in the last part...

~~~~

“I’m your mother. And its your wedding. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. That’s all you need to know. As long as you’re happy. Don’t worry about them. You have me, and all your friends. Am I going to meet them? The infamous Perry White, Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent that I am always hearing so—“

Lois didn’t answer. She stepped back up onto the platform and looked into the mirror. Her mother got the hint. They weren’t coming either.

***************
***************

Blackness. Everywhere. Clark could no longer even open his eyes. It was due to sheer will and faith, he believed, that he wasn’t dead yet. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t really think… he just… existed…barely…

***************
***************

~~~~~~

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME
PART 4


“Well, honey, you look ready to go,” Lois’s mother said supportively, the wedding book in her lap, opened.

“Did you find a name combination that sounded good to you?” Lois asked, skeptically, knowing the names really didn’t sound pleasing to the ear.

“I guess I’d have to hear you say them,” she responded.

Lois looked at herself in the mirror and imagined she was about to introduce herself to someone. “Nice to meet you,” she thought. “I’m…”

Out loud she continued on her train of thought “Mrs. Lex Luthor…Lois Luthor…”

She shook her head and started to cry a little.

***kissing in the honeymoon suite….***

“Lois Lane Luthor…”

***watching movies together at his place, so relaxed, laughing…***

“Lois Luthor Lane…” she said, really starting to cry now.

***”I have been in love with you for a long time”…***

…his eyes…

…his sweatshirt…

…his little actions, that showed he cared…

…his hugs…

…his friendship…

…his love, that he kept so hidden and protected for so long, like it was precious…a treasure…

“Lois Lane… Kent,” Lois said and then nearly fell over when she realized she’d said it out loud. She started crying uncontrollably. “Lois Lane Kent” she repeated, knowing it sounded so much better, so much more how her name should sound, if she even wanted to change it. She knew that Clark was traditional but wouldn’t expect her to change her name if she didn’t want to or it didn’t feel right to her.

Clark…

Her mother was at her side now, knowing now the reason for the intensity of Lois’s emotions. She was having an internal war with herself, clearly.

“Mom, what am I gonna do?” Lois cried in a barely understandable tear-dripped voice.

“You do what your heart tells you,” her mother said, all of a sudden coming through with flying colors as the mother she never was in Lois’s childhood.

“It’s too late,” Lois cried out.

“No it’s not,” she simply said. Because it wasn’t…

She just had to tell Lex that she didn’t want to marry him. That she had a change of heart. She knew she owed him more than standing him up at the altar. She had to tell him. Face to face.

And then find Clark and come clean about everything. About the secrets she had been locking away. Both secrets.

She quickly wiped her eyes and ran off the platform, wanting to find Lex immediately to tell him about her feelings. She had no sooner taken one step when she stopped in her tracks… music. The organs… the ceremony was starting!

In complete fear, she ran toward the music, which sounded anything but beautiful and pleasing to her at this moment. She ran through the long corridors of his massive home, everything flying by in a whiz. In the midst of concentrating on the importance of what lay ahead, she couldn’t help but think, “I can’t believe he just started without seeing if I was even ready, I mean I AM the bride!”

She realized she had to exit his building to enter the church… he had had the room she was getting ready in wired, so she could hear the ceremony start. Once outside, she was holding her dress up, running toward the church entrance, not caring about the looks she was getting from passersby.

The doors. She was in front of the closed doors now. A doorman… or wedding usher… she didn’t know or care, nodded when he saw her rushing, thinking obviously she was rushing toward her wedding, not away from it, opened the doors, revealing her to the entire church before she could protest. She stood frozen, seeing all the heads turn expectantly in her direction. She just stood there. She could see Lex smiling at her form—a vision in white. She looked at all the guests who’d attended… she didn’t recognize anyone. She realized she was gaping, and quickly shut her mouth and headed down the aisle toward Lex to tell him of her changed plans. She walked faster than the pace of the music, but Lex didn’t seem to mind that she seemed to want to just speed the procession up and be married already.

