This is the first time I'm posting fic on this board, so please be gentle
Thanks are in order for Spyke, trusted beta reader and muse. Whatever would I do without you?
JM
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Not Unloved
by Jude Mustard
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"You'll die in two days, a soul-less, paper-thin copy, unloved in life, unmourned in death, and forgotten faster than you ever lived." - Lex Luthor to Lois' clone, in "Seconds".
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Clark washed up in the kitchenette of Lois' apartment. He'd gone over to her place to cook dinner for the both of them, in an attempt to find normality again after the events of the past several weeks. Their marriage broken up by Lex Luthor, himself married to a clone of Lois, Lois first thinking she was the protagonist of her own novel, then forgetting who she was at all... It read like the script of a bad daytime soap opera.
If things had gone the way there were supposed to, the two of them would have been married by now, on their honeymoon in Hawaii. But he had learned, in the past few weeks, to be thankful for the things that he did have. He had come so close to losing the people who meant the most to him to a man who hated him so much that he had come back from the dead to haunt him.
He shook his head. At least, finally, things were back to normal. Well, as normal as was possible of the two of them, he supposed. He and Lois would have to pick up where they'd left off and start over. Clark hoped that their actual wedding would go better than their last one had. He had half a mind to elope, to collect his fiancée from the living room and go down to City Hall right now, before anything else could go wrong.
He could hear her, in the living room, sitting on her uncomfortable couch and working her way through the pile of mail that had accumulated for her during the time that she'd been away and ill. He'd taken the liberty of spending a few seconds sorting it into chronological order for her. She was going through the letters and bills in that order, and the sounds of her ripping envelopes, crushing some papers that were junk mail and putting others away to read later made their way to his ears, along with the sotto voce muttering that accompanied the discovery of yet another piece of useless junk mail, or a bill that was overdue for payment.
"Late fees? *Late fees!?* What do they think, that I was off in the Bahamas, kicking up my heels or something? Late fees! Just wait till I write some scathing letters to these people. To their bosses. They don't know just how *scathing* scathing can be."
Clark smiled to himself. Mad Dog Lane was back, in full force. He tuned up his superhearing a notch...
...And was promptly deafened by the strangled shriek that issued from the living room.
It took Clark less than a second to spin into his Superman suit and go to the living room, and then he was standing in front of her, ready to defend her against perils unknown and unseen. He paused. Unseen was right. He didn't see any peril.
"Lois? What happened?"
Lois looked up at him from the couch. "Clark, are you all right? Why are you... Superman?"
"From the way you screamed, I thought you were being attacked."
"Ha! Attacked. No, it's worse." She waved a piece of paper in his face.
"What's that?"
"My credit card bill, apparently."
"What's wrong? Is it trying to kill you?"
"Clark! The credit card company's really gone and screwed up big time. Look at this thing! It's six pages long! I didn't buy all this stuff. They've like, gone and combined about ten other people's bills and sent it to me!" She shook the offending pages menacingly and threw them on the coffee table. "I think I have an idea for my comeback article."
Clark sighed in relief and came forward, changing back into his t-shirt and jeans as he did so. He picked up the bill and scanned it. "Don't worry, honey, they didn't make any mistake. They probably just haven't updated their records," he said as he sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. "I already returned all this stuff."
"You... what!?" she twisted around to stare at him, horrified. "You returned it? You mean you bought all these things?" She paused, her expression suddenly growing sober. "Or no, wait," she said softly. "I must have bought them. I just don't remember it. What's happened to me? Clark! I'm really sicker than I thought, aren't I? Oh my God! I'm losing my mind! I--"
"No, no! Lois, it's not like that. You're definitely not losing your mind--"
"But I am, obviously, if I went on some crazy shopping spree and don't even remember it--"
She was in full-tilt babble mode and there was only one way he knew to stop her. He turned her face towards him and silenced her very effectively with a kiss.
"Lois, would you listen to me for a second?" he said when their lips parted. "You didn't buy any of those things. She did. Your... your clone."
Lois took slightly longer than he did to catch her breath. "My clone?"
"Yeah."
"Oh my God. She went on a shopping spree with my credit card? That-that *thing* that you married?"
