for your erstwhile partner,” Luthor intoned. “And it comes as no great surprise that your chances with her are as slim as the proverbial snowball’s. I had thought my greatest rival in securing the affections of my fiancée was the much-vaunted—yet overrated—Superman.” There was a sneer in his voice when he spoke Superman’s name, just as there always was. Clark was halfway convinced it was physically impossible for Luthor to speak his alter ego’s name without the sneer.

“I take it your ‘social hierarchy’ doesn’t take into account the fact that a woman has to say yes before you can marry her,” Clark interjected scathingly before silently cursing himself and hunching his shoulders in on himself as if he were afraid of a retaliatory blow from one of Luthor’s henchmen.

“Oh, she’ll say yes,” Luthor said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s the timing of her answer that I’m concerned about at the moment. You see, I knew she had an odd fondness for her reporting partner, even going so far as to ask me to provide a job for you at LNN when she accepted my offer. But preferring to work with the partner you know is a far different matter than leaving Lex Tower before giving me her answer to my proposal, making her way to Centennial Park at midnight, and meeting up with that former partner of hers. And then, of course, there’s the fact that neither one of you were seen leaving the park, yet here you are, safe and sound in your apartment…while there’s still no sign of Lois. And since Superman’s been busy around the world with emergencies, that leaves out the possibility of him as your mode of conveyance. Quite a mystery for such an unassuming man from Kansas, don’t you think, Mr. Kent?”

“Not really,” Clark said carefully, his mind racing through every possible lie he could tell and evasion make. Deception wasn’t his strong suit, but right now, the lives of his parents and Lois and his friends were all depending on him. He remembered his thought from earlier in the night that he didn’t need to bother to hide his alter ego if he could bring down Luthor, and wondered once more if he had gone crazy.

“Oh?” Luthor arched his brows in mock-surprise. “Then why don’t you explain this puzzle to me?”

“Reporters don’t like being followed,” Clark told him calmly. “I knew there were men outside the park, so I avoided them. As to where Lois is, well, I’d guess that if she found out you were having her watched, she’d be none too happy about it.” Silently, he congratulated himself on the complete truthfulness of that answer; if anyone was adept at spotting lies, it’d be the master liar himself, and Clark felt a bit safer with truth as his shield.

“Is that so?” Luthor smiled, a cold, hard smile little more than the stretching of his lips beneath sheer obsidian eyes. At that imitation of a smile, the two thugs flanking Clark reached out and each roughly grabbed hold of one of his arms. Clark pretended to try to shrug them off, then subsided, blanking his expression.

“What are you doing, Luthor?” he asked, his eyes narrowing despite himself. His hands were balled into fists again, but he didn’t bother trying to relax them. If he could have done it without drawing attention, he would have slid his glasses down and x-rayed Luthor and his henchmen for weapons. Every breath felt perilous; one gunshot and his secret was out.

“I underestimated you, Kent.” All trace of deceptive politeness had been stripped from Luthor’s voice so that only ambition and ruthlessness and calculating menace were left. “I admit that I thought Superman would be the greatest obstacle to winning Lois’s hand. But no matter--I’m flexible. And what is it they say about two birds with one stone? Well, I have a stone.”

Tension permeated Clark’s body when Luthor’s hand went inside his jacket, and if he had known what was coming, he would have jerked free of the thugs’ grip, would have thrown himself to the side, would never have answered the door. But prescience wasn’t one of Superman’s abilities, and so Clark simply stood there, as helpless as if he were truly an ordinary man, as guilelessly as if he had no Secret, as naively as if he had nothing to fear.

The dagger glowed green, but only for an instant, because in the next instant, Luthor had buried it deeply, agonizingly, astonishingly, in Clark’s stomach, its phosphorescent shine sheathed in his flesh. Lightning arced like molten silver through his veins while a storm as turbulent and large and encompassing as the skies rooted itself in the pit of his stomach, pain taking the place of the vacuum that had earlier carved its way through him.

He would have fallen, would have dropped to the floor like a marionette who had suddenly realized its strings had been cut, but the two thugs holding onto him supported his weight, little grunts escaping them as he sagged in their arms. Luthor smiled at Clark grimly, his smoky-sweet breath like a miasma in front of Clark’s white- and silver-hazed vision.