“The archbishop?” she asked incredulously, once she snapped out of her reveries and thoughts enough to recognize her surroundings. She heard Lex mutter an apology that he couldn’t deliver the pope. Suddenly, she felt very guilty that he had gone to such trouble to make her wedding day perfect when she was about to end it. Clark didn’t go through any trouble to secure as much for her, she mused, her instincts to be angry at him returning. He didn’t even show up! Lex obviously loved her. And he hadn’t betrayed her or hurt her…

Before she knew it, the procession was at the vital moment. The “I do’s.” Lois panicked. It wasn’t supposed to go this far. She was supposed to tell Lex about her change of heart. Her change of plans…

“I do,” she heard him say happily and confidently. She couldn’t hear what the archbishop said after Lex’s “I do”; as all she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat reverberating in her ears. Then it hit her…

It was her turn.

It hit her with a force so strong it nearly knocked her over. She opened her mouth to say something… should she apologize to the archbishop, she wondered? But all apologies and uttered excuses were lost on her lips. She could barely see anything in front of her. Just… Clark. Dancing with him, hugging him, kissing him. Clark…

“I can’t,” she said, devastated that it had taken her all the way down the aisle to realize what a massive mistake she had been making all this time. All the way to the “I do’s”! Realization that she loved Clark, and had loved him since the beginning, was making her dizzy. She needed to see him, to hold him, to say how sorry she was, and to just tell him she loved him for everything he is. Everything she had always known he was, even when she didn’t know everything about him.

She couldn’t look at Lex. She didn’t want to see what this was doing to him. She turned, preparing to take the trip back up the aisle and out to freedom, to tell Clark what she had waited too long already to say. Before she had even stepped off the altar, the doors to the church swung open.

Perry…

Jimmy…

Henderson…

Lois furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. Then she was overcome with joy that her friends had shown up on her big day. “Lex, they came!” she smiled, giving him a quick kiss on the lips. He didn’t seem to be returning her joy that they were there for her—

“Stop this wedding! Lois, you can’t marry this man!” Perry’s voice boomed.

“What is there an echo in here, I just said that!” Lois said, elated now. They were here. They were all here… except…

“We have all the evidence against you we need,” Henderson said to Lex.

“Evidence? Evidence for what!?” she demanded.

She was confused now. They were here… for her, right?… but accusing Lex of “arson and other heinous crimes too numerous to mention” as Henderson had put it. In the blink of an eye, Lex was yelling at Henderson, saying he would have his head for this. That it was all a lie. Surely it WAS, she convinced herself. Her head was spinning. Everything had happened so fast. Too many emotions at once to deal with. The next thing she knew Lex was running with half of the Metropolis police squad, led by Henderson, trailing him. She stood there in shock, afraid to move for fear that she would fall over. She looked around, feeling very alone, wondering where Clark was. Surely he would want to be in on the big bust.

“Oh, honey,” her mother said. She looked at her mother through tearful eyes.

“What, isn’t this the way every girl dreams her wedding is going to be?” Lois joked, trying to keep her emotions in check.

She turned, preparing to leave the church with her mother and friends, when a loud noise stopped all movement and noise in the church. A gunshot…

Lois swallowed her fear and ran toward the origin of the noise, with Perry and Jimmy hot on her heels.

A gunshot….

She could hear commotion… voices… she followed the noises down… down… down… to the wine cellar. She stopped at the top of the stairs. She could see cops swarming around an area. Henderson looked up and saw her.

“Lois, get out of here,” he ordered.

She walked down the stairs, not ready to start listening to Henderson now; she had never heeded his warnings before. When she got closer, Henderson stepped between her and the area the cops were covering. She could see the green…

“I had to shoot him, Lois. He was… he had an axe and was about to…” he stepped aside and allowed Lois to see, not wanting to explain the rest, obviously.