"Don't call her that! She was as much a person as you or I. At least give her that respect."
"She was the reason why Lex was able to mess up our wedding, as I recall! What makes her a good guy all of a sudden?"
Clark got up from the couch and took a step forward. He stood with his back to her, his arms folded, and was silent.
"Clark?" Lois's tone softened.
Clark sighed. "I'm sorry. I know she was brought into existence for the purpose of separating us, Lois," he said as he turned back to face her. "But she wasn't all bad. She gave her life to save us, in the end."
"You know, there're still a few gaps in my memory about that time," Lois said.
Clark sighed again, a long and shuddering release of breath. "God, I'm sorry, Lois," he said again, "I didn't mean to rub that in."
"No, no, it's okay," she said, standing up and coming forward to take his hands in her own. "That's not how I meant it. There's a lot I don't know about her, Clark, and what I do remember is a bit fuzzy. But I can see that she meant something to you. What I mean is... could you... would you fill me in? Tell me about her?"
"Are you sure?" he whispered, lifting his eyes to look into hers.
"Yes," she said, lacing her fingers through his and pulling him back towards the couch. They sat together, side by side, and she rested her head on his shoulder as he put his arm around her.
"I had no clue, at first, that she wasn't you. She was doing such a good job of acting like you, at the wedding, and the reception. And then, at night, she came to bed... God, I'm such an idiot! I never even suspected."
Lois squeezed his hand reassuringly. She turned up towards him, tears shining in her eyes. "It's okay, Clark. You had no way of knowing. You said yourself she was doing a really good job of being me."
"If she hadn't pretended to be too tired and gone to sleep, I would have made a terrible mistake."
"You what?" she stared at him, her eyes wide now. "You mean... you didn't--Oh, Clark! I thought you had already made that mistake!"
"What? No! No, I didn't make that mistake." He looked down, not wanting to meet her gaze. "I can't take any credit for it, though."
"You know, I remember waking up, after the church, in Lex's hideout. He had me tied up. I was scared, and angry, but I knew you'd find me and rescue me. That gave me the strength to face up to him, until..." she paused. "Until I saw her."
He looked up at her, and waited for her to continue.
"When I saw her," Lois said, her eyes growing distant, "everything just came crashing down. I knew that as long as she was with you, as long as she had you fooled, you wouldn't come looking for me, and when I realized that, I just... I just kind of collapsed inside. I hated her, because I thought that she'd stolen... I mean, it was your first time, and we were going to make it so special, and the thought that you had--that she had... I hated her, so much, in that moment. I'm sorry, Clark. I didn't know."
He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, her face against his chest. "It must have been so difficult for you," he said, tears in his eyes again. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that."
"And you? What you must have gone through, living with this woman who looked like me but wasn't... It can't have been easy for you, either."
"When I first discovered that she wasn't you, I hated her, too." He shifted uncomfortably. "I got so angry, I wasn't myself. I even got a bit violent."
"You? Violent?"
Clark hung his head. "Once I figured it out, I realized she had to know where you were. I tried to frighten her into telling me, shaking her and shouting at her... I almost hurt her. Not quite your shining superhero, huh?"
Lois caressed his cheek, and tilted his chin up so that he would have to look her. "What matters, Clark, is that you didn't hurt her, in the end. You couldn't have."
"I wanted to, for a while, when she got it into her head to go after you and kill you."
"Yeah, that's a bit of a sore point with me, too." She smiled. "But she didn't. You said she saved our lives, eventually."
Clark returned her smile with a sad one of his own. "She was just a little kid, you know. Just a few days old. She had the worst teachers you could imagine: Lex Luthor, Dr Mamba... but somehow she managed to find enough integrity within herself to do the right things. That first night, with me, and then that day, at the end... Do you remember what happened?"
She shook her head. "That day is the fuzziest part of my memory."
"Well, Lex came to my house, and threatened me and my parents. He used some new weapon on me, which actually knocked me out for a while. He took my mom, and I was too weak to go after him. She followed him for me, and helped me to find you. I had some of my strength back by then, and I told her to go home, that I'd take it from there... but she stayed, and helped find my mom... and then, right at the end, she ran in to stop Lex from shooting me with that weapon, and got in the line of fire herself."