“I’m sure, being the farmboy that you are, that you’ve gone fishing before, Kent. Well, consider yourself the bait and Superman the fish. That makes you the worm, but some few people are always typecast, aren’t they. And Lois? Lois is the prize in this contest. Superman will come to save his good friend Clark Kent, just like always, only this time…” Luthor made a twisting motion with his hand, and Clark felt a cry wrung from him to stain the air and break through, temporarily, the miasma of Luthor’s despair-tinged breaths. Shards of glass were dipped in acid and transmuted into his insides, blanking out sight and touch and awareness of all but Luthor’s voice and the tiny snapping sound as he broke the dagger, leaving the Kryptonite blade ensconced inside Clark’s once-invulnerable flesh.

“This time, Superman won’t be able to save you, and Lois will be mine.”

The men dropped him, ridding themselves of an extraneous, useless burden, and Clark fell, fell, fell, and it was a new sensation, something he couldn’t understand or equate. He had never fallen before, not like this, so uncontrolled and helpless and vulnerable, utterly unable to catch himself, to float, to fly. He fell and when he landed, he was crushed and destroyed in a starburst of agony and white-hot torment, and dying was so much more painful than he had ever imagined it could be.

Luthor’s last words rang in his head, like a bell tolling his final moments, and suddenly he wasn’t lying on the floor of his apartment bleeding blood poisoned by radioactive pieces of a homeworld he would never know. Suddenly he was in a boat on a placid lake, floating through serene waters with a fishing rod at his side.

“It’s all about patience, son,” his father told him. His hand was on Clark’s shoulder, heavy and supportive and so unquestionably loving, and Clark basked in that feeling even more than he did in the watery, pale sunlight that felt so much colder against his skin than it looked. The air was honey and gold and sweetness, marked by the ripples their boat stirred on the lake, by the sound of water and wood and warmth, and yet he was so very, very cold, frozen and trembling beneath the weight of his father’s hand that was suddenly more like a shackle than an affectionate gesture.

“Patience and care.” His father’s voice was real, heavy and solid, as substantial as the feel of lead encasing his limbs in sluggish monotony, so Clark anchored himself to that voice and the words he’d so carefully stored away inside himself through the years to take out on dark and bright days alike and scatter outward like candies thrown to children lined up for parades.

He couldn’t quite remember why his father was talking to him, though. The vague recollection of fishing ghosted past him, but it was quickly supplanted by green lightning crackling so brilliantly, so vividly, that it left sparks dancing behind his eyes. He wanted to move, wanted to open his eyes, wanted to shift away from the cold ice burrowing into his stomach, but the effort seemed so far beyond him that he wistfully let the desire go and contented himself with spiraling back toward the placid lake where his father waited to gird him with more words of wisdom and affection.

From somewhere came the explosive sound of a door crashing closed…and then there was silence. Total silence. Silence so complete that Clark found himself completely and terrifyingly unnerved. Because silence was something to be found only when he hung suspended between space and earth, and even then, there was the internal sound of his own heart beating and blood rushing through veins. But now…now there was nothing.

He was alone.

He was *alone* in a way he’d never been before, a way that cut him off from all life, and he wondered, almost curiously, if that meant he was dead. Or dying. One was just as bad as the other, he supposed, and really, what did it matter? His parents would grieve, of course they would, and in an odd, disjointed way, he felt sorrowful for what they would go through in his absence. He would miss them. But Superman had been a beacon for hope, and surely his legacy would live on, maybe even strengthened by martyrdom. And Clark Kent…well, Clark Kent had lived, and that might not sound like much of an achievement on its own, but it was all he had ever wanted to do, and so it seemed all right, then, to let himself float back out toward that lake where things were simpler and quieter--quieter in a way that wasn’t frightening--and softer all around the edges.

Only, the lake disappeared and the green lightning came back and for an instant, he thought he was metamorphosing into lightning himself, transforming with the flicker of searing electricity into a bolt of solid energy and poignant quietness. Which might explain why things were so quiet, he thought--the *sound* of lightning always fell behind the actual lightning bolt.

So he held his breath and waited to hear the thunder, but all he heard, instead, was a soft, feminine voice whispering urgent words that tumbled and cartwheeled their way past him. It was sound, more sound than had been available to him only instants before, so he smiled and listened.

