Table of Contents
From Part 10:“Just promise me something.”
“Anything.” He brought the car to a halt at traffic lights, then turned to look at her.
“You’ll stay with me till the end, won’t you? Don’t let my parents or the doctors make you leave. Promise?”
He muttered something she couldn’t catch. Then he reached across to squeeze her hand. “I promise, Lois. Nothing could drag me away from you. If... If it comes to that, I’ll be right there beside you. I swear.” His voice sounded almost hoarse.
As she clutched his hand, the lump was back in her throat again.
*********
Now read on...Why was she giving up all of a sudden?
What had changed? Was there something she wasn’t telling him? Yes, she was getting weaker - he could see that, even without that collapse she’d pulled on him getting out of the elevator - but she was still Lois Lane. She was still a fighter.
Wasn’t she?
If she couldn’t be, then he’d have to be one for her.
Starting right now. He gently pulled his hand from her grasp, returning it to the steering-wheel as he moved the car forward. He could do calm. He could do
normal. Even if it killed him.
No. Doing ‘normal’ wasn’t what would kill him. He’d just promised to watch her die. To stay beside her as she - in god knew what pain - lost her fight to hang on to life. Being with her through that. Trying not to fall apart completely for her sake.
That would kill him.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. It didn’t calm him much, but he could fake it. Probably.
He looked at her again. She was leaning back against the headrest, her eyes closed, hands clenched together. He
had to try to get her thinking proactively again.
“Okay, partner, so where are we headed?”
Lois seemed to wake up suddenly. She shifted in her seat and looked around, out the car windows. “Oh! Yeah... what were we doing?”
“Lois?” He frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Uh...” She shook her head, her hair swishing as she did so. “I... uh... I don’t know what happened there. I... think I kind of spaced out or something.”
Yet more evidence of what that... there wasn’t even a word in the English language fit to describe him... had done to her. It was bad enough seeing her in pain. Worse seeing her distress and fear at the thought of dying. But seeing his smart, intuitive, vibrant,
brilliant partner gradually fading away mentally as well as physically... it was just unbearable.
How was he possibly going to hold it together enough to carry on being there for her?
But he didn’t have a choice. She needed him. So he just had to push aside everything he was feeling and be what she needed him to be. “Don’t worry about it. So, where are we going?”
She seemed to think for a few moments. “Oh yeah. I thought we should start at the Early Bite diner.”
Right. Where a couple of Lois’s regular sources tended to hang out. It was as good a start as any. He signalled right and headed out towards the Slum. “So we’re going to ask around, see if anyone knows anything?”
“Yeah.” She sounded stronger now, more animated, more...
ferocious. “Someone’s
got to know something. And anyway, we know he’s watching. If we’re lucky, he’ll get careless.”
That was true. “He doesn’t even need to get careless. He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, after all.”
And he’d been so busy worrying about Lois that he’d forgotten who he was dealing with. From the instant they left the parking garage, he should have been looking around in every direction, checking for someone watching them. Someone who looked out of place, or was trying to blend into the background.
He could make up for it now. Sure, they’d gone around the corner from the Planet, but that wasn’t a problem. “Give me a second, Lois.” He pulled in to the kerb and put the car into idle, ignoring the hoots of other drivers stuck behind. Just this once, he didn’t care about their inconvenience. He pulled down his glasses and let the buildings around them simply melt away.
Outside the Planet, the street was as bustling as usual. Commuters hurried in and out of the subway entrance, barely glancing around them as they continued on their afternoon journeys. Dave at the newsstand had a couple of customers. Both were women, which seemed to rule them out... unless, of course, the guy had people working for him...
That was a distinct possibility. That made it even more difficult.
When they returned, he’d have to talk to Dave. See if the older man had noticed anything out of the ordinary today. If anyone had been asking questions about Lois, or about the Planet. Something else he should have thought of before.
When they returned... god, how much more of their precious time would have elapsed by then? It was already past the halfway point, as she’d been so cruelly reminded by her would-be assassin. Time was slipping away, trickling through their fingers like fine grains of sand, impossible to hold onto.
She was getting sicker all the time. Of course, she was doing her best to hold herself together and keep going - she wouldn’t be Lois Lane if she wasn’t - but she was fading away right before his eyes. Her strength was visibly dissipating, her co-ordination was far from perfect and the moments of lost concentration were increasing. This was a shadow of the Lois Lane he knew.
