“And what makes him so special that he gets his own temple like this?”
“Tomb,” he corrected automatically. “And, well, lots of the pharaohs had tombs. Ancient Egyptians believed that the pharaohs were the link between the people and the ancient gods, and by extension they were sort of like gods themselves. But Ramesses II isn’t actually buried here.”
“Well, then, who is?”
“His children.”
“Oh, well, that’s kind of sweet, actually, that he wanted them all together. How many kids were in his family?”
“Some research suggests around a hundred.”
“A hundred! That’s crazy. Can you imagine having a hundred kids?”
“I can’t.”
That wistful twinge was there in his voice again. It was like the darkness was amplifying her ability to read him.
“Still,” she said, trying to boost his spirit from whatever melancholy hit, “Must have been kind of nice to be considered a god.”
“Maybe,” Clark agreed.
But the melancholy in his voice had lingered.*****
“Okay, I’ve got one! George Clooney!”
“No way, Lois.”
“Yes, absolutely!”
“I don’t see it.”
“He’s so charismatic. He could get away with anything,” she argued.
“Ok, then, Julia Roberts.”
“Oh, not a chance!”
“Why not?”
“She’s just so
obvious.”
“So?” he asked with a laugh.
“So that makes her not a good pick!”
“I think she’s a
great pick.”
“I think
Harrison Ford is a great pick.”
“Lois!”
“What?”
“Talk about obvious! The man is Indiana Jones and Han Solo! How would you ever be able to keep that discreet?”
“Discreet? Since when is that one of the rules of the game?”
“Since we started playing!”
A cascade of sand, punctuated now with larger pebbles, trickled down somewhere near their heads, and they both reflexively tucked together and waited for it to pass, still arguing.
“Oh, because Julia Roberts would be so discreet.”
“More discreet than Harrison Ford!”
“Clark, I don’t care what you say about her; nothing will ever convince me that Julia Roberts would be a good reporter.”
“She’d be a good
interviewer. I think people would want to tell her things.”
The sand stopped, and they both relaxed.
“I think you have a little crush on Julia Roberts.”
“I don’t.”
“No? It’s too dark to see you; how can I tell you’re not blushing?”
“I’m not.”
“Your ears could be bright red right now.”
“Really, Lois, she’s not my type.”
“What
is your type?”
It just slipped out. They’d been having fun. Clark had cajoled her into one-upping him on picking the best famous actor to successfully make it on the
Daily Planet staff, and it had spiraled into silliness. She hadn’t meant to ask a serious question. But three hours into having Clark’s strong body pressed against hers, and she’d reined her mind in so many times that it seemed to be chomping at the bit of rebellion.
“I guess I never really had a type.”
“You’re kidding,” she scoffed.
“No, I guess I never really thought about it.”
“What about tall, slim, and blonde?” she suggested pettily.
He must have heard the undercurrents in her tone because he asked, “What are you talking about?”
“I seem to remember you looking awfully cozy with Toni Taylor when you were trying to hustle me out of your apartment,” she picked at him.
“Lois, she was a gangster. She was
dangerous. I was trying to keep her from seeing you.”
“So
not tall, slim, and blonde, then?”
“Not anything,” he said firmly. “To have a type, you need to have a pattern.”
“Is that why I never see you with anybody?” she asked.
She’d just bet that she’d regret that question, but she was suddenly deeply curious.
“How do you know I’m not just discreet? Like Harrison Ford?” he asked teasingly.
But she stubbornly resisted letting him take her back to their game now that her mind was on this path.
“Because you’re the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve,” she said, rolling her eyes. “If you had a steady girlfriend, you’d want to tell everybody.”
He didn’t respond.
“So, have you dated anybody since you’ve been in Metropolis?” she pried.
“I guess not,” he admitted.
She was glad, again, that he couldn’t see her face, since her rapt curiosity would have been wholly evident.
“Why not?”
“I guess… It just hasn’t worked out,” he said.
She opened her mouth to ask him if there was someone he’d been hoping it would work out with when he turned it around on her.