The smile quickly vanished when his leaden limbs were moved, his head lolling--not his fault; it was just so heavy and unresponsive--and that ice in his stomach flared abruptly hot as the sun. He might have screamed, but the sound was delayed, thunder falling behind, so he couldn’t be sure. He only knew that there was pain and hurt and something terrible waiting for him if he let go of the lake rippling within him.

But then he felt something else, something besides the agony roiling like storm-clouds inside him, something soft and gentle and warm. It was strange, almost startling in its stark contrast to the phosphorescent pain, and he followed it, as if it were a string leading him from darkness to light. Only, that comparison was surely flawed because when his eyes fluttered open, he found himself in shadowed dimness so much darker than the sunlit lake and cloudless sky.

The voice sounded again--or maybe *still*--and with a great effort, he was able to focus in on the blurry face above him.

Lois.

Her hands were like blankets and butterflies on his face, flitting from one place to the next, warm and enveloping. She was close, so close that he could touch her, and he would have, but his limbs still wouldn’t cooperate. And anyway, he reminded himself, she didn’t want him touching her. Not anymore.

“I’m sorry, Lois.” It took him a long moment to piece together the sound of those few words to his voice and the rumbling vibrations in his chest. More thunder, he thought dimly. Always just a bit behind, always too slow, always far too little to compete or fully complement the brilliant lightning. That seemed sad, suddenly, so sad that he wanted to cry, wanted to reach past the clogging, cloying pain to grab hold of the sea of anguish that rested so tremulously somewhere deep inside him.

“Shh.” She tried to shush him, which amused him--lightning trying to shush the thunder it beget.

“It’s my fault--I should have known we were being followed,” he murmured. His eyes--the traitorous things--were trying to shut on him, and his head was lolling uselessly again, but he didn’t mind that so much, not when it meant Lois put her hands on him to hold him in place. It was easier to concentrate on her touch--soothing, steadying, and *there*--than the roaring pain that had spread to encompass his every nerve ending. The silence around him, almost untouched even by their voices, was still disconcerting. There had been cries for help and waves lapping against a shore and the general bustle of a city earlier; now there was only vast, drowning silence that threatened to conquer him all on its own. No one needed him, for the first time he could remember.

And if no one needed him, then what was his purpose here?

“This isn’t your fault!” Lois said, the ferocity in her voice snapping outward and scaring off the encroaching shadows. She was enough to frighten anyone, so beautiful and brilliant and bold, and so frustratingly unattainable. “It’s *his*!”

Hope rose, marched forward, battled anguish, merging and melding with the despair he hadn’t remembered he was feeling until the passion in her voice roused it. Hope because she wasn’t saying *Lex* anymore, and her dark eyes were gleaming with anger even while her fingers were gentle on his brow. Maybe…maybe she wasn’t mad at him anymore. Maybe she could eventually forgive him.

It was the first time he’d thought it, the first time he’d realized that he might not have ruined everything, and it woke him more surely than anything else had.

Woke him to searing fire crackling along his veins, scorching outward from the blade embedded within his flesh. His hands scrabbled uselessly at his side, but his shirt was tangled up there, and his fingers glanced off the material and fell away.

“I should have heard them,” he muttered even as he tried to muster up the strength to try again. “I should have--”

“You can’t hear *everything*, Clark,” Lois said--or he thought she said anyway, but he was aware, vaguely, that he hadn’t really just been fishing with his dad either, so maybe this was simply another delirium-tinged dream. “You can’t *be* everything. What you are--who you are--it’s enough.”

It was as if a lifeline had been tossed to him, an escape from the downward spiraling thoughts that had afflicted him since The Park Bench and The Window and The Fountain, so many points of pain, so many sharp edges, so many nightmarish memories contained within those angular, scrawled letters.

But the lifeline was snatched away as quickly and easily as it had been given when soft, cool hands reached inside him and pulled the green lightning from his flesh, exorcising him with an agony that sent him reeling and tumbling through blackness. He let out a shuddering cry--heard it, rumbling through him, but this time connected to the lightning, so close and dangerous that no time passed at all between burst of *hurt* and scream of pain--and curled in on himself. It was a useless gesture, useless to protect him from Luthor and Kryptonite and Lois, but he made it anyway because there was nothing else for him to do and he had to do *something*.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Clark, stay awake, okay? Clark? Clark!”