There was so little time left, but so little to go on.
She was right. They weren’t going to be able to save her...
No! As long as there was time, there was hope. And there was certainly
no time to waste on pointless speculation. Back to surveying the scene. Dave. The newspaper guy.
Someone else approached Dave. Someone who - even though he could only see the guy’s profile - looked vaguely familiar. “Wha-?”
“Clark? What is it?” Lois caught at his arm.
“Oh!” The man had turned, and now he could see him properly. “It’s one of Henderson’s men.” He looked around and refocused on Lois. “I was taking a look outside the Planet - checking to see if anyone was watching the place.”
“Oh.” She studied his face, and then her hand moved, slowly, shaking a little, towards him. He waited, barely breathing, and then her fingertips grazed his eyebrow, circled his eye and finished up resting on his cheekbone. “You look so... different without your glasses.”
Before she could pull her hand back, he brought his up to cover it, holding her fingers against his face.
If he only had a few more hours to spend with Lois, then he needed good memories. Memories of the best thing that had ever happened to him - and of what could have been. Like the kiss in the parking garage, and now the way she’d just touched him.
These kind of moments would have to last him the rest of his life.
*********
Clark seemed strangely reluctant to let her hand go. But she didn’t mind. It was... nice.
So, when he finally sighed and said that they’d better get going, she curled her fingers around his and held on. After all, he could steer just as easily with her hand in his.
He was amazing. Whatever had come over her back in the parking garage, when she’d just felt like giving up and resigning herself to her fate, he’d been patient and caring and reassuring - and then he’d just reminded her, without actually saying it, that they weren’t giving in. That they were still Lane and Kent, still the best investigators in town, still the ones no-one could beat.
And he’d done it. She was back on the case, with renewed determination.
What would she have done without Clark today?
Right from that morning, when she’d instinctively punched out the speed-dial for his number on her phone, he’d been there for her. He’d been solidly supportive, caring, angry on her behalf, determined, proactive... everything she could have wanted. Her own personal Superman.
And he’d promised to be there right until the end.
But they weren’t going to let it come to that. No way.
He parked the car outside the Early Bite. She threw open her door and began to step down... and her head swam. The world spun crazily, dizzily, on its axis around her again. Her stomach roiled again.
“Easy.” Clark had her arm. “I’ve got you.” He almost lifted her out of the Jeep and onto the ground. “Look, are you sure you shouldn’t wait in the car?”
“No...” She coughed. “No way.” Grabbing hold of his arm, she added, “I’m coming with you. I want to look these guys in the eye and see if they can tell me they know nothing.”
But, for all her most effective gimlet stares, it was a waste of time. Nobody knew anything.
It wasn’t a case of knowing but refusing to answer. Lois knew these guys better than that. She’d cracked the toughest nut over a game of pool or an arm-wrestling contest. These guys - bums, drug users, even dealers, petty thieves and other dregs of society - knew and respected her. They supplied her, willingly or unwillingly, with information when they had it. This time, they simply didn’t have it.
Nobody had heard of any hit on a reporter. Nobody had heard any new threats against her life. Nobody had even heard recently about anyone with a grudge against Lois Lane. And nobody knew of anyone playing around with poisons that could kill somebody slowly.
She moved from source to source, questioning, persuading, bullying, arguing, the whole time leaning heavily into Clark, his arm around her waist for support. He was the only thing preventing her from sliding to the floor - her legs just didn’t seem to want to do the job any more.
He half-carried her back to the car when she finally decided it was time to move on and seek more fruitful territory. He said nothing, but the whiteness around his lips and the over-active tic in his jaw told her more than words could. He was hating this. Hating what it was doing to her. Hating that nothing they were doing was helping.
Hating that he couldn’t save her.
The world was starting to lose definition again.
“’s not your fault...” she said as he lifted her into the passenger seat.
The blurry thing above her which might have been a face swam almost into focus. Glasses. Brown eyes. A frowning mouth. “What, Lois?”
“Not y’r fault... ‘m going to die...”
Hands seized her shoulders, almost painfully. Shook her.
As if from a distance, a voice was calling her name.
“Lea’ me alone... tired... wan’ sleep...”
Sounds were fading in and out. “Lois! Come back... me, Lois... can’t... up now...”
Familiar voice. But sounding... different, somehow. “’lark...?”
“Lois! God, Lois, don’t do this to me! Come back!”
