*5*

When morning hits, Lois wakes with a dull headache threading its monotonous twinges behind her eyes. Sunlight pours in from a small window, cascading across her bed and illuminating the twisted tangle she has made of the smooth coverlet. Lois groans, places a hand over her temples, and wishes she could sleep for the next week, month, year (until she can wake and find everything back to what it was when things were still right and good and hopeful and not ruined forever).

And then she remembers.

With a gasp, she sits straight upright and looks all about. Daylight reveals little new about her room. The light in the bathroom is still on (she hadn’t wanted to turn it off and leave herself locked in total darkness), and there are the comforting distant sounds of traffic and a bustling city even this high up, and from outside her door, she thinks she can smell bacon and pancakes and other homey scents. Her bag leans against the closet, innocuous and compact and proof of just how little leeway she has (how soon she might be asked to leave).

Some part of her wants to leap to her feet and throw on the nearest, easiest to grab set of clothes, and charge out into the living room, finally confront him after so long of not seeing him.

But she is not so good at charging anymore. Not so good at drive and motivation and spontaneity. So instead, she gets slowly to her feet and she goes to her bag and she (methodically, pointedly) unpacks all of her things. Hangs up her clothes in the closet. Slides her laptop onto the shelf beside the day old copy of the Daily Planet. Sets out the last of her toiletries in the bathroom. She takes her time showering, and she dresses without much thought to impressing anyone (here, before the one she’s come to see, she doesn’t think she can possibly make a worse impression than she already has), in a pair of jeans and a sweater that feels fine in the air-conditioned room but would probably be too stifling outside.

Only then, when she is ready, when she has swallowed some Advil and hastily chewed a peppermint (to preclude her stomach’s violent roiling from resulting in humiliating her in front of anyone), does she go to stand in front of the door. Terror eats its prickly, cobwebby way through her veins, trapping her nerve endings in a blanket sense of numbness, with the expectation of pain creeping up on them, making her hold her breath.

He’s there. Outside that door. It’s definitely bacon she’s smelling, maybe a bit of sausage, definitely pancakes or waffles, maybe even eggs, and he was always telling her she should take more time with her breakfast. Always telling her his mom gave him the best pancake recipe. Always inviting her to stop by before work, or offering to bring her some, or making her stop in a café.

He’s there, and she is not ready, she suddenly realizes. One wish in this world, one life’s goal, but she is afraid to meet it because once she does…well, then what? What will be left for her (of her)? What will she do? What will he do?

Will he speak?

But she can’t hide here forever, so she fixes a smile (wan and forced and probably more harm than good) on her lips, and she emerges from her cold, dry cocoon.

As much time as she took preparing herself, she is not prepared for the sight that greets her. She expected Superman (the ghost left behind to mark Clark Kent’s passing), sitting at the counter with a plate of breakfast in front of him. Looking up at her entrance the way he always did, already searching for her as the elevator doors opened on the bullpen. She hoped for a greeting, maybe one of his slow, easy smiles. She wanted him to say her name and offer her breakfast. (She wanted everything to be like it was before.)

But he is not here. Not in one of the couches with his feet up. Not at the counter with breakfast. (Not standing, cold and implacable and grim, by the elevator, ready to escort her out and away.) The locked door in the corner is still closed, shut up tight and stern and impassable. But, when she turns her head the other way, she sees door 37 open, though her angle keeps her from seeing inside. And through the other door, the one leading to the kitchen, she sees Jonathan Kent emerging, carrying a laden plate in front of him to the wide counter. Behind him, she hears Martha Kent saying, “No more bacon for you, Jonathan--remember what the doctor said.”

Her throat closes up on her so suddenly Lois almost chokes on the splinters of her peppermint.

His parents. They’re here.

An instant later, she is furious with herself. Of course they are here. They had to leave too, had had their lives uprooted and destroyed irrevocably. They’re two of the most sought-after people on the entire planet; everyone wants to know their story, wants to hear from the parents responsible for raising their beloved, venerated superhero, and yet no one has yet been able to track them down. (And he loves his parents, always talking to them, about them, referencing them, visiting them; she remembers the way he smiled with such relief and love when they’d stumbled out of the barn behind Trask’s raving back, remembers how he’d hugged them, been enfolded into their arms, a loving, cohesive family in a single embrace.)

Of course they are here.