Forgiveness was slathered over those words like butter and honey over hot toast. Acceptance was layered across them like…like…the analogy drifted away from him, and all he could hear was the name. The name that he cradled to himself like a precious treasure, the dream he hugged so close, the desire he couldn’t quite hide.

“Clark, don’t fall asleep. Clark! You have to tell me what to do. Clark!”

“I am Clark,” he whispered through rubbery lips.

“I know you are,” came the reply, all that he wanted to hear, all that he had hoped to hear. He knew, then, that this was a dream, but he didn’t *care*. It was safe and beautiful and hopeful, and that was what he needed, what he *craved*, right now. He just wanted to be warm and safe and happy, just for a moment, and then he could wake again and pull on his cape and be Superman, with all the responsibility and loneliness and joy that bestowed. But for now…for now, he wanted to be Clark. He wanted this dream.

So he lifted a hand, suddenly light and free, and ran his fingers through dark, silky hair. “I love you, Lois,” he told her.

“I know you do.” Her tremulous smile was so beautiful that he had to close his eyes.

“I wish…” He paused, then, because even in a dream, it wasn’t safe to admit too much, wasn’t wise to let go of long-held secrets and watch them emerge, frail and fragile and vulnerable, into the cold, harsh world where so much, so little, could destroy them. But the truth was precious and valuable and that lake was beckoning to him, and in the end, wasn’t truth what he was supposed to stand for? So he confessed.

“I wish I was someone you could love.”

“You are,” she replied, and that was such a fitting end—or perhaps beginning--to this dream, that he smiled and willingly gave himself over to it.

***

Great swathes of gold and carnelian and topaz lights fell like curtains over his eyes, heavy bundles of light and warmth that touched his flesh as if composed of alien elements, so foreign that he stirred and shook himself. When he opened his eyes, he had to pause and try to remember exactly what had happened to leave him lying on the floor with his head pillowed on Lois’s lap because this certainly wasn’t something he’d ever woken to before.

She was sleeping, her head leaning against the couch cushions behind her, and her hand was a solid point of warmth on his neck, so real and present that Clark had a hard time convincing himself he was actually awake and alive. The pain that had gaped wide and swallowed him whole was still nibbling away at him, holding him still and compliant and aching in its razor-toothed grip. And yet, for all that there were coals banked somewhere inside him, buried beneath the ash and soot of unfamiliarity and exhaustion and the strangeness of *normality*, all he could focus on was Lois’s hand on his skin, her legs beneath his head…the fact that she was there at all, still with him, still touching him even though he was just another Claude to her.

Clark. Claude. Too many similarities, but he had almost forgotten--almost wished he *had* forgotten--that she thought him worse than Claude.

She equated him with Luthor.

But those were bleak thoughts, too dark and dismal to contemplate while she was holding him so safe and protected and cherished. So he brushed them aside, anchored himself to the dull ache flaring up within him because that at least reminded him of where he was. With a hand that felt heavier than Nightfall, with fingers that shook more than the most cowardly of criminals confronted by Superman, he reached up and drew a careful finger down Lois’s cheek, a touch so light it was barely there. A touch just enough to convince himself that this had to be real. And yet…

“I’m dreaming,” he said aloud. It was always best to test out theories. The scientific process--submit theories to tests in order to advance them. He’d touched her and she hadn’t disappeared. Now he spoke, and though she stirred and woke to look at him with eyes that were dark and luminous, she also smiled at him, which meant he still couldn’t be sure whether he was actually awake or not. No dream of his had ever included the voracious pain threatening to eat him alive from the inside out, but they all included Lois looking at him with *that* look in her eyes.

“*Am* I dreaming?” he asked her, finally breaking down. Because if this was a dream, he might as well give himself fully over to it and enjoy it--might as well sit up and take her into his arms and kiss her the way he had under the guise of newlyweds in the Lexor honeymoon suite. But if it wasn’t a dream…well, no need to embarrass himself more than he already had in the past couple of days.

