Part Eleven
He was shaking, suddenly drenched in ice-cold sweat. He couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand doing this, pretending he was all right.
He darted a look at her, at the moonlight bouncing off her bowed - bowed, like a supplicant, like a sinner - blonde head. His every wish and dream and terror and nightmare contained in one small body. What was the difference between dreams and nightmares, anyway, they could each turn upside down and into the other in a split second.
She wasn't going to answer him, he could see that. She wasn't looking at him. Was hardly breathing.
He was *such* an idiot. He'd had a golden opportunity to have her out of his life back there, and he'd thrown it away. Gladly. Willingly. Offering suitable alternatives. Damning himself.
That was how it went, wasn't it? He damned himself for her, resigned himself for her, put up with pain and exile and blankness for her, and in return he got a life spilling over with darkness.
What he should *really* do... what he thought about doing more and more often... was call Lex. Call her husband, and tell him where she was. The man must be out of his mind... his pregnant wife, missing in action... and that dress... that horribly bloodied dress...
He shook his head viciously, wondering how he could be so utterly and totally *stupid*. To have the woman he... to have Lois walk back into his life, and then to lose her again. To... *give* her away. It would be crazy, when he'd been waiting the past twenty months to see her again... slowly dying every day that passed, wishing for her... and by some twist of destiny she was back in his arms again and she...
He checked himself abruptly. Back in his arms. No. Not back in his arms. She'd never been in his arms in the first place, so how could she be back in them? And she wasn't back, not really. Not like this. They could never go back, he knew that now.
And he *hadn't* been waiting for her in London. He'd been evaluating the situation, waiting to make himself more secure, working, working, working... he hadn't missed her at all.
He hadn't been waiting for her, no. He couldn't have been. He couldn't have been waiting for the woman who'd destroyed him.
He exhaled sharply, throwing a glance in her direction. She looked decidedly uncomfortable, and well she should be. It wasn't fair that she should sit there, looking endearingly vulnerable, thin around the baby, precious and somehow *his*, it wasn't fair at all.
He wasn't sure what she thought he knew. Heck, he wasn't even sure what *he* knew. The only thing that stuck in his head - painfully clear - was that image of Lois's face floating over him while Luthor's laughter echoed around the bedroom. Looking... what was the word? It was... strange. The expression on her face was... a horrified kind of curiosity, and a strange sense of revulsion... there was fear there as well, he was sure... she'd probably been thinking about what he might do to her if he ever got up...
And then Lex had ordered his henchman to drag him down, down concrete steps and into a place illuminated by the green glow of Kryptonite. The cage, that horribly morbid iron-and-Kryptonite cage...
Caged. Like an animal, like a beast, something sub-human and dangerous.
And Lois hadn't done anything. Hadn't screamed, hadn't tried to stop them. He'd pleaded with her, to help, to help him up and out and away from there, but she hadn't moved. The last time he'd seen her had been there in that bedroom, her arm linked through Luthor's as she watched him being dragged away.
He bit his cheek roughly, cursing himself. Why, oh *why* hadn't he remembered all this sooner? If he'd just stopped to examine his memory a couple of times in London, he might have recalled how he'd lost his powers. And he wouldn't be in this situation now. He'd never have come back for her, no, never ever, not even if he'd known she was missing...
A slight cough to his right caught his attention. She was looking at him, staring at him, probably wondering why he hadn't started talking yet. And yet again, he cursed inwardly.
God, he hated her. So much and so completely that he couldn't ever see an end to it. She was the cruellest woman he'd ever met in his entire life. She had done things to him that were beyond anybody's comprehension, so infinitely painful that he flinched at the mere memory of what he'd felt. And she didn't even *realise* it.
He *should* call Lex. But, god help him, he couldn't - couldn't bear to think of her back with her husband, couldn't bear to think of her with anybody except him. Nobody but him deserved her. Heck, he didn't deserve her himself, but he'd do whatever he could to make her happy...
...and she wasn't his, would never be his, now. She was married, and she was pregnant, and she had betrayed him.
Staring at him. She was still staring at him. And her mouth was gaping open, very wide.
He checked himself suddenly, terrified. What had he said? What had he told her?
A hand to his face revealed that he wasn't wearing his glasses. His heart gave an almighty thud. Oh... god...
"Hold on a minute. What did you say?" Her voice was quaking. With what? Anger? Fear? Confusion? A mixture of all three?
All the fright went out of him. Who *cared*? He didn't *care* anymore.
He shook his head wearily. "It doesn't matter, I just..."
"You said I tried to kill you," she pressed, leaning in. Against his better judgement, he looked up and into her eyes, and almost jumped straight out of his skin. There was an unholy light shining there, and for a second, she looked uncannily like MadDog Lane - the woman he'd known once.
He had a momentary flash of fear at how much he'd revealed, but he shrugged off the sentiment in the same thought. There was nothing further she could do to him. It didn't matter to him whether she knew or not. It didn’t make a difference.
"But... but that makes no sense."