Jonathan sees her first, and she braces herself. Waits for the frown and the wary expression, the silence or the denunciation, the clatter of the plate being thrown at her head, the shriek of Martha demanding she leave.

And for the third (or countless) time, she is surprised.

Jonathan sets his plate down on the counter and gives her a smile (and it is small and it is guarded, but it is a smile nonetheless). “Lois,” he says, then gives a short shake of his head as if chastising himself. “Or should I call you Miss Lane?”

“I…” She clears her throats, coughs up the last pieces of her peppermint (thinks she will throw the rest away because she will not be able to bear the taste again without feeling this hot, heavy rush of humiliation and guilt). “Lois is fine.”

“Lois.” Jonathan nods, stiltedly, then calls over his shoulder, “Martha, Lois is up.”

The clatter of movement and activity in the kitchen stills, and Lois only realizes that it was there when it is silenced.

Silenced.

The entire suite is quiet. Frozen. Stuck in limbo as they all decide on their reactions, fight through emotional responses and wade through unwelcome history and try to come out the other side.

Everywhere she goes, Lois thinks, she brings total and utter silence. She vowed to give voice to those who couldn’t otherwise get their story out, and instead she has become the one who mutes them all, strikes them dumb and leaves herself gaping and breathless behind in the void.

But finally Jonathan gives her that polite smile again and gestures to the high chairs around the counter. “Why don’t you just sit down?” he invites her. “I’ll go grab you a plate, all right? There’s plenty, and Martha made a bit of everything. What will you have?”

“Um…” She doesn’t want to eat (she never wants to eat anymore; Chinese never tastes as good as what he brought her, breakfast only conjures up memories, even coffee only makes her try to tally up how many cups he brought her for which she never thanked him), but he is being so much kinder to her than she deserves and she does not want to refuse this offer of a truce. “Pancakes,” she says. “I heard her pancakes are amazing. And maybe some sausage?”

“Oh, they are amazing,” he assures her, perhaps just a bit too jovially. “Is orange juice okay?”

“Yes,” she says quietly (and she doesn’t care for the tart juice, would prefer coffee even with its fruitless reminders, but she would rather bite off her tongue than admit that to this stolid, bluff man trying so hard in front of her).

He makes another smile (so obviously strained with effort; so obviously touched with deeply engrained courtesy) and ducks into the kitchen, leaving his own plate of food cooling behind him.

Tentatively, afraid she will break anything she touches (ruin everything she comes into contact with; destroy everything these victims of hers have managed to reclaim in her absence), she climbs up onto one of the chairs and tries to look comfortable (or failing that, tries to look like she is not being inundated with guilt so strongly she feels as if she is bathing in scalding remorse).

When Jonathan comes back into the room with another plate, Martha comes behind him, carrying her own plate and a glass of orange juice. “Here you are,” Jonathan says. He sets her plate in front of her, turns and plucks the orange juice from Martha, twists again and slides it to just beside Lois’s plate. Then he hurries back into the kitchen (leaving her alone with Martha, who is staring fixedly at her own plate) before reemerging with another glass of juice that he gives to Martha.

“Well,” he says, when neither Lois nor Martha say anything. “Shall we dig in?”

“Yes,” Lois says, quickly, leaping at the opportunity to busy herself (busy them all) with eating rather than sitting here in awkward, uncomfortable silence. “It smells delicious.”

“Thank you,” Martha says with a careful courtesy that makes Lois flinch despite herself.

She’s seldom passed a few more uncomfortable moments than these, sitting around a counter in a chair too high for her, across from the parents of a man she ruined (a man she killed; murdered, Perry had said, and the word strikes too close to home), eating breakfast as if they are casual acquaintances on good terms. She thinks the pancakes probably are delicious, but she cannot taste them and they clog like sawdust in her mouth and she manages to swallow only a few bites. Jonathan and Martha do little better; Jonathan eats almost his whole plate, but slowly and almost anxiously, and Martha plays with her food almost as much as Lois does.

Jonathan tries to start up a conversation a few times, and each time Lois tries to respond to him (tries not to give him more reason to resent her), but soon enough, they fizzle back into silence while Jonathan shoots unreadable glances in Martha’s direction and Lois tries to pretend she is not counting the seconds until their son arrives. It is taking all of her self-control not to blurt out a demand to see him, a question as to where he is, when he will be here, why are they keeping him from her (although she is glad she doesn’t ask these questions, because she doesn’t think she will like the answers, not when the blame for so much of what’s happened lies solely at her feet).