“So what’s
your type?” he asked.
Unprepared to answer, she gave a cursory, glib response, vaguely thinking that Clark and Superman shared some basic physical attributes.
“Oh, tall, dark and handsome, I guess.”
“Like Luthor?”
That took the fun right out of it.
“No. No, not like him,” she said sharply, not in the mood for games anymore.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
She didn’t say anything, letting the darkness answer for her.
“I’m sorry, Lois.”
She was, too, to be honest. Nothing had gone the way she’d planned with Lex.
“I didn’t mean to bring it up,” he tried again. “I– Sorry.”
“That was really kind of a mess for us,” she said grudgingly.
“For
us?”
His question was gentle, but her response was aggressive.
“Do you not remember refusing to talk to me for weeks?”
She thought she’d put this all behind her, jammed it down out of reach, but apparently she was still angry about it.
“I guess I didn’t handle that very well.”
“I thought you were my best friend, you know? And then you wouldn’t even come to my wedding.”
“I couldn’t watch you marry someone who was so awful, who I knew was dangerous, who went against everything you stood for. But I– I didn’t know what to do.”
The air felt thick between them, and not because of the ancient dust that still hung in the air.
“Abandoning me wasn’t the right choice.”
“Lois, I
never abandoned you. You have to believe that. I worked night and day to try and get enough evidence to prove everything to you.”
“During all those weeks, though, when you were gone, when we weren’t talking, it felt like you had,” she said, her voice small.
“I’m sorry, Lois,” he said.
It sounded like he meant it.
“Me, too,” she admitted.
His arm tightened infinitesmally around her waist.
And her palm pressed imperceptibly into his chest.
Something about the darkness made her feel confessional. Or maybe it was Clark’s solid embrace. Or the way they were clearing the air between them.
“I didn’t–” She took a breath and tried again. “I never loved him,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“When we were moving rocks, you said that lots of people had been betrayed by someone they loved.” She paused before admitting again, “He betrayed me, but I never loved him.”
“You didn’t?”
She shook her head.
Even if he couldn’t see her, he must have interpreted what he was feeling in her movement, because he responded as if she’d answered in the negative.
“I didn’t know that.”
“I thought you should,” she said impulsively, and at once wondered if she’d revealed too much.
“Why?”
That was the exact question that she hadn’t wanted to answer.
“Well, you really hated him.”
“I hated what he was doing,” Clark gently corrected.
She shrugged.
A handful of pebbles spilled through one of the gaps in the rock near their feet.
“So, that’s the only reason?”
She felt her cheeks heat. “Of course.”
He paused, and she marveled that even under all this rock, in total darkness, it felt like it was a hundred degrees in there.
Clark had been silent too long, and she wondered what he was considering.
“Lois, you know that I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”
Not knowing how to reply to that at all, she muttered, “Well, I think we’re
there now, so, sure, I’ll believe that…”
The puff of air on her neck was evidence of his laugh.
“I mean, I always try to take your cue. I know that you feel better when you’re in control, and I don’t mind following your lead. I know you don’t like to talk about your emotions, but I have to ask—do you
ever want to talk about this, or do you just want to dance around it forever?”
“Dance around what?” she asked defensively, immediately wishing she hadn’t.
She felt his chest expand as he took in a breath.
“Us,” he answered.
“I already told you that we could find ways to make the partnership more equal,” she said, grasping the first thing that came to mind as a defense tactic.
“I’m not— I’m not talking about our partnership at the
Planet,” he said, sounding like he was balancing caution with frustration.
She didn’t say anything. Stuck down here for who knew how much longer, she wasn’t about to put herself out on any emotional limb that would ensure awkward hours encircled inescapably in her partner’s arms.
If Clark wanted to say something, he could say it.
Apparently he correctly interpreted her silent challenge.
Because he upped the ante.
“I’m talking about this,” he said in a voice both rough and vulnerable, his head dipping to nuzzle her neck lightly as the hand cushioning her head ran through her hair and the other palm moved possessively across her back before fisting around her linen shirt.