“No,” she said, and wasn’t it just like her to crush his dream with a smile on her face? But she looked so happy that he couldn’t help but forgive her for everything. “You’re awake, finally!”

“I’m awake?” In that case, he thought regretfully, he couldn’t impose on her. With a slight grimace when his stomach muscles protested the action, he sat up as quickly as he was able, separating himself from her. He felt an almost tangible connection torn between them, as if their physical touch had been the last link that bound them together, and now that it was gone, there was nothing but distance and names to stand between them.

Carefully, needing the excuse to look away from her while he tried to tame his expression to something that wouldn’t frighten her away, he looked down at his stomach. His shirt was mostly unbuttoned, revealing a long, red scar that blazed in time with his pulse, slanted above and past his navel. With an almost morbid curiosity, he brushed his fingers over the angry wound, surprised by the texture of marred and mangled flesh. There was no blood on the wound itself, though dark crimson and dull rust stained his shirt like war-paint proclaiming a battle and a victory.

Or a defeat.

Because Clark had been the one who was stabbed. And Clark had bled. And Clark had fallen. All in front of other people, witnesses who would find it beyond strange--would find it darkly suspicious--should the normal mild-mannered reporter be seen walking the streets of Metropolis as if no mere mortal weapon could faze him.

“It’s getting better,” Lois observed, and for a moment, Clark could do nothing but gape at her in incredulous disbelief. But then he reminded himself that she was speaking of the physical wound, that it wouldn’t matter to her if Clark was gone, now that he had ruined his every chance with her, even the chance to be only her friend.

Downcast, he looked back down at the wound where Luthor had pierced the very core of Superman. Suddenly, so abruptly that it left him gasping, he felt compelled to stand, to move, to divorce himself from the spot of ground where Clark Kent had fallen so permanently. He tried to rise, straining with his arms to lift himself from the floor, but he was weak and shaky, and the tiny fist of pain moved and struck out inside his stomach, sewed up behind the red, raw scar.

He let out a grunt, not so much from the pain as from the feel of Lois’s hands on his arm and back, supporting him as he finally made it to his feet.

“I don’t think you should do that,” Lois said. He was glad that she helped him despite her words; he didn’t think he’d have been able to withstand her had she tried to hold him down.

“I’m better,” he reassured her, and wished so badly that he could believe that himself. For an instant, he was struck by the blinding desire for his parents, for the soothing, encompassing touch of his mom’s life-giving hands and the gentle, quiet strength of his dad’s presence. But it was a ridiculous wish, and he wouldn’t endanger them by having them there even if he could have transported them to his side through sheer force of *wanting*. Of course, if he could have willed reality the way he wished it to be, he rather thought that his first wish would have more to do with the woman at his side than with his parents in Smallville.

Lois frowned at him when he stood, her hands hovering a millimeter away from his skin, constant temptation so close he could feel the heat, so far he could not bridge the gap between. “You’re better? Really? So…you have your powers back?”

“No,” he admitted. He eyed the couch, but decided that he’d better not try to sit down, not when his legs felt as limp as water funneled through worn straws. “The last time I was exposed to Kryptonite, they took a day or so to come back, and that was just a small exposure. But that was the first time I’d ever been exposed--I’m sure my body will adjust more quickly this time around.”

There was fear wrapped up alongside the pain left by the Kryptonite blade that he didn’t want to address. Fear that Kryptonite would have a different effect when it was actually embedded in his flesh. Fear that the pain pulsing in his side was caused by a sliver of Kryptonite left encased inside his own body, like the poisoned pit at the center of the peach. Fear that he would never get better, that Superman would be made vulnerable and powerless with the same stroke that had killed Clark Kent. The fears drifted in the air like the sunbeams falling in from the windows, abstract and wavering, and he did his best to ignore them. Lois looked worried and uncertain, and he needed to reassure her.

“So it *was* Kryptonite.” Her eyes tightened and she looked away, hiding the thoughts darting like quicksilver through her mind as she spoke. “I thought that was what it had to be. I…I pulled the blade out and put it in the fireproof safe with the evidence against Lex. It’s made of lead, and I remember you--Superman…well, *you* saying that you couldn’t see through lead, so I thought that maybe that would be enough to--”

“It is,” he interrupted, hating to see her so uncertain and tentative, almost lost.