Eventually, Martha finally looks up from her plate and looks straight at Lois. The direct gaze, so unexpected and startling, locks Lois in place, and she feels, suddenly, completely unprepared for any of this. For a brief moment, she wishes she had never come into Perry’s office that night, wishes she hadn’t taken a leave of absence and left everything safe and familiar (and so very empty) behind. Wishes she hadn’t come here, to sit across from the Kents (who probably aren’t the Kents anymore, are probably Smiths or Jones or some other common, ordinary name), and face exactly what she did four months ago.

“Lois,” Martha says. Lois thinks her tone is tightly reserved. Thinks it is neutral and blank and maybe even just a bit strained. She thinks there is no inflection to the name (and yet all she hears is condemnation). “We’re not angry with you.”

The laugh that escapes Lois is caught between scoffing disbelief and tearful astonishment (and she hates herself for both). “Why not?” she gasps out.

She thought she was doing the right thing. The best thing. The only thing for her to do. Thought that everything would remain the same even after she plastered their son’s face across international headlines and branded him as Superman. She’s always been so much better at reacting than thinking, acting than considering. Striking first than waiting for explanations.

Shoot first and ask questions later, she thinks; it’s what she did, and she cannot understand how her victim’s parents can sit across from her and serve her breakfast and tell her they do not hold it against her.

Martha and Jonathan exchange one of those glances only true partners can (the way Lois Lane once looked at Clark Kent, for just a few brief weeks), the kind that speaks paragraphs in an eye-blink, asks and answers questions in the slant of downturned mouths and minute nods. They look at each other, and Lois is excluded, and she still feels like an outsider, like the loner, the unwanted and uninvited guest in the room (which is what she is, she harshly reminds herself), when Martha turns back to meet her gaze.

“We knew from the moment we found Clark that it was always a possibility people would come looking for him,” Martha says. Jonathan nods his agreement behind her, sets a pudgy, supportive hand to her thin shoulder. “We’ve always known that what we had…what we wanted…couldn’t last forever. But we had good years with him, and he was able to get to us before anything too bad could happen. Besides, it’s not as if we lost everything. We’re still together and that’s what matters.”

They’re trying to make her feel better, but instead Lois feels about two inches tall and made of slime. She shrinks in her seat, wishes she had the power she always told Lucy she wanted, the ability to turn invisible (only this time, she doesn’t want to enter locked doors, doesn’t want to expose hidden secrets; this time, she wants to make those two pairs of kind and accepting and sad blue eyes stop looking at her and seeing so much more than she wants them to see).

She pretends, for their sake, that she doesn’t notice just how many evasions that paragraph held, pretends Martha actually answered her question (pretends that means they will be willing to answer another one), and says, “Is…is he okay?”

Because maybe she doesn’t deserve the answers, but she is here and she is done sitting here and feeling guilty and doing nothing to complete her self-appointed quest. Done worrying about him when they could give her an answer so quickly, so easily.

“He’s doing better,” Jonathan reassures her when Martha only seems to dwindle and turn inward. But at her husband’s words, the farmwife (who took in an alien child as her own; who raised a hero and sent him forth to save the world) straightens her shoulders and wraps her courage and her strength around herself like a mantle. Like a cape, as noble and as grand as Superman’s, as blatant and as beautiful.

“It was hard,” she adds, in a voice so steady it can only be made that way through a will of iron. “But he’s almost back to normal now.”

“What…” Lois pauses and swallows, then gulps a sour mouthful of orange juice to wet her throat. “What happened?”

Another exchange of glances, and this time it is Jonathan who takes up that cape of bravery, swings it around his broad shoulders and transforms, right in front of her, from a kind farmer to a pillar of integrity, a rock of strength, all earnestness and boldness and quiet, steady power (power that comes from within, that can turn ordinary men and super-powered aliens alike into so much more than the sum of their parts), and Lois looks at him and is awed. Looks at them both and is speechless, to see Clark’s compassion and his strength, to see his nobility and his empathy, staring back at her from two very different faces, worn and weathered and wrapped in concern they try so hard to hide from her.

She looks at them, and she wonders how she could not have seen it the last time she met them. Wonders how she could have met them and spoken with them and rolled her eyes at their assumptions and helped them crawl from a burning barn and not immediately recognized that all the things that made Clark Superman were right in front of her, staring back at her.

