From last time:
“I’m sorry, I think I’m going to head home early,” she said apologetically.
Her editor frowned as he placed a hand on her arm. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” she lied. “I just want to spend some time with Jon.”
“Of course,” Perry replied with a nod. “Take all the time you need.”
“I’m sure everything will be better tomorrow,” she said, knowing how unconvincing she sounded.
“Give me a holler if you need anything, you understand?” Perry said with his typical paternal sternness.
“I will,” she said. “Thank you, Perry.”
“Just take care of yourself and your little boy,” Perry replied.
She smiled faintly in response and walked out of the office.
********
New stuff:
“Hey Chief, are Lois and Clark okay?” Jimmy asked as he pulled the door to his boss’s office shut behind him.
Perry looked up from the mockup on his desk, frowning. “Son, they were both almost killed yesterday. Moreover, Jon could have been killed. It makes sense that they’re acting a little off.”
Jimmy leaned against the closed door, folding his arms across his chest. “Yeah, but Ultrawoman announcing that she’s leaving, what’s that about?”
His boss shrugged. "She told me the same thing she told you—that she’d explain it to us in a few days.”
“But you can’t tell me you aren’t wondering what’s going on,” Jimmy said incredulously as he pushed off the door frame and started pacing. “I mean, honestly, and I’m saying this with all the respect in the world for the guy, of the two of them, I would have expected Clark to be the one to need a break after what happened yesterday, not Lois. I mean, yeah, he’s been back as Superman for a while, but you know he must have been through some pretty messed up stuff on New Krypton. And I know she was shot, but Lois looks fine today…”
“Jimmy, this is nothing but henpecked gossip,” Perry cut him off irritably, but Jimmy kept walking a tight circle in the small open space in the middle of the editor’s office.
“But maybe Jon isn’t okay,” he mused aloud. “I mean, he’s just a little kid, maybe he can’t recover from the Kryptonite as fast as they can. I could definitely see Lois giving up Ultrawoman to take care of him.”
“Son,” Perry warned him sternly. “We can hash out a hundred theories, but there ain’t no sense to it. Lois will tell us when she’s ready. Until then, just do what I do, back ‘em up, one thousand percent. Got it?”
Jimmy nodded grudgingly. He knew the old editor had a point. But that didn’t make short circuiting the flow of baseless speculation in his head any easier. He wanted to know what was going on with his friends.
********
She finished reading him his story even though he’d fallen asleep a few pages before. Lois wondered if, even as he’d drifted off, he still knew that she was there with him, if he could hear his mother’s voice in his sleep, promising that the story had a happy ending. She quietly closed the book and left it on the bedside table before turning off the lights and slipping out of the room. It was still early, but she was tired. And with this being a Friday night and Clark having to patrol alone, it would likely be a while before he’d be able to come home. She walked silently to the large master bedroom and lay down, fully clothed, on top of the bed. Lois curled up on her side, staring out the window, through the barren tree branches onto the quiet tableau of Sullivan Lane.
Wistfully, she’d tried to do the math in her head. They had probably conceived around two weeks ago. Knowing she could never be exactly sure, she wondered when it was. Was it that night they’d both come home from cleaning up after a couple of shrimping trawlers that had collided off the Louisiana coast? They’d swum through the Gulf, but returned home salty, briny messes, somehow still inexplicably smelling vaguely of bait. Peeling off their costumes in the bathroom, and laughing at their predicament, he’d suggested innocuously enough that they share the shower. They’d ended up staying in that shower a lot longer than was merely necessary to get cleaned up.
Or maybe it was the following night, when they’d watched the rain fall onto the darkened street from the loft in the library. Even though Bernie had told her it was unlikely to have any effect, she’d forgone the wine because she wasn’t taking any chances. Lying together in a tangle of limbs on the large leather couch, she’d almost been lulled to sleep by the sound of fat raindrops falling steadily against the large windows. But her husband’s hands and lips and quietly whispered declarations of love instead kept her far more pleasantly occupied.
Or maybe it was that Sunday morning, when his parents had taken Jon to the Children’s Museum. They’d intended to read the paper in bed together. Somehow the newspaper had been abandoned even before they’d worked their way through the A Section.