This was his fault, he knew. He had lied to her and then told her the truth at the very worst time, in the worst way possible. And she had been right--he had been mad at her, so angry that she hadn’t seen him and known him for who he was, that she had believed the lies he’d perpetuated. It was irrational and unfair, and he understood that now. Understanding it didn’t entirely do away with his hurt and betrayal and loss, but it did calm that sea of disappointment within him.

The truth was that *he* was solely to blame for the mess he was in, including Luthor coming to Clark Kent’s apartment and stabbing him with a Kryptonite blade. And for the hurt confusion in Lois’s eyes. Everything she had thought and known to be true had turned out to be a lie, and she was right--he was as much responsible for that as Luthor was. So maybe there wasn’t any difference between him and the man responsible for so many deaths and broken lives. Maybe they *were* the same. In which case, Clark Kent’s life was probably the price of atonement, a life of Superman alone his penance.

Dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he was drained and still hurting and that his thoughts weren’t quite right. But he had no time to rest, no time to stop and straighten out the wrongness from his thoughts to leave him with truth, stripped free of all its incorrect evasions and misguided notions. Vaguely, somewhere deep inside him, he was aware that there was still a bit of hope lodged firmly, stubbornly inside him. But he didn’t have the strength to root it out, and anyway, life itself would surely do that for him.

“We’ve got to stop him,” Lois stated, and her voice was shrouded in armor and girded with steel, so much so that Clark almost threw up an arm to ward off the danger. But her fury was, for a change, not directed at him. She was glaring toward the door of his apartment, where Luthor had strode in as an invader and exited as the victor in his never-ending war with Superman. “We can’t let him get away with this! We need a plan.”

“A plan,” Clark repeated. “Yes, I guess so. But…first, I’m going to…change.” He gestured awkwardly to his stained shirt.

“Oh.” She blinked and took him in as if she had already forgotten that he was wounded and weak. “Right. Okay. Well…you do that, then, and I’ll…I’ll figure something out. I know he left men to watch the place.”

“Of course he did,” he said tonelessly. “He’s watching for Superman’s arrival--probably wants to make sure the Kryptonite affects him.”

Lois gave him a strange look, enough all on its own to remind him that he was talking about Superman as if he were a separate entity rather than the only personality left to him. “We’ll have to give him that, then. Clark Kent can’t be alive, not after what Lex did to you--that wound was bad. He…” She swallowed and lifted her chin. “He snapped the blade off inside you. No human could have survived that, not after lying there like that all morning.”

“Yes.” The single word was the final death-knell for Clark Kent, and he mourned the son, the reporter, the *man*. There was a huge tearing sensation inside him as everything he had fought so long to protect was ripped away from him and shredded into fine pieces to be tossed into the air like confetti. Had it been only the night before that he had thought his fate would be to end up scattered to the wind? Well, he had been right after all.

“Yes,” he said again, doing his best not to let Lois see the depths of his reaction. It wasn’t her fault this had happened, not when he’d been the one delaying them all night in the hopes of getting her to understand the life of a man who hadn’t survived to see the dawn. Not when he was the one who had gotten careless and forgotten how dangerous Luthor was. “We’ll probably have to find a way for Superman to show up here for their benefit. But…in a while.”

“Sure.” She played with her fingers, twisting and tangling them together as she watched him. He wanted to reach out and take her hands, wanted to touch her, wanted to hug her--not for her, but for his own comfort; he longed for some form of reassurance, some sort of grounding--but he resisted the urge. When he turned away from her to walk to the bathroom, he almost cried out at the complete and utter disappearance of her from his senses--no heartbeat ticking in his ears, no perfumed scent in his nostrils, not even the feel of her hand on his shoulder or the sight of her standing there and watching him go.

He *hated* being without his powers. Funny, he supposed, since he’d thought for so long that all he wanted was to be normal. And yet…there was something so unnatural, so crippling, about being without the powers he often took for granted, as if he had woken to find that one each of his eyes and arms and legs were gone, leaving him only half-completed. It was disorienting and sickening, made worse by the dull ache flaring in the pit of his stomach.