What did it matter? It was a thing of the past - he really was plain old Clark Kent now. There was nothing further she could do to him. Nothing further her husband could do to him. Even if Luthor tried to have him killed - well, he was dead already.
"That makes no sense... because I *saved* you. Or at least... I tried to."
He snapped to attention, his heart pounding. "What? When?"
Her gaze bore into him, the sharpest of knives. "I think we're getting wires crossed here. How much, exactly, do you know?"
"I know you betrayed Superman," he said levelly. "I know you called for him, and then did nothing while your husband tortured him with kryptonite and had his goons drag him away. After that... I'm not sure."
Suddenly, MadDog puttered out. He felt a strange triumph at this; he'd known she couldn't hold it up for long. He'd been right about her.
She was swallowing very hard, her eyes bright. Slowly, she nodded.
"Did you try and help him any more after that?" He surveyed her with a detached eye. He had to try and distance himself from the conversation, but he couldn't help feeling - he wanted to know, he needed to know, desperately, it would either kill him once and for all or regenerate him slightly.
"I... didn't know... that he was still... I mean..."
She was starting to babble, her words disjointed, but he knew in a strikingly strange way that every word out of her mouth was the truth. How unreal that was, that he could trust that after so long. He could trust that Lois Lane wouldn't lie to him about anything important. How stupid, when he hadn't trusted her with *anything*.
"He... he... promised me, when I called him, that he wouldn't..."
He lifted an eyebrow at her. "He? Who? Lex or Superman?"
She winced horribly at the sound of her husband's name, and his eyebrow lifted further. She'd done that before, hadn't she? When he'd used Luthor's name, she'd jumped a mile. What was it with her, his name was somehow holy, she couldn't bear to hear it used so casually?
"L-Lex," she said, and he got a kind of perverse pleasure at the obvious effort it had taken her to say that. "He said... when I called... that he just wanted to *talk* to Superman... and then, when he walked into the room with that rock in his hand, and Superman collapsed..."
He swallowed deeply. Hearing her admit that she'd called him at her husband's request hurt deeply, but he had to keep going... he had to understand *why*... what had he done to make her hate him so?
"I... I just froze. I wasn't expecting... I didn't think that... he would *do* that. I guess I was a little naive... I couldn't move... I remember looking down at him, on the carpet... and he was... he was in so much pain, and I... I..."
He remembered too, he thought bitterly. //Oh, Lois...//
But this wasn't the story of the woman he'd built up in his mind. *That* person had known exactly what she was doing when she'd called him. *That* person had stood over him, superior to him, had linked her arm through Lex's as he was dragged out of the room.
He remembered that as he looked at Lois, trying to glue the two together in his mind. How was it that people had such great capacity for change, how could they be one person then suddenly another? Lois was so similar to him - she'd been Lois Lane, he'd been Clark Kent.
And now... she was Lois Luthor, and he was himself - whoever the hell that was.
"But Clark -" Here she leaned towards him, her eyes burning fiercely, "- I did that... I did it because... because Lex was going to kill you, if I didn't. I... I wasn't fully... broken at that stage, but after that... I just couldn't let you die..."
A tremor of electricity went through him, from his head to his toes, and suddenly he was trembling, his hands shaking.
"You... what?" he croaked stupidly.
"I couldn't let him kill you..."
"You betrayed Superman... to save me?" His voice was coming from somewhere very far off, cracked and garbled. He cleared his throat, trying to make it clearer. It was important that he get this right.
"It was a choice." She said it very quietly, blood staining her cheeks. "Between you and him. And... Lex told me that all he wanted was to try something... there was this rock, and Superman reacted - really strongly - to it, and then they dragged him away... Lex told me they'd let him go, and they had, but the rock, it made him vulnerable, and..." Here she broke off and swallowed twice. His head was whirling, faster than he'd ever been able to fly.
"Nobody knows this, Clark," she said quietly. "You've probably seen all those shoddy news reports - asking where Superman was, all those people with their aggrieved sense of betrayal because they have to fend for themselves now, and they'd almost forgotten how - all those news reports, they're so *wrong*. I wanted to scream with it, I wanted so desperately to tell the truth, but he had me there and he would have killed me, Clark...
"Superman... he was vulnerable. And - he was walking along West Avenue, he was in pretty bad shape - and there was this mugging, in a side street... he must have known, what would happen, but he did it anyway... ran in and tried to stop it..."
He tried to say something, but his throat was swollen with confusion and loss and guilt and betrayal and wild, wild hope.
"...and of course, he got stabbed... numerous times... he died from blood loss at LexLabs... they were afraid to give him a transplant, they didn't know what human blood would do to him...
"Nobody ever knew, it was hushed up, his body was taken off to be... well, to be examined. The mugger, the one who did it, he turned up three days later in Hobbs River, and the old lady, she died of a stroke... so there was no proof, and no evidence. Except for a cape... Lex left it in our bed..." She broke off, and shuddered. "It was sick... disgusting... blood stuck to the fabric, like nothing I've ever *seen*..."
