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Chapter 6: The Green, Green Glow Of Fear
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It was the sunlight that drew him back. Warm, silken, revitalizing, reaching into that dark abyss and hanging tendrils of pure, rejuvenating light to draw him back into the world of the living. He resisted for a while, but an abyss wasn’t much of an escape when it was punctured by light and warmth, and anyway, hiding wasn’t going to bring Clark back, wasn’t going to make Superman enough for the rest of his life, wasn’t going to take him back to a time before capital letters could destroy him. So he followed the sunlight, sparkling trails that led him to his battered, wounded body and abandoned him in hurt.
He’d been light, free, drifting like gossamer down, before the sunlight touched him, and instead of leading him to the open skies its seductive sensations had promised, it slammed him into a heavy, sluggish form and left him alone and aching, and he didn’t know if he’d ever felt so betrayed. His feet were too warm, encased beneath blankets that were rough and coarse against sensitive skin, his hands were curled up and cramped, and it was almost as much of an effort to open his eyes now as it had been in Luthor’s penthouse. But worse was the pervasive feeling of *lesser*, the sensation of being cut off, crippled, destroyed. All he could hear was the ticking of some sort of monitor beside him and the exhalations of his own breath--the rest of the world was still and silent. Dead. He was blind and deaf and helpless, and there were tiny lines of acid pain running along portions of his flesh, and the only thing he could feel inside was a terrible, crippling numbness.
Gently, slowly, his eyes still stubbornly closed, he lifted one of his hands, stretched his fingers to uncramp them, and then drew them up to touch the scar on his stomach. He found only a dim, trailing line evident through whatever fabric he wore, scarcely there at all. It didn’t hurt, but his *fingers*, brushing against the scratchy covers over him, tremored with teetering pain. The slashes Luthor had made using the Kryptonite glass, Clark realized, the network of pain drawn against his skin, bright and vivid and *sharp*.
Grunting with the effort--*really* wishing his eyes would just cooperate and open already--he tore the covers away. Instantly, he felt less constrained. Sunlight hit him more fully, bathing him in solar energy, and the ache in the center of his bones eased a bit, allowing him to finally take a deep, full breath.
With gold limning his vision, he was able to convince his rebellious eyes to open, though only to mere slits, flinching away from the light that turned from gauzy curtains to slivers of too-bright pain.
He was alone in a tiny, white room, his form sprawling across a too-small hospital bed, with a myriad of wires trailing from various parts of his body. The window in the facing wall was small, a tiny square--enough to let in light but not nearly enough to let out a Kryptonian.
And the door was closed. A bright silver lock on the handle. No window in it to peer through to the outside. Shut up tight like a barred gate denying him entry to the world.
The numbness that had been cloaking Clark in some form or fashion for he didn’t even know how long didn’t just break--it *shattered*.
He rolled off the hospital bed with a clatter, lightning bolts of pain sparking from his hands, his face, his neck, as he tore at the wires, ignoring the way they ripped his unusually fragile skin as they came free. His feet wobbled and protested at bearing his weight, but he convinced them to lift him upright, and then he was staggering to the door, scrabbling at it with white-scarred hands…and it didn’t open.
Panting, almost hyperventilating, the air he could take in little more than tiny puffs of mist evaporating beneath the glare of desert sun, Clark crumpled to the white, sterile floor, one hand stubbornly holding onto the silver doorknob. Only dimly, belatedly, did he realize that he was still wearing the Superman suit, his boots tucked absurdly into a corner, their color like a Kool-Aid stain on the side of a child’s mouth, embarrassing and exasperating to the parent trying to show them off to visiting relatives.
Not that he was being shown off, Clark told himself. Of course not. He was Superman. Governments all around the world welcomed him, *begged* him to come and visit their countries, give his support, aid in whatever catastrophes might afflict them. They wouldn’t countenance taking him and locking him up in a white room and dissecting him like a frog. That was a fear from long ago, a childhood haunting that couldn’t possibly be made real in his adult world, so it was surely just a misunderstanding. He only had to try the doorknob again. Calmly, this time, carefully, like a civilized being, not like a wild animal that had to be locked up for the good of everyone else.
Somewhere deep inside, tucked up next to that withering, shriveled-up hope he couldn’t rid himself of, he wondered where Lois was. Wondered if she had left him to this. Abandoned him. But she wouldn’t--she *wouldn’t*. She admired Superman too much, and surely, *surely*, there was enough left of their friendship to ensure that she would fight for him. She would. He knew it with an undeniable certainty, a trust and a confidence he didn’t dare question.
So if she wasn’t here…
Clark tore at the door again, heedless of the monitor blaring out an alarm behind him or the pinpricks of pain stabbing all over his body as nerve endings complained at their rude awakening. He tried to cry out, to call for help, but his throat was hoarse and his voice emerged dry and quiet--and on second thought, that was probably a good thing. Clark could call for help, but he was in the Superman Suit, and the hero didn’t call for help. He *answered* calls for help.