She moved closer to the green glow… her mouth dropped open, seeing Lex drenched in blood, having been shot in the back somewhere. Cops were administering his wounds, prepping him for an ambulance. She saw an axe by his side. There were a dozen cops blocking the left side of the cage and she couldn’t see what secret lay hidden over there. She started to move her head, trying to see between people. She could only see glimpses.

Red…

Blue…

Instinctively, she got a feeling in the pit of her stomach and suddenly, she was shoving the men out of the way, demanding to get through. She felt like she was moving in slow motion, like there were hundred-pound weights around her ankles. She was pushing through the men, the scene awaiting her slowly revealing itself to her on the way. Red boots… blue tights… red cape… black hair… and then there was no one in her way and she saw. She nearly fainted on the spot at the vision that greeted her. Her mouth fell open and she just stared, unable to react…

Superman… Clark… on the floor, not moving. Unconscious… or….

“No,” she breathed. Her stomach muscles tensed and she suddenly found it impossible to breathe. She wanted to scream, to curse, to cry, but all sounds died in her throat; all senses numbed. Her eyes were not believing what she was seeing. He was lying on his stomach, his right leg bent out to the side. His face was turned toward her, his cheek flat against the concrete. His hand rested next to his face, also flat against the cold floor. He looked like he was sleeping, his cape covering him like a blanket… except he was so still. Too still…

She could see a cop crouched beside him, clearly searching for signs of life. “He’s not breathing and I can’t make out a pulse,” the man said. She fell to her knees, looking at him closer, to prove that this was actually happening, and not some terrible nightmare.

This could not be happening! Her mind screamed “no!” and her heart screamed louder. The internal turmoil and unbearable noise from within was making it hard to hear. She could vaguely hear the man crouched down beside her saying he didn’t know what to do, because he wasn’t human, and worked differently than people.

“I think he’s dead… but he’s Superman,” he was saying, confused. The man had his hands on Clark’s shoulders and was shaking him, repeating “Superman,” over and over to get a response of some sort. Only none came. He just lay there. Lifeless.

“No,” Lois said, finding her voice. She would not even contemplate that fate. “No, he’s not dead… he can’t be. Wake up,” she cried, looking down at him. She put a hand on his upturned cheek, bending over his unmoving form. “Please… wake up… don’t leave me,” she whispered into his ear, crying quietly.

She put her ear down to his mouth, but couldn’t hear anything. He wasn’t breathing. At all. Tears were streaming down her cheeks now, dripping onto his neck. The man next to her had, with much effort, turned him over, so he lay on his back now. Lois lifted his head onto her lap and looked around, trying to make sense of the madness, while stroking his hair—her way of letting him know it would be okay… he would be okay. Her way of letting herself know that.

The green bars… Smallville… Trask… it was starting to make sense. She didn’t have time to acknowledge that Kryptonite really did exist; she just knew it did. “We have to get him out of here!” she yelled, with more force than she knew she had. The room quieted and all eyes fell on her… the woman in the wedding dress on the floor of a dungeon, holding the Man of Steel in her arms. “Now!”

She could see Lex moving, and knew he would live. Paramedics had arrived at some point, she wasn’t quite sure when, and they were about to take Lex.

“No! Lex will live! Superman needs you! We need to get him out of here, now!” she cried, hysterically.

The paramedics walked nervously over to the fallen superhero. It was obvious they didn’t know what to do with him, but the intensity of Lois’s emotions told them to obey her. Two men reached down to pick him up, but couldn’t. He was too heavy. Lois watched wide-eyed, as his lifeless body lay limp in their arms, as they tried to maneuver him onto the stretcher. While one of the paramedics was getting the stretcher lowered, another man held Clark up, his own arms linked under Clark’s. Clark’s head lay limply to one side.

“Frank, Greg, get over here, we’re gonna need your help getting him up!” one guy yelled.

Lois couldn’t take her eyes off Clark’s face. It was expressionless and pale. He looked so peaceful and still. She just wanted to see his eyes open, see those warm, brown, beautiful eyes she had so often seen looking at her, holding all the love in the world in their depths. A love she had ignored and taken for granted, and only just learned that she returned in full.