Any one of those moments could have led to conception. Any one of those moments could have been the beginning of the pregnancy that she was now so very afraid for. Each had been a happy memory. A special moment with her husband. Each would have been a perfect way for their love to lead to new life. And yet, she was now wondering why they’d decided *at that moment* to start trying for a baby. If they’d waited another month or so…
But life didn’t work that way. And she could never wish away the pregnancy that was now at the center of so much heartache. Besides, she tried to tell herself, Bernie had reminded them that there was a good chance that everything was fine. She had to find a way to believe that. To remind herself that there was reason to be hopeful. She felt a film of tears blur her vision and then spill over. She lifted her hand to brush away the tears rolling down her cheeks as she cried quietly.
“Lois?” she heard her husband call her name, his voice rising up in pitch. “Honey?”
She sat up and saw him in the doorway, a look of anguish on his face. In an instant, he was holding her, wrapping himself around her and pulling her close. She buried her face against his chest and sobbed.
“Lois, please talk to me,” he whispered. “You’re scaring me.”
“Clark,” she managed to sob his name. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to tell him how afraid she was, but the words wouldn’t come, they were crowded out by the tears.
“Honey, I’m here,” he whispered as he gently ran one hand up and down her back. She felt him press his lips against her temple. “I love you,” he said as he tilted her chin up to look into her eyes. “You know that, don’t you?”
Lois bit her lip and nodded. “I just don’t know if you can forgive me,” she whispered softly.
She heard him inhale sharply. His arms tightened around her. “There is nothing to forgive,” he said. “You did nothing wrong. And you saved my life,” he whispered fiercely. “And I am so sorry I made you think otherwise.”
Fresh tears came and she was helpless to fight them. But he continued to hold her while she cried. After a long while, after the sobs had finally abated, he spoke. “I know that you’re afraid. I am, too,” he confessed. “But we have to take care of each other. Please, let me in. Let me try to help.”
She wanted to do what he was asking of her, but she didn’t even know how. Eventually, the tears subsided. She looked up at him from where she’d buried her head against his chest, noticing the wet marks where her tears had soaked his shirt. He caressed her cheek and captured her lips in a soft, sweet, lingering kiss.
As he broke off the kiss, she could see him studying her intently, his expression earnest, as he tried to hold her gaze. Why did she want nothing more in that moment than to hide from him? He wouldn’t let her. His hand on her cheek, he titled her face up gently. “Please listen to me,” he began quietly. “Because I need you to understand this. I am still your husband – the guy who’s dumb in love with you. Who knows that this relationship is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. And who still can’t stand to see you cry.” He brushed away an errant tear from her cheek with his thumb. She turned into the contact and placed her hand on top of his, holding it close to her skin. She needed to feel the warmth not just of his words but his touch.
“I’m not asking you not to cry, I know you have to. But I am begging you to let me be there for you like you’ve always been there for me. You told me once that you were sure of two things – that we loved each other as much as any two people could love each other, and that the world was better for it. I know that you were right. I know that this love has saved both of our lives and it will get us through this. No matter what happens—no matter what—I will be here and we will get through it together.
She closed her eyes, feeling fresh tears well up in her eyes. “Clark,” she whispered his name softly, hopefully, like a prayer. His lips descended to cover hers. She needed this – the safe harbor of his arms, the familiar sweetness of his kiss, the rough beating of his heart in his chest. She breathed in the scent of him. The mingled fragrance of sandalwood and soap smelled like home.
He withdrew slightly. “I love you,” he whispered inches from her lips. “I always have. I always will.”
********
Sleep eluded both of them for a long while that night. In the darkened room, they’d merely held each other while it seemed like the world around them turned to dust. When he’d returned to the Planet that afternoon to find the note she’d left on his desk, telling him she’d left early, it had only reaffirmed his belief that her going back to work so soon was a mistake. He’d gently asked if she felt up to going into the office, but he’d already known how she was going to respond. When things were bad, she worked harder. When her problems weren’t things she could control, she focused on the things that were under her power. It was just how Lois Lane ticked.