But he was weak. He was Superman, and it didn’t matter, because the door was unbreachable. He could tear at it, he could pound his fists against it, he could twist the handle as much and as often as he liked, but it wouldn’t open. It simply stood there.
Ordinary.
Solid.
Terrifying.
Clark closed his eyes. Took in a deep breath. Another. Another. Stood to his feet. Reached out a hand as steady as he could make it. Closed his fingers around the silver doorknob, warm from his frantic grip. Twisted.
Nothing. Nothing but a click and a halted movement as the lock caught and held.
The floor was cold against his bare feet as he took several steps backward, stumbling away from the door. He avoided the bed, instead backing himself into the corner most saturated with light, and planting himself there, a wounded, pliable tree choosing its spot with care and putting down tentative roots. Carefully, warily, he looked up to the window, examined its small frame for any escape. It was square and small, no more than ten inches or so, set high in the wall so that he’d be able to reach it only if he stretched up on his tiptoes--or if he could fly, but if he could do that, then he wouldn’t have to worry about the window at all--and seemed good only for funneling sunlight through since it showed nothing more than a white wall outside it.
That monitor, glowing with green lights showing aborted readings, still shrieked out its warnings, a high-pitched keening that tore at the insides of Clark’s ears--a good sign, he couldn’t help but think, because he might not know how well ordinary humans heard, but he was relatively certain they didn’t hear on quite such high wavelengths. He fought and defeated the urge to pick up the irritating thing and throw it across the room until it *stopped* its shrill whine. No need to scare whoever was holding him here anymore than he might have already done, he told himself; no need to give them *reason* to keep him locked away. No need to do anything but remain calm and in control, to be *Superman* so that they would realize their mistake and let him *out*.
Luthor, he thought. It was the only answer.
Henderson had come--Clark remembered the door bursting open, the arrival of police officers with their weapons and their handcuffs and their Miranda rights. Henderson had heard Luthor’s confession, heard that the businessman had killed Clark Kent, had conspired to kill Superman, had thought he could continue to grow his criminal empire. That should have been enough to ensure Luthor was put away, but…but Luthor was slippery and conniving, and now it was Superman who was locked up like a criminal. Like an alien.
Like a monster.
Which was exactly what Luthor did, Clark thought in despair. He twisted the truth until it was as poisonous as lies, turned lies into truths etched in sincere malice, made everything go upside down and inside out and *wrong*. It should be Luthor locked up, but it wasn’t. It was Clark instead--no, it was *Superman*, the untouchable paragon, brought down to earth and shackled to the ground.
And now he stood in a beam of sunshine, a spotlight that would, he hoped, turn him from a vulnerable man--not ordinary, not human, not *Clark Kent*--into the superhero who could fly from this place without a second’s hesitation, without questions or accusations or suspicion. Only…only his Suit was torn, stained with blood turned rust on blue, a cape drenched in more blood and dried to stiff shreds of itself. White scars spider-webbed whatever skin wasn’t covered, and beneath the Suit, the scar where Luthor had left his blade in a reporter’s flesh was neat and covered with tiny stitches--like lab animals, like frogs cut down the middle, their outsides peeled back to reveal the secrets hidden within. And Lois was gone, and he was alone, and if his rash plan had only succeeded in making everything worse, then he wasn’t sure what he could possibly do now to fix everything that had gone so very, very wrong.
Everything he touched turned to dust, as if his very presence were a curse. He’d told Lois, and she’d hated him--*both* of him. He’d tried to expose Luthor, to Lois and to Metropolis, and Clark Kent had been murdered. He’d confronted Luthor, and now Superman was nothing more than a specimen in a lab.
His hands curled into fists, his muscles rippled, a seething, raging mass of fear and anguish and anger--dim anger, distant and unknowable, so much wearier than that black ice that Luthor had leeched him of with glass shards--stretching inside him, reaching out, testing their confines.
The door was locked. But it was only a door. Only a thin, thin slab of metal and plastic, a two-dimensional barrier he could strike down if need be. Clark wouldn’t--he’d wait, he’d plan, he’d investigate--but Superman…Superman was less tamed, more feral, utterly direct.
He’d taken only one step toward that door when he heard, from beyond the closed and locked obstacle in his path to the skies and Lois, a symphony of footsteps coming toward his cell. Quick and sharp, heavy and hurried, tentative and lagging--a dozen sets of footsteps that burst into the room as easily as if *they* were the supermen and he alone were the ordinary, normal, not-enough man.
The door, heedless of its betrayal, swung lightly on its hinges, and in no more than the blink of an eye, his cell was filled by white, white, white, *white*, a vibrant white so thick and heavy and dense that it made him flinch away. White lab coats, white shirts, white badges, white faces, expressions with eyes so wide they showed the whites all the way around--so much white that Clark was abruptly aware of how vivid his Superman colors were, how starkly he stood out next to them, how very alien he looked, standing before them, staring back at them exactly like a lion in a cage, restless and wild and hungry for freedom.