“Hurry up!” she yelled, practically bawling now. She couldn’t stand looking at him, seeing that he wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing … wasn’t alive… he needed to get out of this… out of his cage. Away from the poisonous rock that really did exist.

*************
*************

He was surrounded by light…white light. Everywhere. It was blinding him. He couldn’t see anything. But he could hear… it sounded like Lois’s voice pleading with him not to leave.

“I’m not going anywhere, Lois, it’s okay,” he said, but he couldn’t see her. He was saying it into empty space, turning and turning, not seeing her. How he just wanted to see her…

But all he could see was the bright white…

*************
*************

Lois sat in the front of the ambulance in shock. She could not believe this was happening, that she was sleeping peacefully last night while he was … dying. The word hung in the air like a whisper and a curse.

Dying! He was dead, as far as anyone was concerned. He had been encaged by the only thing that could hurt him… and it had killed him. A tear rolled down her cheek as she tried to shut out images of what he must have gone through. She wondered how long he’d been in there. In a cage… like an animal. Now she was sobbing more audibly. The ambulance driver just drove silently, not looking at her, probably not sure of what was happening.

Strewn in with her thoughts of what pain he must have suffered were images that she couldn’t erase, of him lying there so still, and then being hoisted onto the stretcher, a limp arm falling over the side. She wanted to forget these things, but they were imprinting themselves in her mind. The worst image of all… one confused paramedic, who didn’t seem to understand that Lois Lane did not accept that Superman was dead, pulled a sheet over his face.

***”No! What are you doing!?” she screamed, pulling the sheet down, looking at his beautiful face again. “He’s not dead… he’s not dead,” she repeated, staring at his face.***

Getting a ride in the ambulance had been another obstacle. She was adamant about not leaving him alone in their care.

***”Miss, it’s family only in the ambulance,” the paramedic had said.

“You know as well as I do that Superman doesn’t have family. He is the only one from his planet here. He only has friends! So his friends ARE his family! This is SUPERMAN we are talking about. I’m going with him,” she stated.

That shut the man up… no one wanted to argue with the crazy lady in the wedding dress.***

The ten-minute ambulance ride seemed to take forever. Lois just stared out the window, lost in her thoughts for most of the ride. She wanted to ride in the back, but the paramedics said they needed to do a thorough checkup on him, to look for any signs that he might still be alive, and work on a plan of action to save him if he could be saved. Perry and Jimmy had pushed aside their own fear over what had been revealed in the wine cellar to provide support for Lois, who was clearly devastated. They said they would meet her at the hospital when she got into the ambulance.

Now, in the ambulance, she stared almost catatonically out the window. Her heart clenched as memories danced in her head of their many times together. She smiled sadly as she remembered his excitement when he first joined the Planet team. Things started making sense about him now… he let everyone walk all over him, her especially, and did whatever anyone asked, and with all the excitement of a boy scout. She thought he was just new and didn’t know any better, but really, he was excited to just be treated normal. To fit in. She started seeing the year through his eyes; struggling to fit in, save the world and lead a normal life. Job, friends, girlfriend… She frowned at that last thought. His unassuming ways had broken through her barriers, her rules… and he became the person she was closest to. Needed. Wanted. And now she knew that he was in love with her all that time. Knowing how she felt about Superman, he settled for just being her friend, where anyone else would have pushed the issue, asking her out relentlessly. But that was not how he worked. She was always aware of the light of hope in his eyes, but she had never really known what it was he was hoping for. Sure, deep down, she was aware, but that awareness frightened her and she told her self, most convincingly, that he was just a very naïve person probably hoping for peace, love and happiness in this crazy world. And he never let on his real hope. But it was there. In his eyes. He was hoping that someday she would feel the way about him that he felt about her. While he waited patiently, quietly hoping, he was content with her friendship, knowing it was all she wanted and what she needed, and locked his own secret desires away. And when time was seemingly running out and he had to tell her how he felt, he put his heart on the line. He was the strongest man in the world, yet he was, in that moment of truth, more vulnerable than any human she had ever met. She could see that in him that day… that vulnerability. She shuddered, wondering what was wrong with her that she turned down and broke the heart of the most quietly gentle and strongest person she had ever known. She had turned down Clark Kent, who she now knew she couldn’t go on without.