The movements themselves were chaste enough, but the intent behind them was blatant.
And it was making her pulse race so fast that she could hear it rushing in her ears.
Her mind readied a properly searing rebuke, but her treacherous, traitorous body, which had been primed by being hotly pressed against his for hours already, eagerly responded before she could consciously reply. Involuntarily, her head tipped back as she felt herself arch into him, mouth falling open as she gasped. Her toes curled without her consent. One of her knees even bent without her permission, pressing her thigh against his in the scant room they had, holding him closer to her.
Then he paused. “This, Lois,” he said gently into her ear, close enough that she could feel his lips on her skin. “I want us to talk about this.”
Knowing her eyes were probably bright and her cheeks impossibly flushed, she was actually relieved that he’d pushed this conversation on her in the dark, where she had some camouflage. Nevertheless, she was mortified. Trying desperately to catch her breath, she stammered out a mostly coherent response. “I can’t— I can’t help but respond when you do that. Anyone would respond this way to you doing that.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Lois,” he replied, still sotto voce, stroking lightly through her hair as he released it.
“It’s nothing,” she protested, trying to ignore his hand, which was still locked tantalizingly at her back, but feeling her pulse race again anyway, hard against her veins.
“I don’t think it’s
nothing,” he volleyed back, light but serious. “Why do you think it’s nothing?”
“It’s just a stupid thing that got into my head. It doesn’t mean anything.”
His hand relaxed on her back, and he leaned a few inches away, as if trying to see her better. “What are you talking about?”
She sighed, her face burning. “Look, I– I think it was just my subconscious trying to warn me about Lex.”
“What was?”
She’d never planned to tell him this. “I really don’t want to say this aloud.”
“I think it sounds like part of what we should be talking about,” he said steadily.
She sighed, embarrassed and flustered and still pressed against him.
“I won’t laugh or judge you for it. I won’t bring it up again if you ask me not to,” he swore. Then added, “Scout’s honor.”
A grin tugged at her mouth in spite of herself, but she still hesitated.
“Please?” he asked, and she heard a note of pleading in his voice, as if
this particular bit of nonsense really mattered to him. And, unfortunately,
that mattered to her.
Swallowing, she tried to articulate it. “I was really unhappy that morning. It was supposed to be one of the most important days of my life and you weren’t there–or Perry or Jimmy or Lucy,” she added quickly. “And I guess it was bothering me that I didn’t know where you were. I’d called you the night before. I expected you to be there, to answer, to call me back, to show up anyway, but…anyway, I guess I just couldn’t get it off my mind. I was thinking about it when I was getting my make-up done and stepping into the dress and waiting to enter. And then I was walking down the aisle and I just couldn’t stop thinking about—well, I suddenly didn’t know what I was doing walking to
Lex, when all I could think about was...” She couldn't finish, couldn't say it out loud.
“You were thinking about me while you were walking down the aisle?” he asked, surprise coloring his voice.
“I know that sounds crazy–”
“No, that doesn’t sound crazy,” he said with certainty. “That sounds…
right.”
“What?”
The dig team was making more noise above, and it was harder for her to concentrate, with their distraction paired with the distraction of Clark’s focused proximity.
“Do you ever think about that day in the park? Outside LNN?” he asked in a low voice, as if the non-sequitur made sense.
She cringed. She
never wanted to think about that day in the park, when she’d told him she wasn’t in love with him. Reliving words she knew he hadn’t meant and that he’d never say again only made her feel cold all over, a tight ball of confusion and grief taking root in her stomach. She couldn’t even go there. Plus, how insensitive and blind could she have been to him, whether or not he’d meant it? He’d given them an opportunity that she surely should have taken and she’d just thrown it back in his face.
But rather than fall into the guilt and mess of that, again, she decided that the best defense was a good offense. “No, I don’t. But I can’t
stop thinking about that day Franklin Stern gave us the
Planet back. I think about
that day a lot.”
It was the day that he’d told her that
he didn’t love
her.
“I’m sorry,” he said contritely, knowing immediately what she was really talking about.