He straightened, stiffened his spine, pretended he was not hurt and exhausted and confused, and faced them all as if he had nothing to fear. As if he were not an alien locked away in a padded white room. As if he were simply waiting politely for an escort to the exit. As if he were not terrified that it would be Luthor who strolled into the cell next, cigar in his mouth, triumph in his eyes, smugness in every line of his body. As if he were not frantically trying to figure out where Lois was, if he had only dreamed her in that penthouse, if she was alive and safe or lost and hurt somewhere, needing Superman.
The superhero--the alien--on one side of the room, the humans on the other, staring and staring and *staring* until he thought he would go mad, like the lion in his cage, coiled energy hidden beneath slanted eyes and lax muscles and rippling patience, watching its audience and waiting for its moment that might never come.
“Superman!” the lead man exclaimed, all tall angles and knobby elbows and balding head, so earnest and excited, so worried and almost afraid that the sheer force of his emotions nearly made Clark stagger back a step, stumble away from him, from them all, until his back was against the wall as literally as it was metaphorically.
“He’s awake!”
“Look at that, already standing!”
“I don’t believe it!”
So much astonishment, so much curiosity, so much unbounded, unhidden frank perusal, and Clark wanted to shrink into the floor--or better yet, explode into the air, burst through the white ceiling with its gleaming reflections of white shadows, flee into the skies where he’d always before felt so alone but that he now craved with all his soul.
“Superman!” said the first scientist again. “Are you sure you should be up? We *just* finished operating not even ten minutes ago!”
“Operating,” Clark repeated. He couldn’t fly, but he felt himself spiraling away from them all, could tangibly feel his grip on Earth and humanity slipping away from him, as ethereal and abstract as the wind itself, playing about him and promising him he could grasp it, then laughing and darting away, always out of reach, taunting and tempting and tormenting. Spiraling in twisting loops that left everything distant, twirling round and round in a cyclone he couldn’t control as he was funneled away from this earth as easily as he’d funneled away that tornado. As if it were nothing, as if it didn’t belong, as if it could bring only danger and so could not land anywhere near people. He tried to speak, had to stop and swallow, then tried again. “Where am I?”
“Well…” The scientist stopped, as if taken aback. His badge was half-hidden behind the fold of the collar, but Clark could read ‘Dr. Bernard Klein’ and the logo that answered his question even before Klein looked down at the badge himself, as if needing the reminder, and said, “STAR Labs. A hospital just isn’t equipped to deal with a Kryptonian, you understand. We’ve been given everything anyone knows about you and even we didn’t know what we were doing--xeno-biologists aren’t exactly something we’ve ever had to--”
“Wait!” The voice was so welcome, so longed for, that Clark thought he might be hallucinating, the sharp, sudden, *purposeful* solo of footsteps pushing through the stillness as welcome to him as an unlocked exit door. “Wait, don’t--stop, get out of my way!”
And then there was a burst of color exploding before his hue-starved eyes, and Lois pushed her way through the mass of white until she stood in the middle of his cell, planted on the thin strip of floor that was all that stood between him and the intent, eager eyes of his audience, her expression fixed on him to the exclusion of all else. A lion-tamer, he found himself thinking, and felt only relief, because with her there, with her blue, blood-stained sweater, her grime-torn jeans, her dark, *dark* hair and eyes, the vitality sparking outward from her in every direction as if she carried her own personal storm with her wherever she went…well, with her there to dilute the white behind her, he didn’t feel quite so alien, so set apart, so hopeless.
And she was safe and alive and *here*--and maybe she was dirty and looked as tired as he felt, and maybe she had streaks of tears staining the paleness of her complexion, and maybe there was blood on her hands, but she was *here*. She wasn’t dead, wasn’t locked away, wasn’t in Luthor’s clutches. She was here, with *him*, looking at him as if there were so many things she wanted to say if only they were alone. Looking as if, maybe, none of those things would be cruel or harsh or scornful.
“Lois,” he said, and only when her name sprinkled the air, colored the white aura choking him, did he allow himself to believe that she was really there. His voice emerged hoarse and strained and not at all like himself, but that was probably a blessing in disguise because he didn’t think he would have sounded like the aloof superhero when he said her name, didn’t think he would have been able to hide the ghost of Clark Kent haunting the body of Superman.
“Superman,” she said, suddenly still, motionless…but her eyes still full of so much he was sure he was interpreting incorrectly because if she’d looked at him like *this* before, then he wouldn’t have delayed nearly so long in telling her he loved her.
Except.
“Superman,” she’d said, and she’d always looked at the superhero like that, hadn’t she, always set her ideal up on a pedestal that had no room for anyone or anything else, certainly didn’t give Clark Kent a chance, or Lane and Kent, Lois and Clark, him and her, *them*.
