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Resurrection: Clark Kent/Superman
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It’s happening again, right in front of your eyes. Just like before except worse, because last time she didn’t know how you felt until later, but this time she knows and it still doesn’t seem to matter. Like history repeating itself irrespective of every step forward you’ve taken, of every landmark you’ve erected to commemorate her progress toward you. Of every scar your heart has forced itself to heal over.

Your scarred and beating heart feels like it’s caught in a vise, like your lungs are filled with vacuum, like you’re trapped in the cold of space. You blink and you’re standing in an alleyway next to the body of a man with Lex’s bullet in his heart while Luthor tells you that you weren’t fast enough and Lois hangs off his arm. It seems so real, so immediate, that for a moment the cemetery turns dark and Scardino actually morphs into Luthor. He has his hand on Lois’s arm, just like Luthor did.

It’s going to happen again, and you’re suddenly terrified that there’s not a single thing you can do to stop it. Maybe there never was. Maybe this is the way it will always go: you will be there for Lois to cry on, to laugh with, to work beside…but you will never be the man she kisses, or goes home with, or makes a life beside.

But you’ve been so careful! you want to cry, to rage against the unfairness. You lied so you could be there while she healed from the wounds Luthor inflicted. You waited while she found her balance as a partner rather than a competitor. You discovered that she mourned the death of Clark and that she would keep Superman’s secrets even when it made her feel guilty. You rejoiced when she compared you-Clark to you-Superman and for the first time did not find you wanting. You began to really let yourself hope when she admitted she’d do anything for Clark, when she stayed by Superman’s sickbed without wavering. You let yourself begin to feel confident when she didn’t let either of you give up on your first date, when she kissed you for the very first time without disguise or excuse or farewell as reason--when she lost herself in that kiss and gave herself over to you.

And then you blinked to clear the tears--and the guilt and the shame and the fear inspired by Mayson’s face when she saw Superman beneath Clark Kent…and it all disappeared.

The closeness. The smiles. The willingness. The spark of something more finally arrived for you. The kiss.

Even the friendship you thought you could depend on.

There, then gone, and now you stand removed from her--wearing a cape, even--and still she has eyes only for this man. This agent with his leers and his smirks and his casual put-downs for mild-mannered Clark that she doesn’t even seem to notice, and it’s like a recurring nightmare you will never be able to escape.

She asked if she was yesterday’s news, and you thought it was her insecurities rising up, but now you see the truth.

You’re the one who’s old and stale. You’re the one who’s been left behind. You’re always the one she’ll shrug aside, and maybe she didn’t take the out you offered from your first date, but she obviously wants one now.

“Well,” you say, and you try not to sound bitter. Not to sound as bereft and betrayed as you feel. “I guess you don’t need me.”

The final nail in your coffin as you fly from the cemetery is that Lois says nothing to refute it.

You blink again, and you’re alone.

You’ll always be alone.

***