“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for,” she said, fighting back the sinking feeling that always threatened to overtake her when she couldn‘t stop herself from replaying this memory. “You said you wanted us to be friends, and partners. Forever. And that’s what we are.”
It went unspoken that it was
all they were.
“I should never have said that.”
“You can’t help what you feel,” she said, magnanimously offering him forgiveness for his inability to force his fickle heart into loving her.
“No, I can’t. That is true.”
“Although…I guess you lied then.”
“Lois, I never thought that you might–wait, what? What did I lie about?”
“You said ‘forever’. You wanted to be friends and partners forever. But obviously if you’re already practically planning your move back to Smallville, then you couldn’t have meant it.”
“Lois, I…” He trailed off.
He didn’t even have a rebuttal to her accusation, and she felt a prick of fear. Maybe it wasn’t as far down the road as she’d thought it was. She felt the agonizing pain of his future abandonment tear through her, and held her breath to stop its destructive path across her heart. A little leaf of fury blew through her subconscious, and she grasped it tightly. Anger was easier. Anger protected her.
Her heart rolled. Did she really need to be protected from
Clark? From the only person in the world that told her over and over that she was safe, and made her believe it?
“Lois, I
did mean ‘forever’ when I said it.”
She rolled her eyes. People said things that they meant in the moment all the time. And then they changed their minds.
His tone changed. “Lois, just be honest with me for a second, okay?”
That was somehow rich, coming from him.
“You get worked up about things. And I love that about you. But sometimes you react passionately just to prove a point, or to assuage your pride, and then other times you get upset about something because it’s a small example of a much bigger problem that you really care about. I know you normally wouldn’t ever admit to this, but just this once…Is this– Is this situation closer to the first or the second?”
It was the second, her mind answered immediately. It was the second, and she hated it. She’d been reaching out for him for weeks, but he’d already pulled away. She couldn’t put him out of her mind these days, and he’d essentially told her that he already had an exit strategy from her. So now she was in another country, already off-kilter from her whirlwind sham of an engagement, endlessly tripping over sand and her own emotional baggage, and forced to live out her heartbreak in real time beside the person who was causing it. She wanted more, she knew. He wanted less. It wasn’t an example of a larger problem. It
was the problem.
Clark was expecting an answer but she couldn’t give one through the hard lump in her throat. She forced herself not to sniffle, not to breathe any harder, not to give him any indication that she was a heartbeat away from sobbing.
“Lois…” His voice sounded like he could see her heartbreak written all over her. She’d thought that the dark would save her, but maybe he just knew her better than that.
“I meant ‘forever,’ when I said it,” he said again.
Here it comes, she thought, bracing. The reminder that she wasn’t his priority. That a best friend wasn’t family. That even if she
was family, he’d still pick them and leave her anyway. It felt like no one in her life had
ever picked her. She’d constantly had to fight to be noticed for anything. That day that Superman had picked her out of the crowd was the only time in her life someone had chosen her just for being her. And even though he came when she called, even Superman never stuck around. And now Clark was about to prove that he wouldn’t either.
“And I’ll mean it forever,” he vowed.
She blinked, shaking her head, as if she’d heard him wrong.
Maybe she
had heard him wrong.
This wasn’t their script.
“I will be your friend and partner forever,” he reinforced.
She was so shocked that she found her voice. “You can’t mean that. You and I both know if your parents need you–”
“If they need me, I will find a way to help them without leaving the
Planet.”
“Be realistic,” she scoffed darkly.
“I am. I’ll ask Perry if I can work part-time. I’ll spend half the week in Smallville and half the week in Metropolis if I have to. You and I can coordinate when we’re really going to dive into something and I’ll hire on help at the farm. We have e-mail now. I can help write articles and go over research with you even if I’m not in town.”
Even though he couldn't see it, she was shaking her head. “Clark, I– Even then, we couldn’t predict when every lead would come up. And you’d be on a plane twice a week. Aside from just the money for flights, you wouldn’t have time to–”
“I’ll ask Superman for help.”