It was so hard... such a struggle even to open her eyes. But she had to. For him. Because he needed her.
Moisture touched her cheek. Or did it? Eyes finally dragged themselves open and the world regained clarity. He was leaning over her, his expression tortured. He’d aged twenty years in... how long? Ten minutes? It hurt to look at his face. The way he was staring at her, agony in his eyes, tore her apart.
Her gaze flicked to her shoulders. His hands were there, gripping her, the knuckles white. Yet, for all his strength, not hurting her.
“Clark?” The word emerged as a whisper.
He groaned something inarticulate, and his grasp softened. Then his hands slid down her back, tugging her to him, and she was in his arms. Safe.
Home.
“Thank god. Thank god. I thought... I thought I’d lost you just then. I thought... god, I thought that was some
sick joke, that he’d said twenty-four hours and meant twelve!”
He buried his face in her hair. And in that instant she realised that he was shaking.
*********
Was this how it would be? Lois getting weaker and weaker before his eyes, fading away in front of him, but still
Lois - and then, suddenly, without giving him any chance to prepare for it, not there any more? Gone?
He’d thought that was it, right there. She’d gone limp in his arms. Her eyes had drifted closed and her heartbeat turned faint. The indistinct mumble he hadn’t been able to make out had felt as if she was saying goodbye.
Goodbye. Right before his eyes. Just like that. Without warning. With nothing that he could do to save her. And without even time to tell her that he loved her.
But she’d only spaced out on him again. Lost consciousness for what had probably been just a matter of seconds - but enough for him to imagine the worst.
What was he doing? What the hell were they doing? Why wasn’t he doing more to save her life? They’d wasted far too much time just sitting around talking. And, okay, time with her was precious. If she did... die... he’d need those memories - but right now he had a choice.
Accept that he couldn’t save her, and just make the most of the few hours they had left, and live the rest of his life
knowing that he’d given up on her - or do everything within his power, and beyond, to make her better, even if he lost her in the end anyway, and even if he had regrets later that he hadn’t used some of their remaining hours to... To tell her that he loved her. To show her that she was wrong: that she was cherished, and that he would miss her every single day for the rest of his life.
It wasn’t a choice. If there was even just a slim chance that he could find a way to save her...
He withdrew his arms from around her. The warmth seemed to leave him instantly.
“Clark?” There was confusion and hurt in her eyes.
“We have things to do.” His tone was curter than he’d intended, but it was probably for the best. They both needed to remember what was important here. “The investigation, remember?”
He closed her door before she could answer then, while she couldn’t see him, scrubbed his eyes. While walking around to the driver’s side, took out the cellphone Perry had given him when he’d told the editor they were going out. Lois gave him a questioning look as he got in with the phone pressed to his ear, but he refused to acknowledge it.
He couldn’t look at her. Not now. If he did that, if he saw the vulnerability in her eyes and the pallor of her skin and the way she was probably barely holding herself together, he’d fall apart. Correction: fall apart more than he already had.
“Perry? It’s Clark. Just checking in to see if there’s any news.”
The rumbling voice of his editor held more worry than Clark had ever heard the man express before. “Not here. Henderson says his guys have been up and down Lois’s street, but nobody remembers seeing anything this morning. Course, more than half the street’s at work, and he says he’ll send people back again after six. They’ve got the security tapes from that shopping mall, though, so maybe they’ll get something from there.”
Maybe. It was a slim hope... but it was hope. “Okay. Thanks, Perry.”
“How are things going there? Guess you haven’t got anything to report, huh?”
“Nothing. I just don’t get this. Nobody seems to know
anything! Whoever this guy is, he’s either a complete stranger or he’s more closed-mouthed than a confessor.”
He could hear Perry’s disappointment. “Darn. I suppose it was worth trying, though. You two comin’ back now?”
“No - there are a couple of other places we can try. More sources to talk to.”
“Okay. How’s Lois holding up?”
Instinctively, he glanced across at his partner. She was leaning back, her head against the headrest, breathing shallowly and looking exhausted. “About as well as you’d expect.”
“That bad?” He heard a loud thump; something in Perry’s office had taken the brunt of his frustration. “If I could get my hands on the bastard...”
“You’ll have to get behind me.” The coldness in his voice even surprised him.
He hit the END button and laid the phone in the dashboard shelf, then started the engine. “Okay, partner, let’s go.”