It wasn’t until he was standing in the shower, leaning against the wall in his exhaustion after having wrestled with his clothing, that he realized his grief and loss were only a thin veneer over a surging, roiling river of fury. He was *angry*. Angry in a way he’d never been before. Angry with nothing to hold him back, nothing to keep him from relaxing the rigid control he kept over his temper--he was angry, and he no longer had anything left to lose.

The last hints of Clark Kent sloughed off his skin and were sent whirling down the drain, sucked away into nonexistence, and all that was left to him was a vulnerable Superman all too fragile and unprotected.

His bones were heavy and limp within his skin, his nerve endings aching and worn, his limbs disconnected from him, but he still managed to wrestle on a Suit when he emerged from the shower. He brushed his fingers once more over the scar--not quite so raw or red anymore--fascinated anew by the uneven feel of his own flesh, and then he shrugged on the top of the Suit, the crest adorning the front a poor shield to hide and protect the scar and the wounds and the broken heart beneath.

He breathed in deeply, the air flowing into his lungs, chasing down the tight shrinking knot of pain still resting within his abdomen. The breath was clean and cool and necessary, but it didn’t help stiffen his resolve, didn’t give him the strength he needed to step back into the living room, ready to unveil himself as Superman. He had already done this, already spun into Superman in front of Lois Lane, but that was when Superman was only a tiny, closeted portion of himself. Now, however…now Superman was all that was left.

He wondered if Lois would prefer it that way. Or had the superhero’s lies erased her fondness for even this portion of himself? Would she ever smile at him again? Stare at him as if he were truly a hero and not just a freak in a garish costume? Or would she never again trust him, never think him admirable, never again make him feel as if simply being himself was *enough*?

“Oh,” she said, a quiet word expelled with her breath, when he entered the room, his cape flaring behind him like some kind of banner declaring the birth of a new era. “Are you…are you feeling any better?”

“No powers yet,” he said, and he was distantly glad that his voice emerged so cool and calm, confident in a way that fit Superman. Pointedly, he crossed his arms over his chest, a clumsy and inept attempt to protect his beleaguered heart. “But it doesn’t matter. Luthor won’t wait forever. We have to make a Superman entrance and get out the news that Clark is dead.”

“Right.” Lois nodded and straightened in her seat. “But I’ve been thinking about taking him down permanently, and I think what we need is for Superman to confront Lex, get him to admit to what he did, and then use the conversation--which we’ll have taped--to get him arrested.”

“Luthor still doesn’t know where you are,” Superman pointed out. He didn’t want to think about the future, not yet, not while the present was still so very painful. “Is there a way you can sneak past the men he left to watch the apartment? If you can get to a public payphone and call here, as if you want to speak to Clark Kent, then we can let Luthor know that way that his Kryptonite blade worked.”

“You think he’ll overhear the conversation?” Lois asked. She didn’t sound surprised. She sounded grim, determined, and it was everything Clark had hoped for and just enough to worry Superman for her safety.

“I’m sure,” he said, watching her carefully. There was still something lost and indefinably broken about her, something in the downward slant of her eyes and the straight line of her mouth and the way she wasn’t talking a mile a minute. But at least she no longer looked frightened or closed off or angry. He remembered holding her as they flew across the ocean, remembered how stiffly she’d held herself, remembered the irritated disapproval in her voice as she interrogated him. None of that was evident now--did that mean she actually did think Luthor was worse news than Clark and Superman’s own lies, or just that she was on the verge of a huge story?

“All right, then.” Lois stood and began to pace, her hands gesticulating wildly as she spoke. “I’m sure I can sneak out past the fire escape, though I might need you to have Superman ‘show up’ then to distract them from me sneaking out of the alleyway. I’ll get to a phone, call here, and then…what? Superman will answer?”

“Yes. I can dig out a fan and blow the curtains around noticeably enough that Luthor’s hired muscle will think I’ve only just arrived. I’ll answer the phone when you call, and tell you that Clark Kent is dead.”

The entire moment--the entire situation--seemed surreal. A fear that had plagued him for so long that now that it actually took solid, unmistakable form to shackle him into this life, it seemed like a dream, an abstract moment that had lost the power to hurt him. He was Superman, aloof and invulnerable, standing in an apartment that had transformed, during the course of a single twist of a blade, into a shrine to a life that had been all too short. But Superman was used to seeing people die, losing the few he couldn’t save, and though this life would haunt him more than most, he still had a crisis to see to.