“What?” she asked skeptically.
“If I need to travel quickly, I’ll ask him for a lift.”
He’d thrown her again. “We don’t even know if he would do something like that. Plus, you would have to be able to contact him for that to work.”
“Then we’ll figure out a system.”
“I don’t– That sounds– He wouldn’t–” She couldn’t form a cogent thought. Finally, she asked, “Do you really think he would do that?”
“Lois, I think he would do anything for you,” Clark said plainly. “I think if you needed this, he wouldn’t think twice.”
She felt her emotions shifting away from the overwhelming heartache she’d been trying so hard to push back.
“So, forever,” Clark concluded. It sounded like an offer.
She knew she was smiling, but she couldn’t calibrate.
Once again, he’d rendered her speechless.
But she was warming to the idea.
“Friends and partners, forever,” she tested.
“Friends and partners, forever,” he promised.
And then the hand under her head was lightly fingering her hair.
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes fluttering shut as she momentarily surrendered to the light, hypnotic sensation along her scalp.
“Lois, is that...
all you want?”
Her eyes opened.
In anyone else’s mouth, it would have sounded like a smooth, even sleazy line, but Clark was earnestly asking her what she wanted.
She wanted more.
But she knew he didn’t–because he’d plainly told her so months ago–even though now it seemed he’d clocked that she did.
So she wasn’t sure what answering him was going to gain her except more humiliation.
She tried not to lean into his hand.
“It seems like things have been different over the last few months,” he said tentatively. “It seems like maybe we understand each other a little better. Maybe we take each other more seriously. We’re not just ‘close,’ we’re… closer.”
He was right. But if he’d tracked all that and still pulled back, this conversation probably wasn’t about to go the way she’d been starting to hope it might.
Friends and partners, she reminded herself.
That was enough.
Friends and partners forever.
At least they
had a forever.
It was more than she ever thought she’d get.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “That sounds…” What was the word he’d used earlier? “...right.”
“I guess I thought I might have been imagining it, but now… Have you been looking at me differently than you did last year?”
What was he asking?
“I think we
both see each other more clearly than we did last year,” she said carefully.
“Yes. But– That’s not what I– I’m saying this all wrong,” he said miserably. But then he chuckled suddenly. “Sometimes I think I’m not a brave person after all.”
“You chased a mummy into his tomb to make sure I wasn’t alone,” she said drolly. But then the humor dropped away. “I think that’s pretty brave.”
“I’d follow you anywhere,” he said without fuss, as if that, somehow, was a universal constant. “Its just
talking to you that seems to trip me up.”
She was flustered again. “Just say it,” she urged.
“I'm not as brave as you,” he said tensely. And she nearly told him that she’d entirely revised her opinion about her own bravery because based on this week she wasn’t brave at all, but then he inhaled deeply and said, “I asked you earlier if we could talk about–how you respond to me,” he said, his hand at her back minutely flexing.
“Uh, yeah,” she stumbled noncommittally.
“I– We’ve– We’ve admitted before that we were attracted to each other. I know I’ve teased you about it, but I’m not going to tease you now. I swear.”
“Okay…”
“I just— Since it seems like things have changed, since we
are closer, I just wanted to ask if… you…wanted to…do anything about that?”
She couldn’t easily come up with an answer oblique enough to that without wholly giving herself away. Apparently her obviously lustful reaction to his entirely simple movement earlier was already easily explained away. They’d both already admitted to an attraction, just as he’d said. The face she had to save lay in his current line of questioning.
Sometimes she wondered if it would be easier for them to communicate if they weren’t both investigative reporters, versed in interview techniques and in sidestepping questions.
Or if she weren’t so stubborn.
Or so scared.
“Do
you want to do anything about that?” she asked, placing the ball firmly back in his court.
He huffed out a breath at her response.
He was nervous, she realized.
Was he nervous about what she’d say if he said ‘yes’?
Or what she’d say if he said ‘no’?
Testing her building theory, she brought her palm up against his chest, letting her thumb sweep upward in just a hint of a caress. It could be taken as platonic, especially in their heightened circumstances, but if he wanted to read more into it, he certainly could. “Clark?”