Bernie had told him just how important it was for her to avoid unnecessary stress in the coming days, but the scientist himself knew what a tall order that was. Either Lois worked and dealt with the stresses of her profession, or she didn’t and was left with nothing to distract her from the awfulness of their current situation, of waiting and hoping, unable to do anything.
And it didn’t seem to matter what he’d told her the night before, his own confusion and fear had clouded his ability to be the supportive husband she needed right now. In truth, if he’d held back, it was because he’d had little choice – his own emotions were so raw, so close to the surface. Trying to be calm, to keep some semblance of control over them was the only safeguard he’d had against the worries that were terrorizing him, too. But that couldn’t excuse the fact that he’d badly misjudged the depth of her fears. He’d known she was hurting. He’d known she was scared. But last night, he’d seen something he’d previously believed was impossible—Lois Lane paralyzed by fear.
She looked up at him from within the circle of his embrace, reminding him that she was still awake, still suffocating on the silence, just like he was. “You know this was not your fault, right?” he asked quietly. “No matter what, you can’t blame yourself. You did what you had to do. To save everyone in that building. To save my life. I wouldn’t have even made it to the second bomb without you. It would have gone off. It would have killed me and dozens of other people. Thank you for saving my life. For giving me the chance to live my life with our little family.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes as she nodded silently. He touched her cheek and tilted her face up slightly to allow him to capture her lips in a soft, bittersweet kiss. “I love you,” he whispered. He’d said it more than a few times that night, but he was going to say it as many times as it took to make sure she understood that the depth and the intensity of that love couldn’t be diminished. Not by this. Not by anything that heaven or earth could devise to test them.
********
He took her hand as they walked down the hallway a few steps behind their physician. “I love you,” he whispered almost silently, squeezing her hand three times, once to punctuate each word.
She gave his hand a gentle squeeze in return. “I love you, too,” she whispered. He could hear her heart thundering in the otherwise silent hallway. Actually, his own pulse was racing, too. The sounds mingled together like rapid, staccato tommy-gun fire. He’d tried to reduce the anxiety on her, but the last few days had been nothing short of a living hell. The waiting had been intolerable from minute one and it had just gotten worse and worse. Mercifully, she’d suffered none of the symptoms Bernie had warned her might indicate a miscarriage.
They followed the doctor, turning sharply down one corridor and then another as they finally arrived at his secured lab. Bernie completed the complicated voodoo necessary to disarm the door and usher them through the lab space and into his office. He gestured to a couple of chairs on the opposite side of his extremely messy desk. “Lois, I know you said you’ve had no unusual symptoms, which is very good, but obviously since your physiology doesn’t work like other people’s, I still want you to take another pregnancy test here. It’ll just take a few minutes, then we can take care of your physical. I take it you both feel fine after the Kryptonite exposure, no lingering side effects?”
“I’m fine,” she said simply.
“We both are,” Clark echoed.
“Okay, then,” Bernie said, seemingly somewhat flustered. “Uh, Lois, I think you know where the little girls’ room is?”
“I can find it,” she assured the scientist. Wordlessly, she stood up and walked out of the office.
“How are you holding up, Clark?” Bernie asked him.
Clark sighed, trying to figure out where to begin. “I’ll be better when we have some answers,” he said at last.
Bernie’s expression twisted into a slight grimace. “How has Lois been?”
“Honestly, I’ve never seen her this afraid before. Besides being with Jon, there’s nothing she’s interested in. All she does is wait and I know it’ll be months still before we know anything.”
Bernie nodded. “Has she thought about talking to a professional?”
“She already has,” Clark replied. She’d gone to see Dr. Friskin the previous night, but hadn’t said a word about it after returning home. “I mean, I think it’ll be an ongoing process for both of us, especially if…well if the news we get isn’t good. But Bernie, I don’t know how we’re supposed to keep this up for months. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. She’s pulling away from me and I don’t know if I should give her space, or if I should try to get her to talk to me.”
Bernie nodded sympathetically. “You know the interpersonal stuff isn’t my strong suit. But I do know that if you don’t find some way to get back to something resembling a routine, waiting out the next few months will be even harder. Try to live your lives as normally as you can.”