“He has to survive,” she thought to herself, just as the ambulance came to a stop. They were there. They were at the hospital. The vehicle was no sooner in a fully stopped position than Lois was on the outside of it, running to the back as the doors opened. She watched as the paramedics took the stretcher out of the ambulance and placed it on the ground. His suit was cut down the front, through the center of the ‘S’ revealing his bare chest now. Lois stared at his defined chest—Clark’s chest, which she’d had the privilege of seeing once or twice, and was admittedly extremely attracted by.

“I still can’t believe he has a human chest,” a paramedic was saying, unaware that Lois was there. “I mean, without that suit, he looks like a human being,” he said to his coworker.

“Do you think you could concentrate a little less on his chest and more on saving him?” a frustrated Lois asked.

“Miss, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think there’s a life to save here… I think he’s dead,” he said, shrugging, as if it were of no consequence whether he lived or died. But it was of consequence to Lois Lane.

“You take him into a hospital room and put him on a bed. There’s a way to save him, I know there is; I just need time to figure out how.”

The men didn’t move, but just looked at one another questioningly, as a police car pulled up, putting a short siren sound on upon arrival. Henderson jumped out and ran over to where Lois stood, staring down at Clark. He stopped, looking down at Clark on the stretcher. “Any sign of life?” he asked, more to Lois than the paramedics.

In lieu of an answer, Lois just met his gaze, looking despondent. Henderson understood and just nodded.

“Look. Henderson, he doesn’t work like normal people. And we owe it to him to see if he is alive. He’s done so much for—“

“Lois, you don’t have to sell me on Superman. I know what he’s done. In case you don’t remember, I work at the place where all the criminals he catches go. But look at him,” he said, looking down at Clark, who lay, chest exposed, head lulled to the side on a pillow… not moving or breathing still. Face wax-pale. At his command, Lois looked at the image that had been choking her for almost twenty minutes now. “He’s dead.”

“He is not dead!” Lois said, lifting her gaze hesitantly back up, to meet Henderson’s eyes with her own determined ones. “Henderson, that cage he was in was made of poison… poison for him. It did this to him,” she started, stealing a quick look at Clark once more. She looked back up. “But he’s away from it now, and maybe there’s a way to bring him back. I just need a little time. I know where I can find out about him and what might help him. I know where I can find the information, but you HAVE to give me time,” she said, adamantly. Henderson was about to open his mouth to talk, but she held up a hand and continued. “You have to. I’m not asking for a long time, but I just need to make sure that when I’m gone nothing happens to him. You said yourself, he’s not human. So he appears to be… dead,” she spit out, the last word barely audible, “but maybe being away from the poison for a long time will bring him back. Don’t we owe it to him to at least try. To watch him and see if maybe something changes? And I will find out what I can—“

Henderson held a hand up at her now, sighing. “What do you want me to do?”

She smiled, despite the situation. “Get him into a room, into a bed. Don’t tell anyone he’s in there. There are a lot of criminals in hospitals, you know that. Tell everyone who has come into contact with him, cops included, that his condition, and the fact that anything is wrong with him is completely confidential. Stay with him. Or keep someone outside his door. Or both! Make sure he’s hooked up to a heart monitor, so we can see if… I mean, when… there’s a beat. Just don’t let anything happen to him. You have to make sure of that.”

“Lois, if after a few hours it still looks like he’s dead, we have to close the case on this. You know that,” he said, clearly shaken by the day’s events as well.