*********
More endless questions. More useless answers. And, once again, a complete lack of information.
Oh, her sources were sympathetic. Some of them had already heard that there’d been an attempt on her life, though they didn’t know the details. Word had spread from her conversation with Bobby earlier. Word of the Planet reward had also spread, and people were eager to help; thirty-five grand was a lot of money. But they couldn’t supply information they didn’t have.
They were searching for a needle in a haystack. And wasting the few precious hours she had left.
There were other things she could be doing with the time. Things which wouldn’t necessarily save her life, but which would at least make her feel she wasn’t wasting the remaining time she had.
Leaning heavily against Clark for support, since her legs felt like jelly - tingly jelly, though - she glanced up at him. His expression was still grimly taut, as it had been ever since she’d spaced out in the Jeep and he’d thought he was losing her.
He’d been almost coldly distant ever since. Businesslike, matter-of-fact, offering all the support she needed but none of the deep concern and... well, and almost
love he’d shown before. If she hadn’t known what was causing it - if his state of mind hadn’t become obvious to her during his phone call with Perry - she’d have been hurt. But she knew what was behind it.
He was terrified. He didn’t need to tell her that - it was written all over his eyes and the way he was avoiding talking about anything personal. He was driving himself ragged trying to find the answers they were looking for. In the couple of hours they’d been out, he’d taken them all over the city, asking the same questions again and again to different people. In between, he’d been making phone calls - sometimes to the Planet, other times to the hospital or LexLabs, and at one point to the Planet’s science editor, demanding that he look up the symptoms Lois was having and match those with poisons which took roughly a day to kill.
And he’d never stopped looking around or listening. He’d played with his glasses so often in the last couple of hours that it looked like a nervous habit. The way he kept glancing around and clearly taking his attention off whoever they were talking to made him look like he suffered from attention deficit. There were times, too, when she felt strongly that he was itching to change clothes and rip the city apart in his superhero guise.
But he wouldn’t do that. He’d promised not to leave her, so Superman was stowed away for the day, apart from quick flights to do things for her.
He was still ignoring cries for help, too. He thought she hadn’t noticed, of course, but even in her falling-apart state she couldn’t
not see the way he’d go perfectly still suddenly, his whole body tense, before shaking himself slightly and refocusing on what they were doing.
This was torture for Clark. If she had any decency, she’d release him from his promise. Tell him to go be Superman, to do what he had to do. Wish him well with his life and tell him how special he was to her, how much of a difference he’d made in her life... and say goodbye. Set him free.
But she was too selfish for that.
They should just give up this fruitless traipsing around, asking questions, getting nowhere. Right now, Clark’s apartment was where she wanted to be. Sitting on his comfortable sofa, next to him, with his arms around her. Safe in his embrace.
And kissing him. More kisses like the one in the air and in the parking garage. And maybe like the way he’d kissed her before - in Trask’s plane and at the airport. Maybe more than kissing, though her body probably wasn’t capable of that. She had too much tingling in all the wrong places. Her fingers hadn’t stopped twitching since they’d left the Early Bite.
Yes, it was time to stop
wasting time. All she had to do was persuade Clark to give up on this pointless, endless search for something they weren’t going to find.
It was time to give up. To accept that she was dying.
Of course, this morning she’d never have done that. But then, it had been easy, back in the hospital, when she still wasn’t feeling too bad apart from the shock, to insist that she wouldn’t leave a single stone unturned in the search for a cure or for her would-be killer. But that had been then.
This was now, and she was tired. So very tired.
Ready to accept the inevitable, so at least they could make the most of what little time they had left. And she wanted to spend that little time alone with her partner. Her best friend. The man she...
Yes. The man she loved.
“Clark - ”
The cellphone rang. He gave her a brief smile of apology as he drew it out of his pocket. “Kent.”
As he listened, she saw his expression change, from the awful grimness she hated to a look she’d thought she’d never see again. Lightness. Joy. Relief. He muttered something before ending the call.
“Clark? What is it?”
“Get in the Jeep. We’re going back to the hospital.” Suppressed excitement laced his voice.
“What’s happened?” She allowed him to hustle her out to the car - well, actually, she didn’t have a lot of choice. Her feet weren’t even touching the ground.
“Dr Sutton called the Planet. The latest lab tests have just come back. They’ve got a positive ID on the poison!”
*********
...tbc