Once again, still, *always*, the name cut to the quick. It shouldn’t, of course, not with so many curious scientists in the cell with him, but…but it did. He’d done away with his own capital letters, set them aside in Luthor’s penthouse when it became clear how much there was left of life *outside* those places, but he’d forgotten, in his pain and his resolve and his desperation--and his terrible, overwhelming *grief*--that there was one capitalized word he still couldn’t get away from.
No escape from the alien inside him, and how ironic was that--he wanted to laugh--that the identity that *gave* him an escape was now his prison.
The sunlight filtering in through the too-small window seemed to be growing dimmer, less translucent, more gray than gold. Lois was still in the same clothes she’d been wearing when he’d spilled all his secrets out before her and watched her trample them. And he felt as if he’d been awake for days, as if he hadn’t slept since inanimate objects became debilitating weapons, or as if the duration of his unconsciousness hadn’t done anything for him at all. And he wondered, incongruously, if so little time had passed, after all. Was this still the same day that he’d flown Lois to that cruise ship? That he’d breathed life into a young boy’s lungs and dug a trench to stop a tidal wave? That he’d showed Lois his hidden closet and heard her denounce him as a monster. That he’d faced Luthor and lost everything.
How could so little time pass while he lived lifetimes? While he watched lives destroyed and empires fall and eras end? How could he look at Lois and see her looking back at him, and be swept right back to the haunted, confused man he’d been since she told him Luthor had proposed?
“Lois,” he said again, because he *was* still Clark, because even Superman needed something to hold onto when he was alone and frail and locked up. Because she was standing right in front of him.
Her eyes, dark points of light refracting the sunlight back at him, softened. There were tears shimmering in their depths, casting still more light toward him, but none of those tears fell, and he thought that she should probably be the one with the steel moniker. Lois Lane, woman of steel, he thought with a twist of bitter amusement, and Superman, the superhero turned mad dog, crazed and caged and condemned.
“Superman,” she said, and he wished she wouldn’t. Wished she would say nothing, only look at him like she was, or else start talking about anything and everything in that way only she could, countless words weaving a world, private and intimate, around the two of them, just as she’d done so many times before, usually while they sat at their respective desks or in her Jeep on a stake-out. He thought he might be willing to do anything to bring that time back, to turn back the clock and erase all the ticks and tocks that had led them here, to this place, standing so close and yet so far apart.
“I *really* don’t think you should be up yet,” Klein interrupted, pressing forward. He reached out toward Clark; his hands were empty, but Clark took a hasty step backward anyway, lifting his arms and crossing them tightly over his chest, a barrier at least as impenetrable as the door they’d opened so easily. Klein didn’t seem to notice. “The Kryptonite affected you pretty badly, and we had to expose you to more of it in order to be able to operate. There might still be side-effects--”
“You have Kryptonite?” Clark demanded, his hidden hands forming into fists yet again. He clenched them tightly enough to feel his pulse threading between them, compressed between fear and alarm, hot and ready to explode so that he imagined he was combustible, one second away from a meltdown.
“We used the shards Luthor had,” Lois interjected quickly. The entire room, tensed at his abrupt question, relaxed when his attention moved back to her, curious onlookers trusting to the lion-tamer to keep them safe. “There…” She swallowed hard, then canted her chin up, relying on that curious, entrancing inner strength of hers to keep going. “There was a shard left inside you, from the blade Luthor used on you. I’m…I’m sorry.”
Klein nodded vigorously, sweat dotting his brow. “It was festering, but thanks to Ms. Lane, we managed to get it all out. Of course, seeing as how your physiology is so alien, we’re not quite sure how different your body’s healing process will be. You *seem* to be doing okay.” He swept his gaze up and down Clark’s body, from the top of his rumpled hair--probably looking far too much like Clark’s--to his bare feet, sticking out so absurdly from the bottoms of the suit.
Clark blinked, tried not to flinch away from the open perusal, tried not to give away just how dirty he suddenly felt, how much he wanted to burst into flight, to employ so much speed he became only ribbons of color and everything extraneous, everything *not-him* was burned away by the friction, left far behind to the unchangeable past. “I see,” he said slowly. Deeply. Carefully. Superman, confident and upright and unafraid and mildly curious about the things the people of this world did and thought and considered important. Trying, over all, *not* to be Clark Kent, boy from Kansas who couldn’t imagine what it had been like to be surrounded by a team of scientists wielding Kyrptonite and scalpels, laying him out on cold beds in white rooms and cutting and examining and probing and marveling over the *alienness* of their victim.
*Patient*, he reminded himself. *Patient*, not *victim*, but he couldn’t quite make himself internalize the correction.