“Henderson, you know how many lives he’s saved, without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation! How many times has he just flown in and saved us all? Saved the world, even. Don’t we owe it to him now to just try—TRY—to save his life with everything that WE have?” Lois asked, tears falling unchecked down her cheeks.

“I agree with you. I’m just telling you that you can’t take too much time.”

“Fine,” she said.

Henderson requested to the paramedics that they step aside with him for a moment to talk to him and another cop about the situation.

Lois looked around and realized that no one was within earshot of her and Clark at the moment. She bent down over the stretcher and looked at his face, just willing his eyes to open, his lips to curl into one of those welcoming grins. But that didn’t happen. He just lay there. Motionless. Completely expressionless. “Clark,” she whispered, her voice quivering saying his name. It reminded her of just who lay in the stretcher in front of her. Her best friend and partner, Clark Kent. It was him who was lying there… dead. “I am making a promise to you here and now to save you. I know I’m a little late, and I am so sorry. But I am not too late. I can’t be. I can’t live with myself if I am. You’ve saved me more times than I can count and now you need me. I want you to know that everything will be okay. We will get our chance. Just hold onto the good memories and draw your strength from the hope and faith that things will be like that again… we’ll work together again and have a million more good times. Only it will be better because I… I love you too. That day in the park… I didn’t know it then, but I have always felt that way about you too. And I can’t lose you now. I won’t. We have so much to talk about… so much to do… I still need to babble to you the millions of thoughts I now have knowing what I now know and give you an earful. I need to yell and ask ‘why!’… and then hug you and kiss you and tell you that you don’t need to explain. Tell you I love you for everything you are and everything you make me. Just please… please come back to me. I can’t do this without you,” she finished, noticing Henderson walking back her way.

“Okay, Lois,” he said as he approached.

She straightened up and wiped a tear away harshly.

“I want you back at the hospital in two hours with something that will prove he can be saved, or he is being officially declared dead. One of the cops that is still over at Luthor’s just called in saying that he found two things. The rock that caused it, ah, the poisonous rock, that is,” he corrected. “It’s being put in a safe to be sent to S.T.A.R. labs and stored there for now—until Superman himself, if he does live, says what he wants done with it.”

Just hearing Henderson talk about the possibility of Clark surviving made Lois smile. He seemed to notice the effect and smiled back, as if that was his intent—to sound like he had hope too, which might give her more ammunition in the next two, vital hours. “What was the second thing they found?” Lois asked in reporter-mode.

“A camera. Apparently the sick bastard didn’t just stop at killing Superman, but he wanted to relive the experience over and over again. Looks like he won’t get that chance,” he said, as Lois went deathly pale upon hearing that the tragedy was on tape. “So…” he continued, “I’m going to sit with Superman in a hospital room, make sure nothing happens to him, well nothing more anyway, and view the tape. I want to see if I can determine how long he’s been in THIS state, and if it’s been too long, then we may have no choice except to declare him dead. Even though he doesn’t work like humans do,” he added, almost reading Lois’s next argument.

“Fine. I’ll be back in two hours. You’ll keep your word and stay with him?”

“They’re putting a VCR in the room now that he’ll be in, and I’ll be in there for the next two hours, watching.”

Lois didn’t have time to even think of how horrible Lex was, that he had not only tortured Clark, but taped the whole thing; she didn’t have time to think of what horrible visions existed on that tape… she didn’t have time.

She started to walk away when she heard Henderson call her name again. She turned quickly to face him, her serious expression revealing the depths of her emotions and the determination within her for the mission that lie ahead.

“Luthor’s being taken to a different hospital,” he finally said.

The mention of Lex’s name made Lois’s blood run cold, until she realized what Henderson was saying. He was protecting Superman… Clark. Protecting him from Lex, realizing that in the same hospital, he would most certainly make sure that Clark had no chance of survival, if he could. Lois smiled a small, appreciative smile at Henderson, and turned to get into Perry’s car, which had just pulled up and would take her to her car, which would then take her to Clark’s apartment where she hoped her answers were.