Clark was exhausted.
He was mildly surprised that he could be exhausted given his powers, but as he thought back over the past few days he realized that he hadn’t slept at all since before he’d been “shot to death” in Georgie Hairdo’s club. Add to that his uninterrupted searching for Capone and his gang of reconstituted clones, fold in his frantic mental search for some way for Clark Kent to survive, stir in his anguish over leaving Lois to think he was dead, and it was no wonder he was wiped out.
He closed his eyes and settled down in the passenger seat of Lois’ Jeep. Maybe she’d just take him back to his place and drop him off. Maybe she wouldn’t feel like talking.
The soft stream-of-consciousness buzz from the driver’s side told him that his probability assessments of her actions were, yet again, wrong by orders of magnitude, and that Lois Lane was just as much a mystery to him tonight as she had ever been. Maybe she’d quiet down if he ignored her and let himself drop off to sleep. He really didn’t have the energy to keep up with her tonight.
Her sweater and slacks ensemble were ruined by the cement that still clung to her, and with which she had coated him when he’d appeared out of the fog at the dock. Even the small blanket the police had given her, on which she now sat to protect the Jeep’s driver’s seat, would be useless for anything else. He wasn’t sure he could clean up his clothes, either. They might be destroyed by now, although he hoped not. He liked that jacket.
The backhanded slap across the chest she abruptly gave him splashed a small dollop of still-damp concrete onto his chin and ensured that his sports jacket would soon join her clothes in the city dump.
“Wake up, you lunkhead!”
As he sat up and wiped off his chin, he turned to her and said, “I assume you want to say something to me and that you aren’t just mad at me.”
Her hands were white where she gripped the steering wheel, and they were strained as if she were still trying to pull herself out of that barrel of wet cement. Her eyes bore straight ahead and her teeth were mashed together so hard Clark was afraid she might break one of them.
“Lois,” he called softly, “please pull over before you wreck the car.”
She gave him a hard glance, full of unidentifiable emotion. Then she swerved to the curb and parked in front of an open donut shop. Then she grabbed the wheel again as if it were the only thing keeping her from flying apart.
“Thank you. Now what is it that you want?”
She all but pried her fingers from the wheel and crossed her arms over her chest. “Actually, there is something I need to say to you, Clark.”
She stopped. He waited for a long moment.
He was about to prompt her when she spun in the seat to face him. “You know I – I have some pretty strong feelings for you, right?”
He nodded, unwilling to appear to be guiding her. This was starting to sound good – he hoped.
“And I know you have some pretty strong feelings for me, too, don’t you? I mean positive feelings, more than just comfortable coworkers or friends or friendly rivals or – or anything like that.”
He nodded again. This sounded like a very good thing.
“Okay. Then you – you also know that I don’t have a good track record with relationships, especially romantic ones.” She waved her hands aimlessly. “Actually, I can’t think of any relationships of any kind that I haven’t damaged at one time or another. Or that the other person hasn’t damaged. I mean, I can’t stand to be around either of my parents for very long, my sister and I don’t see eye-to-eye on anything important because she’s such a flake and she thinks I don’t know how to have fun, Perry thinks I’m a great reporter but that I’m a workaholic, Jimmy dodges me if he sees me coming, Capone and Dillinger wanted to entomb me in concrete and sink me in the harbor, and even Superman has backed away from me.” She dropped her chin to her chest and almost sobbed. “I – I don’t know why you’re still hanging around. I really don’t. I’m a disaster waiting for someone to get close enough to get caught in the blast radius.”
This did not sound so good. “Lois, I don’t believe—”
“That’s because you’re such a great guy!” she wailed. “That’s why you don’t believe it! You’re a really great guy with terrific parents and Perry thinks the world of you and Jimmy puts up with me but he really likes you and Sharon thinks you’re better than sliced bread and peanut butter and you don’t need me destroying your life!”
Oh, this was bad, really bad. He had to reassure her of his fidelity. “I promise you, Lois, I’m not interested in Sharon – who are you talking about, anyway?”
“Sharon McClure, the poker player! The one who took everyone’s money the other night! And if you don’t like her I know that new ADA Mayson Drake would snap you up like you were on the bargain counter at Macy’s!” She put her hand on his upper arm. “Oh, Clark, not that you’re not worth more than that, it’s just that she’s so hot for you she can’t eat ice cream without melting it all over herself.”