The scientists didn’t seem to realize the fear turning Superman into stone, but Clark thought that Lois did. At least, she took a small step nearer him, one hand raised ever so slightly toward him, his lion-tamer preempting an attack from her lion. “Superman,” she said quickly. “It’s all right, really. They were just trying to help--Dr. Klein’s the only one who seemed to think he could possibly save you, and I…I needed him to try. But they did get the shard out and they’ve agreed to do whatever you want with the leftover Kryptonite--”
“Oh, yes!” Klein shuddered, while around him, his colleagues exchanged nervous glances. “We don’t want it! It’s yours, Superman, whenever you like. We have it locked in our vault now, but you probably know of a safer place.”
“Yes,” Clark said softly. “I do.”
The sun should be hot enough to burn it to nothing, and if it wasn’t, then he would throw it toward the next nearest star. Or he hoped he would. Hoped that the multiple heartbeats pulsing in his ears and the cold against his feet growing less important and the fading white lines along his hands and neck and face meant that he would soon be able to fly and hurl objects toward nearby galaxies and leave this place behind in the feeble hope it wouldn’t come back to torment him in late-night dreams.
“So…” Klein paused, looked back at his colleagues as if to give himself courage, and then looked back at Superman. He took a tentative step nearer--Clark would have flinched away, but Lois was there first, sliding effortlessly between them, as if she didn’t even notice what she was doing. “*Are* you feeling all right? I could check the wound, make sure it’s not--”
Clark didn’t even have time to tense, to swell up under the depths of his instant and complete negation, before Lois was moving, holding out her arms, herding the scientists and doctors toward the door. She was talking too, lots of words falling from her mouth to help her herd the white mass away from him, her own personal army of indomitable syllables deployed in his defense, and Clark wanted to break down and tremble and try not to shudder into a thousand bits at this proof that she didn’t completely hate him.
Or maybe he was about to shudder into pieces out of fear of whatever she planned to say to him. He didn’t think he could bear to hear any more denunciations, to defend against any more accusations. He loved her and he still, even after everything, hoped for a future with her--as if it were still possible, as if she would ever forgive him or see him as less than a monster--but he was beginning to think the truest thing he’d told her at the fountain was that he couldn’t bear to fight with her any longer. He didn’t want to argue or defend, to accuse or explain. He just wanted…he wanted to be in the same room with her. He wanted to listen to her talk. He wanted to bring her a cup of coffee and watch her take a sip as if it were the first coffee she’d drunk in years.
He wanted her as a friend again. He wanted her as a partner again--not Superman and Lois Lane, taking down crime moguls and fooling scientists--but Lane and Kent. He wanted…he wanted his dreams back. Dreams of a not-so-far-off day when she looked at him and saw something special in the ordinary man, something worth noticing. Dreams of dinners over candlelight and kisses by moonlight and secretive smiles by daylight. Dreams of a Secret shared because he wasn’t afraid anymore, or at least if he was, it was a fear dwarfed by his hope and his love and his belief that they’d come through it all right in the end.
Dreams that he could be enough. That she could love him. That Clark Kent could have it all, parents and world and home and job and Lois Lane…*and* Superman.
He wanted dreams, but all he had were vague, rootless hopes, a tiny shard left buried in him after the blade itself had been drawn out and thrown away, festering inside him and tainting whatever coherency he could manage to grab hold of.
And then the door closed--only, this time he didn’t mind because Lois was the one closing it and she was still here with him and so he didn’t feel closed in, didn’t feel locked up, just vaguely trapped--and he was alone with her, and she was turning back toward him, and when he gathered up enough courage to be able to meet her eyes, he found something astonishing.
It was *his* Lois. His friend and his partner, looking at him as if he were still Clark, as if he still could *be* Clark. It was the same expression in her eyes as he’d seen in Smallville, when the echoes of a gunshot were still ringing in his ears and water was dripping off him and bruises were forming on his skin, and she’d thrown herself into his arms and held him close to herself.
She was looking at him as if he weren’t a monster.
Against his better judgment, that hope inside him grew and swelled, a wound that would never heal, a throbbing scar laid over his heart.
“Clark,” she whispered, and then she threw herself forward exactly like an echo of her past self. Not a lion-tamer at all, was his vague thought as his arms dropped from in front of his chest and slipped--tentatively, hesitantly, *desperately*--around her slender, drooping form. Not a lion-tamer, but the lioness, fierce and wild and angry, succumbing to the pull of…of what? He didn’t know, wasn’t sure, the analogy slipping away from him as easily as Clark Kent had, and all he could do was hold onto her, cling to her as if she were the sole piece of reality left in a fading world.
Her voice was a comforting hum, as soft as sunbeams, as gentle as air cradling his body a thousand feet above the ground, as necessary for life as his parents and ordinary persona, so it took him a moment to claw through his urgent, almost panicked relief, and translate the hum vibrating across his collar bone and neck into individual words.