"Clark... you said Lex shot you with that weapon? At your house? He knew that you were Superman?"
"Yes," he said. "She told him."
"She told him?!"
"I really don't blame her for it," he said, taking her hands and rubbing them soothingly. "Lex manipulated her into it. She told my mom, later, what'd happened. He'd told her that she was a low-grade clone, with a short lifespan. That she had only a few days to live... I don't know if that was even true, but she believed him. He led her to think that he could help her to live longer, in exchange for the information that she had..."
"Oh, no... the poor thing!"
"So she told him that I was Superman, and then he turned around and thanked her, and told her that there was nothing that could be done about her lifespan, that she was going to die in two days anyway."
He freed his hands from her grasp and clenched them so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I never liked Luthor, from the day I met him. But I never hated him more than I did in that instant. I would have killed him!" Clark paused. "I'm sorry if I seem more upset at what he did to her than at what he did to you..."
Lois shook her head, understanding, reassuring. "Go on," she said, putting her hands over his, rubbing them gently until some of the tension was gone.
"When he went after you, at least, somewhere in his sick, deluded mind, he thought that he loved you. He thought that he had something to gain. But when he told her what he did, he had nothing to gain from that. Nothing but the satisfaction of seeing her suffer. What he did that day proved that he was rotten to the core. He's not even human! I was so furious that I was afraid of what I might do, if I found him."
"You're right about one thing, Clark. Lex ceased to be a human being a long time ago. To torment that poor child like that..."
"She just wanted to fit in, make a place for herself in a hostile world where everyone thought she was a freak. I know what that's like."
Lois leaned back so that she could look at him, searching his face with a question in her eyes. "You identified with her, didn't you? It was easy for you to care about her, because you had something in common."
Clark nodded, grateful for her understanding and acceptance. "You know, she said that she loved me. She asked me if I loved her, and when I said that I didn't, she looked so disappointed.... But I think I did care for her, in a way. As if she were... the little sister I never had."
"I'm sorry, Clark. I wish I could have known her. She must have really been something special," Lois said.
Clark looked down at their intertwined hands, and stroked his thumb over her knuckles. "I was just thinking that nobody knows if it was even true, what Lex told her. For all I know, he could just have been taunting her for the sake of being cruel. But we'll never know. I think that's what drove her to do it, to sacrifice herself. She was so sorry for what she'd done, and she thought she had no time to make up for it."
"She probably thought that if she was going to die anyway, she might as well make it count."
"She did. All she wanted was approval.... To be loved. To make a difference. Her last words to me before she died were to ask me if she'd done a good thing."
"She did."
"Yes.... She did." He stared past her at nothing in particular.
"Clark, I was thinking. Did she have a name? Other than mine, I mean."
"No. That was one of the things that really bothered her."
"Maybe we should give her one. A name, and... a gravestone, maybe? She gave her life for us.... Do you think...? I think we should do something to honour her memory."
Clark stared, wide-eyed, at the woman standing before him. What had he done, to merit having her, the most wonderful woman on the planet--no, in the universe--here, in his life? He turned his hands over in his own and looked at them, marveling at the strength in this frail, human woman. He stroked her slender fingers with his own, stopping to trace the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. The ring that had been his mother's, and that he had given her. After all that it had been through, the diamond still shone with a pure, clear, brilliant light. Just like its wearer.
"Would you really want to do that?" he asked softly, his eyes glistening.
"Yeah. Believe me, I want to forget everything that Lex did as much as you do, but there're so many holes in my memory already--this is something I wouldn't mind remembering."
Clark couldn't hold his tears back any longer. He lifted one of her hands and pressed his lips to it. "You are so amazing," he said. "What did I do to deserve you?"
"What did we do to deserve each other?" she whispered, and leaned forward, just as he did the same.
He kissed her, at first tender, then hungry and passionate, holding her as if he would never let her go.
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They held a small memorial service a few days later, with just Clark's parents and themselves, the only people who had known her enough to care about her.
The inscription on the gravestone was short and simple:
"Anne Lane. You are loved, mourned and remembered."
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finis