He was all but drowning in mixed metaphors. “Lois! Now please, stop this! I don’t want Sharon or Mayson or any other woman in Metropolis! I want to get closer to you!”
Her eyes froze over and her hand retreated to the ignition key. “That’s too bad, farm boy. Because I’m stopping any kind of relationship we might have had right now! I think too highly of you to let you hang around me. I’m a disaster magnet and I won’t be responsible for you getting killed again!” She wrenched the key around and yanked the gearshift lever into drive. “Now let me get you home and I’ll see you at work when your doctor says you can come back and not one minute before!”
He forced his mouth closed and shook his head. Why couldn’t he have just slept through her slap?
He had to try once more. “Lois, look, you’ve had a tough few days—”
“That’s right, I have! And if I could hurt this much because I – because I thought I’d never see you again then I can’t in good conscience let anyone else risk that kind of pain with me!”
“Don’t you think that I should be involved in that choice?”
“No I don’t think you should be involved! This is for your own good, Kent, and I’m not backing off from this! You work your side of the newsroom and I’ll work mine! If Perry teams us up for a story I’ll be professional about it and you’d better be the same! But no more secret smiles or double entendre conversations or hints about dates or cute notes or flowers or even coffee in the morning! You got that?”
This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be saying those things. She couldn’t be calling it quits between them before they really got started.
He took a deep breath and tried again. “What if I don’t want that? What if I want to pursue a relationship with you anyway?”
He heard her gasp, or sob, or hiccup, or something. Then she blinked several times and gritted her teeth again. “Tough tacos, pal. There’s no ‘we’ now. There’s just you and me and we’re not going to be together, not ever, not in any personal way.”
He sat back and took another deep breath. “Can we still be friends?”
She stopped at a traffic light and drummed her fingers on the wheel. “In a limited sense, yes. But I won’t butt into your life and you won’t butt into mine. If we happen to be at the same social function and neither of us is working, we won’t make a scene and neither of us will storm out in anger and we won’t snub each other. But we’re not going to leave together, either. And don’t ever ask me to dance with you again.”
He looked through the windshield as the light turned green and she stomped the gas pedal. “That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”
She didn’t look at him. “No, I don’t. Get it through your thick skull, Clark. We’re never going to be an ‘us’ except as reporters on the same paper.”
He could tell she wasn’t going to change her mind right now. “All right, Lois, I surrender. No ‘us’ unless we’re writing the story.”
“Good.” She opened her mouth to add something but apparently changed her mind. “There’s your apartment up ahead. I assume you can get in?”
“I’m sure the key is still under the plant.”
Her mouth worked again and Clark thought she was about to launch into a short rant on his over-trust of Metropolis’ citizens. But she stopped whatever she was going to say as she pulled up to the curb outside his building’s front door. “Here you go. Get some rest and get healthy.”
“Thank you.” He hesitated, hoping for more that didn’t come. “Good night.”
She nodded sharply without looking at him.
He exited the Jeep and closed the door. Lois pulled away without turning her head to look at him.
He turned and trudged up the steps to his place. It was the stress, he thought. It had to be the stress of losing him and getting him back so abruptly combined with her own near-death experience. She’d feel different in a few days, no matter how sure of herself she sounded at the moment.
For a moment he almost smiled. Lois had just confessed to him that she cared about him deeply, more deeply than he’d dared believe a few days earlier. He’d managed to penetrate her emotional defenses more thoroughly than he’d known.
But it wasn’t a good thing. She’d just thrown up a new barrier between them, what military planners called a “defense in depth,” designed to present an attacker with a series of obstacles to be overcome instead of putting all of the defense’s energy and effort into a single point. It reminded him of a football team, with the defensive line attacking the offensive line, the linebackers patrolling the area directly behind the linemen, and the defensive backs dropping even further back, all of them focused on keeping the offense from moving the ball to the goal line.
Clark sighed. Whether it was a military or a sports metaphor, he’d just run up against the proverbial brick wall around Lois’ heart. But now it was festooned with poisoned spikes and patrolled by grim-faced defenders, each with Lois’ features, ready to drop hot sand or large rocks or fiery brands on anyone approaching the citadel.
Wow. He really was worn out. He probably should take the next day off and lay in the sun from morning to evening. And he should stop watching war movies for a while.
He pulled the key from beneath the planter and leaned his head against the door frame. She had to feel different tomorrow. She just had to.