“I’m so sorry,” she was saying, over and over again, her arms locked around him so tightly he thought her strength could surely rival Superman’s. “I’m so sorry--I knew you wouldn’t want to be here, but Superman’s a target and we couldn’t hide that you were weak and the hospital doesn’t have any security, and…a-and you were bleeding and you wouldn’t wake up and I thought you--” The comforting thrum of her voice was chewed up and devoured by a sob. He *thought* it was a sob anyway, and her slender, fragile frame was shaking in his already-trembling arms--and the realization that she was as near to falling apart as he was made him want to sweep her up and fly her to safety and make a dozen cups of coffee for her.
But he couldn’t fly, and he wasn’t normal enough for coffee, so all he could do was hold her.
“You needed a doctor,” she began again. “STAR Labs helped equip you for Nightfall and I thought…I thought they might know enough now to help, and Dr. Klein said he would try, so here you are, but I didn’t want you to wake up alone--I wanted to be here, to explain everything so you wouldn’t have to wonder or be afraid, but we didn’t think you’d wake up so soon or even…maybe at all. You were so *still*, so *pale*, and you didn’t move at all, even when they brought the Kryptonite into the room.”
“Here?” he asked, just to make her stop. He didn’t like hearing her cry, didn’t like feeling the sobs rippling through her--hated, above all, hearing the real, sheer *terror* in her voice. “That’s why I’m here, in this room?” He drew back a bit, not wanting to let go of her but wanting--*needing*--to see her, to try to ease her suffering. But the sight of her, broken and desolate and so very confused--and all of it his fault--almost made him fall to his knees. It certainly compelled the truth from him.
“The door was locked,” he admitted, not able any longer to meet her intent gaze. “And the window…everything was white.” Which didn’t make sense, he knew it didn’t, but he didn’t want to finish. Bad enough she knew how much of a liar he was, knew how weak and inept he was, had already seen him broken and bloody--why did she have to see his childhood fears too?
But she was silent, her words locked away as she stared up at him, waiting. For him to tell the truth. To trust her. To prove that he wasn’t a liar by habit as well as by necessity.
“Dad was always afraid for me,” he said quietly, looking to the window over her head. “He warned me not to let people know what I could do or they’d dissect me like a frog.” He forced the semblance of a smile, but from Lois’s sharp inhalation, he didn’t think it had quite the effect he’d meant it to. “Stupid, I know, but--”
She shook her head, sharp and violent, and her hands tightened on his shoulders. They weren’t hugging anymore, not really, but she wasn’t letting her hands drop, wasn’t stepping away, and he couldn’t detect any signs of uneasiness at all concerning his proximity to her. So carefully, shyly, Clark let himself sustain his own touches, let his hands rest on her waist and his feet tilt him ever so slightly nearer her. An almost hug, hovering on the threshold of something more than it was.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. Not the words Clark wanted to hear. Lois saying she was sorry was like Lois speaking a different language, and right now he didn’t want new and unfamiliar--he wanted the ordinary, the normal, the comforting familiarity of *his* life. “I didn’t…I didn’t know that. It was the only room with security that had a window, but it…it locks from the outside.” She was silent, as if waiting for some response, but he had nothing to say and so she added, almost hastily, “I made them keep the Suit on, though, as much as possible. I thought if you woke up without it, you’d…you’d wonder what they knew. And I wasn’t sure if seeing Superman in a hospital gown would make you look too much like Clark.”
Stung, hurt, so very wounded--and he *hated* it, hated that instant reaction, because she was right, she was helping, she was protecting him, so why did it matter that she sounded so distant and lost, and yet how could it *not* matter when he’d stripped her of all her defenses and left her alone and abandoned?--Clark stepped away from her. Their touch was severed, cut as abruptly as if with a scalpel revealing all their differences. “Thank you,” he said, and finally, *finally*, he reclaimed his Superman voice, deep and confident and so utterly aloof. Enough to set up their boundaries again, to remind her of who he was now and who he wasn’t. Enough to reassure her, to remind her that he was well and she could go back to normal.
Because as reassuring as her voice was to him, she sounded so desperate, so scared, so *unsure* of herself, and he couldn’t stand that he’d been the one to bring her to her knees. Better for her to be mad at him again, for her to rant and shout and threaten him--for her to call him a monster--than to watch her shrink ever smaller and smaller, becoming *less*-Lois with every passing moment.
She watched him step away, her tears lending her face an opalescent sheen, as if she were a china doll, fragile and frozen and…and afraid.
And maybe it wasn’t him.
Maybe it was Luthor.
“You brought me here to be safe,” Clark said suddenly. “But Luthor…Henderson was there, I saw him. Luthor didn’t get away. He’s locked up…right? You’re safe?”
The wrong question. Of course it was. It had to be. Ever since the Daily Planet had been ripped away from him, he couldn’t seem to find the right words. Everything he said just made the damage worse--driving Lois away, confessing his love to her, threatening to use Superman’s powers against her, revealing his Secret, digging himself deeper when he tried to explain, and now…now he wasn’t sure what he’d said wrong, but Lois was looking at him as if he’d died right in front of her. As if she still loved him--like a brother, like a friend, like anything but a lover, a husband--and he’d been stabbed and there was nothing she could do, no doctor to bully into helping him, no article she could write, nothing but watch him bleed out.