“I have.”
“You have?” Her brain worked that over rapidly, parsing his meaning. He had
already done something about it? Did he mean by prompting this conversation?
“I have wanted that,” he said, voice tight and small. “Since we met.”
She felt the carefully blank expression on her face that automatically rose to match her very careful vocal tones melt away.
“But you– you– you said you didn’t love me,” she accused. “That you’d have said anything to keep me from marrying Luthor.”
“I lied,” he said, his voice cracking.
That was the
last thing she thought he’d say.
“But you—you barely touch me. You never flirt with me. You don’t ever hint or–”
“Lois, I asked you out the first week we worked together. I flirt with you every day. You slept across my lap on my couch last week. We touch a lot, more than most friends.”
“We
did,” she corrected fiercely. “But not since Lex. Not since the wedding.”
“I thought– I thought you needed space,” he said, sounding honestly confused.
“I needed my best friend!”
“I was right there, Lois,” he said compassionately. “All summer. Putting the
Planet back together. Getting started at the new offices. After the wedding, I wasn’t even sure that you wanted me around. You were so closed off. You’d move away when I sat near you. You never reached for me. I know the wedding really shook you. I know you needed time. But I didn’t know when that changed.”
“You pulled away because you thought I needed space?” she asked, incredulous.
“I didn’t pull away,” he protested. “I just followed your lead.”
Because he’d follow her anywhere.
The certainty of it crashed into her harder than any ancient boulder could.
He’d even follow her into a fractured version of their friendship with this new set of boundaries that she didn’t want and couldn’t seem to navigate.
But she’d subconsciously signaled that she wanted it, so he’d gone along with it.
He was right; they really
did need to start talking about this stuff.
“What would your lead look like?” she asked shyly.
“You don’t ever follow someone else’s lead,” he said, skeptical but chuckling.
“I do when they’re right,” she said, her voice coming out as light as he was making her feel. “I’ve followed yours before.”
She felt his arms tighten around her just a little more, as if he wasn’t quite conscious of it himself.
“Well, I guess it would look sort of like things are now. Friends. Partners. That would stay the same,” he assured her.
“That’s good,” she said, her breath suddenly shallow beneath her words.
He dipped his head then, softly nuzzling her ear.
“But it would look a lot more like candlelight dinners and lazy Sunday afternoons and cozy holidays on the farm.”
She nodded, charmed by his idea of taking the lead, then managed, “Uh-huh?”
He gently extracted his hand from behind her head, smoothing her hair back.
“Kissing in the elevator and walking to work hand in hand and never needing to make up an excuse to see each other.”
His hand came to rest along her cheek, cupping her jaw.
“It would look like being able to rely on somebody during the hard stuff and planning a future together for the fun stuff, having each other’s back during the day and telling each other our secrets in the dark.”
She felt her lips curve into a smile, anticipation tightening in her chest.
His thumb gently caressed her cheek.
“It would look a lot like…”
He paused as his nose slid intimately along hers, and her eyes fluttered closed.
“This.”
She felt him move against her, felt his breath on her cheek, felt him close enough that she could tell that he was smiling, felt him lean in to kiss her.
“Hello down there!”
Her body jumped in surprise and she felt Clark’s hands steady her in response, as he twisted a few inches upward to shout back. “We’re here!”
Slivers of light made their way down to them, dancing through the rocks as the men above fought their way closer.
It was the first light she’d seen in hours, and despite the less-than-impeccable timing of the interruption, she breathed a sigh of relief.
The voice called to them again.
“Are you alright?”
It was Dr. Weeks, she recognized.
“We’re okay!” Clark called back.
“Come back in ten minutes,” she growled under her breath.
Clark chuckled and swept his thumb lightly over her cheek again.
This time she didn’t resist leaning into the palm of his hand.
“We’ve cleared a sort of path upward,” Dr. Weeks said. “Will you both be able to crawl out?”
“We should be able to,” Clark called up again. “We’re not injured.”