“Is there anything she should avoid, things that could put her or the baby in danger?” Clark asked anxiously.
Bernie frowned. “Not really. With her body invulnerable again, she isn’t susceptible to the usual things – alcohol, caffeine, smoking, medications. I know she avoided them anyway when she was pregnant with Jon, but they shouldn’t be an issue.”
Clark nodded, thankful for at least that piece of good news. “What about us…I mean, is there anything we should avoid doing…” he fumbled.
“Oh! You mean sex?” Bernie exclaimed with little tact as realization dawned on him. “No. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” he said confidently.
“Good,” Clark said with a sigh. “That’s good. I mean, I know it’s kind of a silly thing to worry about since she’s invulnerable, but…”
“But you’re worried about your wife and the pregnancy. That’s perfectly normal, Clark,” Bernie reassured him. As they hadn’t made love in days, he knew the concern may have been entirely academic, but at least he had one less thing to trouble him.
He heard Lois’s footsteps in the corridor. A moment later, she entered the office. “I’ll go run the test,” Bernie said as he stood up. She retook the seat next to her husband’s and they sat in silence.
“I hate waiting,” Lois said with a wry grimace.
He reached out to take her hand. “Me too,” he agreed quietly. In reality, it was only a few minutes before Bernie returned.
“The pregnancy test is positive,” he announced, to Clark’s great relief. He heard his wife exhale a deep breath. “Lois, let’s do a quick physical and then we can talk about the timing for an ultrasound and an amniocentesis.
In the exam room, Clark sat mutely while Bernie completed the simple check-up. He felt his features settle into a dour frown as the irony of their situation—the sheer magnitude of which was usually reserved for Greek tragedies—weighed heavily on him. This was her first pre-natal exam. Ever since he’d returned from New Krypton, he’d cursed himself for missing moments like this one in her pregnancy with Jon. He would have given damn near anything to have been there with her. Now, he was fulfilling a vow he’d made to himself, to never miss a moment like this one in their second child’s life. But he’d taken for granted that this was going to be a happy occasion in their lives. He was going to hold her and she would smile at him and they would marvel in contented silence at the fact that her body was nurturing the new life they’d created.
Instead, a pall had been draped over them as obscene feelings of fear and despair rudely intruded into what should have been unalloyed happiness. He was terrified that Lois was going to start shutting him out, like he’d done to her for the better part of the last year. But this was not poetic justice. She didn’t deserve to have this pain heaped upon everything she’d already endured. And whatever his crimes were, surely this was more punishment than was just. Of course, looming in the background was the paralyzing fear that the biggest victim of this tragedy of errors was going to be their innocent child.
“Everything looks good,” Bernie said. Clark let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding in. “We can schedule the first ultrasound for two weeks from now. We should be able to hear the heartbeat by then. If you’re trying to listen for it yourselves and you can’t hear it, don’t worry about it. At that stage, it’s hard to pick it out from other sounds if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. The amniocentesis will have to wait several more months.”
“Will transferring my powers back to Clark for the amnio put the baby at risk?” Lois asked anxiously. God, he hadn’t even thought of that, Clark realized morosely.
“No,” Bernie replied. “While I think that having Clark’s powers keeps your body from recognizing the baby as foreign, we can complete the amnio in just a few minutes, too quickly for your immune system to start creating anti-bodies that might harm the pregnancy.”
“You’re sure?” Lois pressed the doctor.
“I’m positive,” Bernie confirmed with a quick nod. Clark couldn’t tell if she was truly mollified by Dr. Klein’s response or if she just couldn’t deal with yet another risk that wouldn’t become clear to them for many weeks. “I’ll give you a couple of minutes and then we can take care of the scheduling,” Bernie said before exiting the exam room.
Lois changed out of the exam gown and back into her clothing silently. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine,” she said curtly.
He tried not to flinch but keeping up the stoic mask was taking its toll on him. “I’m sorry,” she said softly off what he assumed was his wounded expression. She reached her hand out to him. He interlaced their fingers.