She took a single step toward him, reached out a careful hand and touched his arm, and there was something so haunted in her eyes that he had to cross his arms again, had to try so very uselessly to ward away whatever she was going to tell him.
“Clark,” she said--and he felt limp and watery at the sound of his name, “Lex is…he jumped off the balcony.”
The words didn’t--*couldn’t*--penetrate for a long, arrested moment.
Jumped off the balcony? No, of course not, he couldn’t have. They’d been in the penthouse, countless floors up from the ground--Clark should know, he’d been in that coffin-like elevator far too long waiting for the floors to sludge past him--and Luthor was…well, he *was* an ordinary man. He couldn’t fly, so why on earth would he have jumped off the balcony? He’d been jealous of Superman, had thought the hero superseded his rightful place, but even Luthor wouldn’t have tried to fly on his own.
“I’m so sorry, Clark,” Lois whispered, and the dam inside of him broke.
Numbness consumed him--not an aura, not a globe, not anything but complete and utter deadness. Apathy, so much of it that he finally, unknown hours after dying on the floor of his apartment, felt himself to be a new person, empty and blank, untouched by who he’d been before.
He backed up, his arms falling limp and helpless to his sides. The wall thudded painfully into his spine, and so he slid down, knees pressed up against his chest, his bare feet flat against the floor, so icy cold it sent shivers wracking through his body.
“I didn’t mean for him to die,” he said dazedly, staring straight ahead, at white walls bleached paler by twilight. “You have to believe me, Lois, I didn’t mean to kill him.”
She knelt in front of him, stared at him evenly, her expression impassive and her dark eyes sparkling with emotion he didn’t dare look at too closely lest she call him something even worse than monster.
Murderer.
That was one word that didn’t need a capital letter to turn it frightful and nightmarish.
No wonder they’d locked him up.
“You didn’t kill him,” Lois said firmly. “Lex made his own decisions. He couldn’t bear to lose, so he went out his own way. That isn’t your fault.”
Clark shook his head and turned to stare at her dully. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “He was your fiancé and you…you shouldn’t have had to see that.”
Finally, anger sparked in her, a passing shadow of irritation flashing across her features. “He *wasn’t* my fiancé!”
“Right,” he said, nodding, because what use was there in denying reality or wishing for things to be different or trying to make her see things the way he did? “But you cared about him and now he’s gone, and I’m sorry.”
Lois paused, the anger gone as quickly as it had come. Finally, she swallowed and met his eyes. “I care about you more,” she whispered.
It was such a beautiful sentiment. Such a lovely dream.
Such an impossible lie.
He sank deeper into his numbness, reached back and drew it around himself until it cloaked him, as if now that his cape was shredded and stained, the apathy could work in its stead, could become as much a symbol to him--to the new Superman he was now, Superman without anything inside--as Superman’s old cape and look was to the world. If he didn’t care, if he didn’t let anything touch him, then he couldn’t be hurt. Couldn’t look at Lois and realize just how much he’d hurt her, how much he’d stolen from her, how much he’d let be taken from her--the Daily Planet, the truth, Clark Kent, Superman, Luthor, *everything* she cared about.
He’d taken it all one way or another, and of course she couldn’t care about him. Not anymore. He wasn’t a monster--facing Luthor had shown him that at least, shown him what true monsters looked like, the seething complex simplicity of cunning void underlying their pretenses--but he was still a liar, still an alien, still a living dead man.
When he said nothing, Lois gave a short, disappointed nod, her eyes veiled, and stood. “Do you need anything?” she asked, and he could no more read her now than he’d been able to sitting on the edge of a fountain and looking up at her. “Is there anything that will help you recover from the Kryptonite faster?”
Clark hesitated, then shuddered and pulled his legs in closer, wrapped his arms and the tatters of his cape around himself. Looked away because he wanted to remember Lois as she’d been before he destroyed her more thoroughly than Luthor ever could have. “I want to go home,” he uttered aloud.
He knew he couldn’t. The door was locked, the window too small, the world too big. He couldn’t leave--but he *wanted* to. He wanted to go back to that apartment that had been his, that contained all the things that made Clark real. He wanted to *be* real, even if only for one more night.
“I want to go home,” he said, but he didn’t have a home anymore.
Only…Lois didn’t seem to remember that.
“Okay,” she agreed. Easily. Simply. As if Clark weren’t dead and Superman weren’t locked away from the world that wasn’t his. As if his apartment had anything left for him past the bloodstain on his carpet and the file of now-unnecessary evidence to condemn Luthor.
Clark blinked up at her. “What?”
“Okay,” she said again. “You want to go home? You can go home.”