“The asteroid was almost too big. Almost too heavy,” Jonathan is saying, shaking her from her awed musing. “It took everything he had to shift it out of its path, to shatter it into more manageable pieces. It took a lot out of him, and he wants to be sure he’s at a hundred percent before he goes back out.”

It is a concise report. Coherent and brief and adequate…but nothing more. Lois wants details. She wants minute-by-minute replays. She wants to understand the flashes of fear that spark behind their voices, that showed in Jimmy’s eyes in that diner, that keeps Clark hidden away behind his locked door.

But she has no right to ask it of them. No right to demand anything more than they give her. And anyway, she does not want to hear it from them. (She wants to hear it in a voice that has been silenced as definitively as she’s been destroyed from the inside out.)

So she nods and looks down at the congealing remains of her breakfast. “I’m glad,” she murmurs, then clarifies, “Glad he’s all right, I mean. I’ve…Perry and I have been worried about him.”

She doesn’t need to look up to know that husband and wife are exchanging yet another weighted glance (and no wonder, she finds herself thinking incongruously; no wonder Clark believed so much in love, in romance, in finding the right one, when he has had such a clear and present example before him his entire life).

“Lois,” Martha says abruptly, a thread of iron determination and fierce resolve turning her voice into a shield to cover her family as she plants herself between them and Lois. “James said you were here on a leave of absence. Obviously, he never would have brought you here if he didn’t believe it. But…but you do realize that nothing you see here can be reported, right?”

Hurt as heavy and large as that asteroid they keep referencing slams onto Lois’s shoulders. “Yes,” she grates out. “I’m not here as a reporter.”

“Good.” Martha gives a short, decisive nod. “We wouldn’t have let you come if we thought differently, but sometimes it’s best to just get everything out in the open so there can be no misunderstandings.”

“Right.” Lois swallows back her (angry, hot-tempered, loud-voiced) objections about how they obviously hadn’t thought that about Superman’s true identity. The hypocrisy of speaking that aloud (of throwing hostility back at them when they have offered only polite welcome) is too much even for her. “Well, I promise, I won’t write about any of this. Truthfully, I don’t write much anymore anyway.”

Awkward silence scarcely has a chance to fall for the dozenth time since she exited her room (the guest bedroom, she reminds herself) before the elevator dings. Lois’s heart rate skyrockets through the roof at a speed only Superman could match, and she leaps to her feet. She’s not ready, not yet, not so soon after facing his parents! She needs more time, to compose herself, to think of what she will do when she sees him, what she can possibly say in the face of all he has to blame her for--

But it is not him. Once again, she looks for Clark and finds Jimmy instead.

She looks into Jimmy’s steadfast, impenetrable face, then, and feels a sudden surge of unreasonable resentment. If he cannot be Clark, if he will not bring her to Clark, then he should stop reminding her of him, should stop throwing Clark’s expressions and Clark’s mannerisms and Clark’s stride in her face.

“Lois.” Jimmy gives her a slight nod of recognition before turning and smiling widely at the Kents. It’s the first time she’s seen Jimmy’s smile on James’s face, and it hurts so much that Lois has to spin around, turn her back on them and their congenial conversation, the sound of Martha bustling about, fussing over Jimmy as if he were Clark, Jonathan setting out a glass for him, asking how his meeting went.

The remnants of her investigative instincts struggle to rouse themselves from their hibernation, try to shake themselves up and turn her attention to whatever this meeting is Jimmy (dressed in a pressed suit) had so early in the morning, but Lois ignores them. Superman can appear at any moment, can unlock his deadbolts and open his door and walk out into this room and join his family while they tease each other over breakfast. He can step into view and meet her gaze and strike her instantly into a pillar of salt (for looking back at things she’ll never be able to have again), disintegrate her into a pile of dust (for daring to think that seeing him again could help either of them), send a bolt of fire through her to transform her into singed ash (for what she did to him, what she took from him, what she said about him).

And if he walks in, if he appears, Lois wants to be ready. She will have only moments, she thinks, to say everything she might want to, to notice everything she did not take the time to before and has thought of so often in the last months. Only moments to last her the rest of her life (because if Jimmy barely let her come this time, then he will never let her find him again), so she will have to absorb them and store them and burn them into her very cells as quickly, as fully as she can.