“And then what?” Lois was asking, demanding his fragmented attention. “If Lex knows Superman is here--and thinks you’re vulnerable--then won’t he come to confront you?”

He looked at her and contemplated his reply. He could give her a sedate, careful plan, but the truth of the matter was that for all of Clark Kent’s methodical caution, Superman was often reckless and impetuous. He was freed of the need to pretend to normality, unfettered by the desire to fade into obscurity, accepted and unafraid of being dissected or feared for his powers and therefore able to openly show what he could do and help in the way he constantly longed to do--and with that shocking, still-new liberty, he often forgot the need to stop and think and consider and plan.

So he could tell Lois that he would wait for her to return, and he knew it would be a safer and wiser choice to leave her out of this and keep her out of harm’s way. But he was tired of lying, sick of holding back, and this was his last chance to partner with her--even if it was Superman and Lois Lane, not Lois Lane and Clark Kent—and…and…and all right, maybe a part of him did want to see Lois gunning for Luthor, to reassure himself that she wasn’t going to believe excuses and lies, that she was actually believing and helping *him*. Perhaps that was wrong, but whether Clark was dead or not, Superman was still a man and vindictiveness wasn’t solely a human response.

“Luthor wants Superman,” he said finally, meeting Lois’s eyes and dropping his hand from where he was unconsciously rubbing the scar on his stomach. “So I’m going to give him Superman.”

“He has Kryptonite,” she objected. “If he thinks it will affect Superman, you can bet he didn’t leave it all with Clark!”

“I know,” Superman said quietly. “But I’ve let this drag on too long already. He murdered a man in cold blood today, and if that’s not enough to get him convicted, then nothing will be.”

“There’s no body,” Lois said, and he wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize the irony of her being the voice of rational reason while he advocated the reckless course of action.

“There’s a blade, there’s a witness, and there’s Superman’s word. That, added to the confession we’ll hopefully get on tape and the evidence Clark collected, will have to be enough. It may not put him away permanently, but it’ll give you time to dig up more on him.”

“Give *me* time?” she repeated, her voice small and confused. He wondered if she was only now realizing that Clark Kent was gone forever. Had she not thought there was cause to be afraid just because he was Superman? Had she thought him invulnerable to the scorn and derision and furious accusations she had sent his way? He wished he could believe that because then it would mean that she hadn’t meant to hurt him--or was it worse to know that just as she’d done on The Park Bench, she discounted his pain completely?

He didn’t know, couldn’t tell, but he was exhausted and hurting and so very, unfamiliarly *angry* and none of this mattered anymore. Clark Kent was dead, Superman was flawed, and Lois was once more awake and afire, so perhaps things hadn’t turned out the way he so desperately, unrealistically wanted, but it was still better by far than things had looked the night before when he’d gone to meet Lois at The Fountain.

“It’ll be okay,” he told her, and hoped she believed his assurance. Hoped she believed *him*. There was great sorrow, knowing that the dream he’d chased his entire life was dead, but there was also a vague sense of relief. He didn’t have to watch every word he said anymore, didn’t have to worry about the right time to tell his secret, didn’t have to come up with excuses and lies. He had to discover who he was anew, now, had to learn all over again what his life consisted of, but he would help more people, save hundreds more, make a difference on a scope he hadn’t been able to countenance before. He wouldn’t write, wouldn’t be able to tell other people’s stories, and that hurt, of course it did, but *this* was his life now. He’d spent years coveting a life he should have known could never be his; now he could stop trying, stop pretending, and just *be*.

It was good, he told himself yet again. Or at least, it wasn’t all bad.

One day he’d believe that. When he wasn’t still stiff and aching and screaming silently. When Lois wasn’t staring at him with eyes so wide and dark and gleaming. When he wasn’t being suffocated by a vast vacuum sucking away everything he’d ever wanted and replacing it with loneliness and isolation and duty.

Later he would mourn Clark Kent and lay him reverently to rest. For now, though, Luthor had finally made a careless misstep, and Superman would be there to catch him.

No time for capitalized words anymore. Or rather, room for only one now.

Superman.

***