“It’s all right,” he assured her as he kissed her temple.
“Let’s just get this over with and go home,” she said, the weary plea evident in her tone. But things weren’t going to be any better when they got home. He knew that already. He couldn’t wish that fact away. They would go home and wait in painful, awkward silence for his parents to come home with Jon. They would pretend around their son that nothing was wrong, even though the effort was often exhausting. And when he’d gone to bed, they would go back to the agonizing quiet, straining, despite themselves, to listen for a heartbeat they both prayed desperately would be there, even though it would still be a few weeks at the earliest before they would be able to hear it.
********
“I know Lois promised she’d tell you what was going on,” he began as he pulled the door to Perry’s office shut behind him. His mouth was suddenly dry and he really didn’t want to have this conversation, but they owed their friends the truth. “We needed a few days for Dr. Klein to confirm it,” he said in a quiet tone. He looked up at Perry and Jimmy, who were watching him expectantly. Clark swallowed roughly as he found his voice. “Lois is pregnant,” he finished.
He watched as a grin spread across Jimmy’s face and then died just as suddenly. “Oh man, the Kryptonite,” he whispered.
It didn’t matter that he’d already had these same thoughts, sharing them with his friends only seemed to make it hurt worse. “Yeah,” he said simply, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Perry looked at him, his expression ashen. “Is she all right, son?” he asked.
With a sigh, he fumbled to continue. “Dr. Klein says Lois is fine, but it’s too soon to know about the pregnancy…what kind of effect the Kryptonite had…” he trailed off, not knowing how to finish. The three men stood awkwardly in the middle of the office for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“Whatever we can do to help, son, if you two need to take some time off…” Perry began.
Clark shook his head. “Thanks, Chief, but the waiting is hard enough even when we keep ourselves busy. If we didn’t have the Planet, I think it would be worse.”
Perry nodded in understanding. “All right, but you let us know if there’s anything we can do for you, understood?”
“Thanks,” Clark replied. He turned toward the door.
“Clark?” Jimmy called from behind him. Clark stopped and looked over his shoulder at his friend. “Tell Lois we love her,” Jimmy said. With a ghost of smile, Clark nodded and left the room.
********
“Martha, how do I do this?” Lois whispered quietly as she looked pleadingly at her mother-in-law sitting across the kitchen table from her. In the background, she could hear the sound of her son’s heartbeat as he slept in the otherwise quiet house. “How do I keep going, spending every minute of every day worrying that I’m going to lose our baby?”
Martha looked up from the mug of herbal tea and reached out to give Lois’s hand a gentle squeeze. “You hope for the best,” she began softly. “You find yourself making a lot of bargains with fate. You try to live your life, and you remember how much your family loves you. How we will always be here for you. No matter what happens.”
“I’m shutting Clark out,” she confessed softly. “I don’t mean to do it, I swear, but I don’t know how to talk to him about this. Every time I try, it’s like I can’t even breathe. And I fall apart.”
“If you find it too hard to talk to any of us, you always have Dr. Friskin,” Martha responded.
“Thank goodness,” Lois breathed. “But there’s only so much anyone can do right now. Nothing is going to make the next few months pass by any faster.”
“That’s why you just have to accept that this is one of those things you can’t control,” her mother-in-law said.
“I hate things I don’t control,” Lois replied flatly.
Martha gave her a sympathetic smile. “I know,” she said.
Lois frowned as she stared down at the bottom of her mug. “I’m hurting Clark by not talking to him about this, aren’t I?”
“He’s worried about you,” the older woman said gently. “You know he loves you more than anything.”
“But how can he not be thinking that I might have killed his child?” Lois whispered tearfully.
“Honey, you know he doesn’t think that!” Martha replied, squeezing the younger woman’s hand tightly. “All of us are so grateful for you saving his life. You know that. A strong marriage can survive a lot of things. Even losing pregnancies. But it won’t survive if the two of you stop talking to each other. Be there for each other. It is the only thing that can make this easier.”