"Wait. Wait." He held up his hands, shaking his head frantically. "Stop speaking. Stop. Hold on a minute."
He could sense her confusion, her frustration, her anger even, but right then he didn't care. There was thunder in the room, somewhere around him, anyway, he was amazed that she didn't seem to hear it.
He delved back into his memory, back to that all too vivid image of Lois's face, standing over him. He looked carefully at her in his minds eye, his eyes suddenly open to every tiny detail of her. The details he'd missed before.
Like the tears on her cheeks. Tears on tears, built up and up and up, layered upon each other, old and new. Dripping down onto his face. Suddenly he could feel them acutely, he could taste their saltiness. How could he have forgotten that?
And her neck, right where her blouse opened. There'd been a dark mark, hadn't there? It hadn't been a shadow, or a smudge, it had been a... a bruise. A series of bruises.
He concentrated on them, that mental snapshot, and yes - they were the right circumference, all the measurements matched up.
The marks of a man's fingers around her neck. That'd been what had convinced him that she was telling the truth in the first place.
His ears suddenly rang with her sobs. <Oh, god, Superman, I'm sorry, please forgive me...> How could he *ever* have forgotten her sobs, as they dragged him out of the room, how could he have passed over them when they were so unbearably full of torture?
<Leave me alone, Kent. I don't ever want to see you or hear from you again. Leave me alone with my husband.>
He winced, his heart drumming beneath his chest, so loudly and forcibly he was sure it would burst. He'd known, that time - all the times - he'd known that everything wasn't as it seemed.
He'd *known*. Known that she wasn't okay, wasn't fine, wasn't having the time of her life in Luthorville. And he'd walked away, regardless of how thoroughly suspicious the whole thing was.
He'd thought, all along, that he was being forced to live with her mistakes. He could now see how wrong he was. It was the other way around, had always been the other way around. Because of him, she'd gone through nightmares and persecution, through never-ending pain and heartbreak - colossal anguish. Because of him.
He'd never been stabbed. He didn't know exactly what had happened, but he sure as heck knew he'd never been stabbed.
<Get him out of my sight, he's no use to me now... he's an ordinary man, no better than the rest of us...>
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, like a goldfish.
Being let out. Out into the blinding sunshine. Being kicked so that he rolled along the path. Being put in a taxi. Being... an ordinary... man.
Dressed in ordinary-man clothes.
And sent... they'd sent him...
Home.
They'd sent him to Clark Kent's apartment.
She sniffed, and he looked up, startled out of his revelations and their implications. She looked absolutely miserable - tiny and defeated. Whitewashed into the background, as she'd been in her marriage.
She'd said, back there, that she'd chosen him. Chosen to save him, chosen him above Superman. But... but if that was the case - why had she driven him away? Suddenly, desperately, he needed to know.
"Lois," he said, urgently, his fingers reaching out and wrapping themselves around one of her wrists, "you said - back there - that you... you saved me, but - if that was the case, why did you push me away? Constantly? You told me never to come near you again, don’t you remember?"
She sniffed again, he could see her swallowing.
"Remember that day in the park? The day that you... that you kissed me?" Her voice sounded very muffled, and he could see a pink line edging its way along her cheekbone. He nodded mutely, not trusting himself to speak, not trusting himself not to say something totally dumb, like 'I'll never forget it' or 'The best day of my life' or 'I love you, Lois'.
"Nigel... was watching us," she continued, and he could see her shaking. "That's why I slapped you. I couldn't... I couldn't let Lex think..."
Explanations. So many things cleared up at once. And the months of torture, for nothing. Wouldn't have happened if he'd talked to her, if he'd believed in her.
"And then he did *anyway*, and he began threatening... so I had to try and drive you away... I was obsessed, I did it to everybody, Perry, Jimmy, Lucy, Mom... I had to make you believe me... and then it didn't work, I hurt you for nothing, lied for nothing, and now Superman is dead..."
Dead. Superman. Dead. She thought she'd killed Superman. She was bolstering the blame for killing Superman, when she hadn't at all.
He would ask himself about everything else later, obsess about her choosing him over Superman later. Here was something he could fix for her, straight away.
"You didn't kill Superman," he said, interrupting her. "Superman isn't dead."
She stilled, fixed her dark eyes on him. Her chin was wobbling, and he felt a surge of protectiveness. It was inconceivable that she could be carrying a baby; she was almost a child herself, vulnerable and so easily destroyed.
"You didn't kill Superman," he repeated, reaching forwards and taking her hand. Maybe if he was touching her in some way she wouldn't hate him.
"How do you know?" she whispered, her cheeks drained of all colour.
He took a deep breath, preparing to throw his life away - for her. Just like he'd always thought he had, just like she'd done for him. Strange, that they could sacrifice so much for each other and be so utterly alienated.
"I know, Lois," he said calmly, amazed that his voice wasn't trembling. "I know - because he's sitting in front of you."
~&~
to be continued...