He wasn’t sure he could stay in Metropolis without the prospect of winning Lois’ heart.
*****
She managed to turn the corner before the tears came.
She pulled over again and turned off the motor, then dropped her face into her hands and let the agony penetrate all her heart’s defenses. She forgot what coherent thought was as she soaked her hands, her sleeves, the top of her sweater, even the edges of the blanket the police had given her.
She’d hurt him so badly.
But he’d hurt her, too, and it wasn’t his fault that she couldn’t take the pain. It wasn’t his fault that Lois Lane, intrepid investigative reporter, was too much a coward to risk her heart on the best man she’d ever known. It wasn’t Clark’s fault that she believed – no, it wasn’t just a belief, it was an absolutely certainty – that if she ever let herself love him like she wanted to love him and she lost him for any reason it would kill her. She wouldn’t have to overdose on sleeping pills or jump off a building or shoot herself in the head or inject poison into her veins. If she were to allow herself to love him and then somehow she lost him, her heart would just quit on her and she’d drop dead wherever she was, whatever she was doing.
Lois was certain she couldn’t survive losing Clark if she let herself love him.
So the only option was to prevent it from happening in the first place.
As her crying jag began to wind down, she remembered how many tears she’d already shed over Clark. She’d thought him dead, just like the rest of the city. Jimmy had mourned him. Perry had missed him deeply. His absence had cast a pall over the entire news staff. Everyone had been affected by his death.
But none of them thought their lives had ended with his.
Hers had.
And then he was back, hale and hearty and smiling and she’d run to him and embraced him and covered him with wet cement and he hadn’t minded. She didn’t care if Superman had used Professor Hamilton’s process to bring him back to her. All that mattered was that he was back, that he was breathing and walking and smiling that smile that lit up whatever room he entered.
Then the cold icy truth had set in. Lois had already lost her heart to him. And if he died again, her heart would die with him.
She couldn’t risk that. It would hurt too much. She couldn’t risk seeing him, loving him, even having him all to herself, all the while knowing that there was no guarantee that he’d be alive to take the next breath. The thought of seeing him in a coffin, or having to identify him on a slab at the morgue, or seeing him dead on the street because he’d just taken a bullet or a knife or a bomb meant for her nearly tore her apart. She couldn’t risk being destroyed by her love for a man who might die the next day, the next hour, the next minute.
She couldn’t spend every moment in fear. She couldn’t spend the rest of her years terrified that she’d lose him to death. Another woman? Never happen, not with Clark. And even if it did, she could deal with it, work to get him back.
She knew she couldn’t take losing him to Death, the coldest and cruelest mistress of all.
It was better this way. Clark deserved to be with a woman who was willing to risk her heart with him despite his dangerous lifestyle. He should be with someone who would love him and take care of him but would go on if she lost him. And that wasn’t going to be her.
Nor could she risk the pain of losing him to her own relationship cancer. Every man she’d ever cared about had walked – or run – away from her for one reason or another. Her father had led the parade, but there were a number of others following him in a conga line of disappointment and betrayal. Some had left her, others had been abandoned or driven away, but all of her relationships with men had failed.
And she cared too much about Clark to number him among that company.
She swiped the heel of her hand across her eyes once more and restarted the car. She was ready for a hot shower and a long sleep. The shower would come first, then she’d type up some notes to Perry and email them to him, and by then her hair would be dry enough for her to go to bed. She hadn’t slept since the night of the shooting – at least, not very well or for very long – and she was exhausted. Her mind was ready to attack the next story, but she knew her body wouldn’t go much farther without rest.
It was a good thing the police had allowed them to link to Perry’s home phone via their car radio. He’d make sure everyone at the Planet knew that Clark was still alive – or alive again, whichever it was – and that she’d send some notes for her part of the story as soon as she could. It was already too late to get anything in the morning edition, but she knew the evening edition would display the banner in fifty-four point type.
It saddened her to think that it might be the last story where she and Clark shared a byline.
Enough of this. Time for her shower, then the email to Perry, then sleep. Her clothes would go into the dumpster as soon as she got up and got dressed. She’d really liked that outfit, too.
And Clark had liked it. So maybe it was appropriate that she dispose of it at the same she disposed of any possibility of a relationship with Clark.
The finality of that thought almost started her tears again, but she forced them back. She would no longer cry for a man she would never have. Clark was out of her life forever.