Nodding, she tried to recognize the wisdom of the other woman’s words, but the dark and unwelcome thoughts that were with her constantly wouldn’t let her. She exhaled shakily, as though the burdens she was carrying were forcing the breath from her body. “I know he consoles himself with the fact that I didn’t know about the pregnancy,” she began, wondering if she actually had the strength to complete the confession, and wondering whether it would be cruel to Martha to do so. “And if I had known, obviously, I would have thought about the risks, but if you ask me if I could have left my husband to die alone in that building, I couldn’t say yes,” she admitted. She’d brought one child into the world without him. Shamefully, she was pretty damn sure she couldn’t do it again. Avoiding her mother-in-law’s gaze, she kept her eyes fixed on the table. What did the other woman think of her, listening to her daughter-in-law weighing the life of her son against that of her unborn grandchild?
“If you’re expecting me to be mad at you for loving my son that much, I’m not,” Martha said gently. “Never forget that you are the best thing that has ever happened to Clark.”
********
She looked up at the sound of knocking on the frame to her office door. “You got a minute?” her husband asked softly.
“Sure,” she replied.
He pulled the door closed behind him as he entered the office, dropping into one of the chairs across from her desk. “I know we’ve been putting it off…but we should probably figure out what we want to do about Thanksgiving,” he said. She thought she saw him tense slightly, probably because he knew she wasn’t exactly thrilled about this topic of conversation. On the scale of injustices they were currently battling, it barely registered, but having to go through the ordeal of worrying about this pregnancy during the holiday season filled her with some additional amount of dread. She hadn’t even realized it was possible to feel worse about their situation until she’d sat down to figure out the dates of her appointments with Bernie.
The holidays meant dealing with her parents. It meant yet another year of doing her damnedest to make sure her issues didn’t spoil Jon’s Christmas. It meant there was going to be no way to avoid the rampant speculation of the newsroom when she didn’t partake in the egg nog or cider at the staff holiday party.
“With everyone here, it probably makes sense to stay in Metropolis…unless you don’t want to deal with it…we could go back to the farm…”
She sighed. “If we go to Kansas my parents will think we’re actively avoiding them and pitch a fit.”
“Let’s not worry about your parents or mine for that matter,” he said firmly. “Right now, just worrying about us—
you, Jon, and me—is about all I can handle.”
As much as she wanted to take her little family somewhere quiet and secluded and pretend that all of their problems and the world’s problems and whatever else was going to be heaped on their plates didn’t exist, she couldn’t. “What do you want to do?” she asked.
“Whatever you want,” he replied unhelpfully.
She frowned. “What’s our alternative, just skip Thanksgiving?”
“If you want to…”
“We can’t just hide from this,” she said. “And at some point, we’re going to have to tell my parents we’re pregnant.”
His mouth twisted into a frown. “They’re highly educated medical professionals, can’t we wait until they figure it out?” he asked.
She would have been thinking the same thing in his place. “I didn’t exactly handle it well when I told them I was pregnant with Jon. In fact, we didn’t talk for months afterward. I’m not sure my mother has really forgiven me for pretty much excluding her from my entire pregnancy. But I know that having them know is going to make things harder, not easier. Especially if something goes wrong…”
Lois had never told him about the fight she’d had with her parents when they’d learned she was pregnant. It was one of those difficult moments she saw no particular need to relive. Concern etched deep in his expression, he leaned forward in his chair and rested his chin on his folded hands. “We have our first ultrasound next week. Bernie told us if we could hear the heartbeat then, that would be a really good sign. Why don’t we wait until after that appointment to tell them?”
She nodded in silent agreement. “And if we decide to have Thanksgiving here in Metropolis, Mom and I can take care of all the cooking and the hosting,” he assured her. He was gladly accepting every burden she’d allow him to take on his shoulders, all so that she wouldn’t have to struggle with them. It was sweet. And thoughtful. And so very much like the Clark she’d married. He was hurting—just as she was—but he was figuring out how to get past his own pain in order to take care of her.
“So we’ll just take it one step at a time, then?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said quietly, knowing it sounded easier than it actually would be.
He stood up and stepped around her desk toward her, extending his hands to take hers. He pulled her into his arms. “I love you,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes and hugged him more tightly. “I love you, too,” she replied.