So she walks away from the family (and finally Jimmy’s found a family that accepts him even more readily, more openly, than the Daily Planet staff; found the family he’s always been searching for) and over to the glass windows. They are completely uncovered, tinted so that it’s a bronzed, ambient light blanketing the suite, turning tan couches almost gold. Lois stands in front of these windows to the outside world and looks out on the bustling metropolis of a city she doesn’t recognize. She’s fairly sure it’s not Coast City, its multiple buildings too short, no sign of the harbor, but beyond that, she has no idea.

And it doesn’t matter. Coast City or Central City, Keystone City or Gotham City, London or Tokyo--she doesn’t care where she is so long as Clark (Superman) is here. So long as she gets her chance to see him for however few minutes he allows her.

“Lois?”

She startles at the sound of her name (so tentative, so gentle, and this too is like Clark, and so she knows without even turning that it is Jimmy at her shoulder), then turns to meet him.

“You okay?” Jimmy’s dark eyes are concerned. She thinks he is trying to appear wary and unaffected, his hands in his pockets and keeping a few feet between them, but she knows him better than he thinks, and she can see that he is worried for her.

“Fine,” she says, and forces herself to unwrap her arms from around herself, straighten and face him as if she is not ashamed to even meet his eyes. “Just a bit impatient.”

The concern vanishes as if it had never been. Jimmy disappears and Lois once more finds herself confronting the young, self-assured businessman from the diner. “This isn’t about you,” he says coolly, turning his head to stare with narrowed eyes out at the cityscape. “He’s not here right now.”

Lois frowns. “I thought he wasn’t going out again until he was fully recovered.”

“He isn’t going on rescues,” Jimmy replies, still not looking at her. “But sunlight's the only thing that rejuvenates him. He’s been going out every day to soak up as much of it as he can.”

“Oh.” She can think of nothing else to say, too busy reeling at this thought (at Superman blooming in sunlight, unfurling with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men; at Clark needing recovery so much that he has to go and seek it out every day for three weeks). “Is it that bad then?”

Jimmy doesn’t answer for a long moment, the struggle plain to see in the tension mapping out the edges of his form. Finally, though, he gives a half-shrug. “Not bad in the way you’re thinking. But he hates that he can’t be helping as many people as possible.” After another hesitation, he adds, almost reluctantly, “He doesn’t like taking time for himself. Not anymore.”

And she doesn’t need to ask the next natural question, not when she already knows what’s changed, why he doesn’t take time for himself (for how can he, when she has left him no himself to give time to?). So she gives a short nod and looks back out the window. “You really think I’m going to hurt him that badly?” she asks, the question torn from her before she can think better of it. “You really think I’m the enemy?”

His expression is almost contemplative as he turns to face her full-on, his scrutiny so uncomfortable and off-putting that Lois raises her chin and meets his glare with her own, unwilling to shrink away. “I think,” he says, very slowly, very intently, “that you could be the worst thing that has ever happened to him.” She doesn’t even have time to flinch (to cry out at the agony of the blow he has struck, to fold in over this mortal wound and drop to the ground to hide the bloodstains), before he continues. “But he doesn’t see it that way. So…so I’m trying to see it the way he does. The truth is…”

She holds her breath, waiting for him to finish his statement (willing him to finish it). Holds her breath so long black spots are dancing at the borders of her vision. Waits so long she wonders if she will pass out right in front of this silent, stubborn stranger.

“The truth is,” Jimmy finally says, swiveling to walk away as he finishes, throwing the words over his shoulder, “he needs something. And if you’re the one to give it to him, well then, maybe I’ll just chalk it up to poetic irony.”

He disappears into the kitchen (where she can hear the murmur of Jonathan and Martha over the clatter of dishes and running water) without even turning to see the effect of his words. Not that it matters. Lois has become an expert, in recent months, at keeping her reactions and thoughts and emotions locked away inside.

She does not show just how much she wants to believe him. Does not show the thousand thoughts spiraling through her mind, all the implications of his statement. Doesn’t show anything, just stands there in the sunlight-drenched room and looks out at cloudless blue skies and sees a pair of silvery brown eyes covered in glass lenses staring at her with that look only he ever gave her (that look of awe and devotion and discovery and amusement and awful, awful hope).

Stares ahead and sees into the past and is too afraid to contemplate the future, and the hours slip by her while the sun falls in its well-worn path through the sky.

*[b][/b]