And she offered him her hand.
Suddenly, all he could see was the hand he’d held out for her to shake that first day, in Perry’s office, when she hadn’t even cast him a glance. And the day when she’d stormed past him and reached out her own hand to tap him on the chest, marking him out as her own, letting him know he’d been assigned to her with that one, seemingly unimportant touch. She’d reached out hundreds of times after that, holding onto him when Nightfall had stolen his memories and his past from him--but not his dreams or his hopes, not his desires or his feelings--letting him comfort her during the story they’d done on her father’s cyborgs, tucking her chilled fingers in the crook of his elbow when they walked together. A hundred days, a thousand moments, a lifetime compressed into eight months of friendship and partnership, of acceptance and understanding--because even when she hadn’t understood *him* at all, she’d always understood what he wanted to do as Superman, understood that Clark was someone she could trust.
All that time, all those months, she’d been there. Yanking on his tie, rubbing his shoulders, hugging him, ruffling a hand through his hair.
Stroking his blue-clad arm, kissing him before he flew into the vastness of space, looping her arms around his neck when he caught her or saved her or just wanted to hold her.
She’d been his. Not his to love, of course, because this still wasn’t a dream, wasn’t an idyllic fantasy that he could twist to suit his own desires…but she’d been his friend, his advocate, his own ideal to strive for.
And now? Now she wasn’t, not when she could only be a grieving friend for Clark and a casual acquaintance for Superman--but she held out her hand as if none of that mattered. As if for this one moment, this one night, they could both pretend together that things hadn’t irrevocably changed.
He didn’t care if it would hurt, later, if it would tear him to pieces to have this now and then lose it all over again. He didn’t *let* himself care. He just took her hand--unfurled himself, let his tattered and insufficient cape slip away, stood on cold, bare feet, and wrapped his fingers around hers. She didn’t let go either, not when he stopped to put on his boots, not when his entire body went rigid with tension as they waited for her knock to bring someone to open the door for them, not when they walked through endless corridors of white and silver. She just kept holding on, and Clark let her lead him blindly, not caring where she led him or where they ended up so long as she didn’t let go. He wanted this moment to last, wanted to savor these last few moments of being the strange alien-human hybrid that Superman was with Clark Kent beating inside his heart, and so he stayed silent lest any stray noise shatter the illusion, stayed passive lest any sudden movement jar him from this dream, stayed numb lest he be turned to heavy, unresponsive lead beneath the burden settling ever deeper on his shoulders.
Lois didn’t let go even when they passed Dr. Klein, stammering and bobbing in his haste to catch up with them. Clark saw the scientist coming and regretfully, but resignedly because he had known this couldn’t last, opened his hand to let her touch fade away. But Lois didn’t let go, only stepped slightly in front of Superman and let her hand dangle behind her, tangled up in the torn remnants of his cape--armor once more, hiding that which mattered most. Gratitude, like the warm homespun quilt on Clark’s bed, settled across him, momentarily displacing that cloak of apathy.
“I just want you to know that I’m sorry, Superman,” Dr. Klein said, sincerity transforming him from the bumbling approximation of a threat to a man who’d saved Clark’s life, from the specter of his childhood nightmares to a living, breathing doctor who’d done more than anyone could have expected of him.
“Thank you,” Superman said, surprised by his own sincerity.
Klein smiled faintly, as if he knew how much that statement cost Clark, but he reached out and offered him a small, gray box. “Here, it’s all the Kryptonite we could find, but don’t worry--it’s in a lead box. I just wanted you to have it so that you didn’t have to be afraid of where it was or who had it. And I’ll make sure no one’s watching when you leave. The cameras are already off.”
Superman was turned mute. He was the one named a hero, the one who had articles written on him and cameras turned in his direction every time he made an appearance, the one made into a symbol of hope for the world--but he didn’t know why. Didn’t know why one brightly attired man with more-than-average strength was considered the hero when there were men like Dr. Klein, and Perry and Jimmy and Henderson and Jack, women like Lois and his mom. They called him hero, but Superman looked at the human in front of him and wished he could name his own heroes.
All he had to give in exchange were words--for now at least, until later, when the news of this day’s events hit the streets, and then maybe the Superman Foundation could do something to show his appreciation and gratitude, his *respect*, for the man in front of him.
“Thank you,” he said again. It wasn’t nearly enough, but Klein straightened as if it was, and he smiled at Superman, almost shyly, and then he turned and headed back into the depths of STAR Labs, a place that didn’t seem nearly as terrifying now as it had mere moments ago.
Clark turned back and was surprised to catch an almost wistful smile playing along the edges of Lois’s mouth, her eyes fixed on him. It was unnerving, to see her so soft and worn down but smiling at him.
“What?” he asked, warily.
The smile disappeared as if it had never been, and all that was left was a bleak sort of sadness. “Nothing,” she muttered.
Then she tugged on his hand and led him outside.
***