“Ms. Lane, as well?” Dr. Weeks questioned.
“I’m fine!” she shouted up.
“Incredible,” he said, almost to himself, then raised his voice, “Well, good! It shouldn’t be long now!”
As if in proof, a larger rock fell through and hit her leg at the top of her knee.
“Ouch! Careful up there!”
“Sorry!” Dr. Weeks called back. “You might want to protect your heads. There’s bound to be a few loose rocks falling through now that we’re this close.”
“Great,” she muttered.
“Tuck your head under my chin,” Clark said, adjusting them both. He slid his arm back under her head and curled around her.
“You’re more likely to get hit than I am,” she said, reluctantly pulling away.
“I’ll duck,” he said off-handedly.
“I’m serious,” she said, concerned.
“I’ve got a hard head,” he joked.
She shifted, trying to pull her arm out from where it had been trapped between them.
“What are you doing?”
“If you won’t protect yourself, I will,” she told him.
He immediately pressed against her more firmly, inhibiting her ability to move.
“I don’t want you getting hurt to try to protect me,” he said.
The little intermittent glow from the lights above made it possible to actually see his face, and she could read in his expression how serious he was.
“A concussion is no joke. I’ve had enough of them to know,” she argued.
“Well, then, it sounds like we should protect you, not me.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, you’ve had them before, I haven’t. Maybe you’re just prone to getting them.”
She could hear the laughter in his voice and her mouth dropped open at the flawed logic. “Clark!”
“Is this what you want our first fight to be about?”
She snorted, resuming her attempts to dislodge her arm. “We’ve had a hundred fights.”
“Our first fight as a couple,” he clarified, smiling.
She stopped struggling. “Oh.”
In spite of the dim light, she saw the flicker of doubt pass through his eyes. “Unless… Unless you don’t want to be a–”
“No. I– You just surprised me.” She was grateful for the fractured light that let her see well enough to catch the emotions playing across his face. “I do. Want that.”
His smile returned, and she felt it warm her down to her toes.
“Me, too,” he said, his voice tender and buoyant.
Another rock dislodged itself, and they heard it tumbling toward them. Clark pulled her into him again, and it bounced somewhere off to her right.
The men’s voices were much louder now, and the rocks above them shifted.
Clark made a small noise in the back of his throat in response as they settled.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “It’s just dark in here and I think I might be getting a little tired.” He sounded unsure.
“Amazing how tiring not moving more than an inch is,” she quipped.
He didn’t laugh and she looked up at him. His expression was strained.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“When the rocks moved–did it hurt you?”
“No, not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s just a little bit of pressure,” he said. “It’s fine.”
But Clark never complained. He was rarely tired. And she’d barely ever seen him uncomfortable.
“Dr. Weeks!” she shouted. “Hurry up!”
“Lois, it’s okay,” he assured her.
“Everything alright down there?” Dr. Weeks called.
Ignoring Clark, she shouted back, “The boulders are starting to press down on us!”
“It’s because we’re close. Just hold on! There isn’t much weight above you now!”
That wasn’t very reassuring.
But they heard more of the men above calling to each other, and a moment later, a rock nearly above them started to lift away.
More light crept in through the winding crevices between the rocks now, and for the first time in hours, she could really see Clark. He was absolutely covered in dust, a thick greyish layer that she could only assume was also completely covering her, too.
“Hi,” he said, a shy smile lighting his face.
“Hi,” she said back, feeling her answering smile already blooming.
And then, out of the corner of her eye, she swore that the rock just to her right moved.
Her gaze whipped toward it just in time to see it move again. Hope surged in her chest. “We’re getting out of here!” she said excitedly.
Two of the rocks beside her shook again, assumedly from whatever was moving on the other side.
“You’re pretty close to us now!” Clark called toward the two rocks.
Suddenly one of the rocks that had been moving jutted in toward them, and they both called out sharply.
“Hey! Careful!”
“Watch it!”
“Sorry!” came through the wall of rock.
The second rock that had been shaking was pulled back by a couple of inches.
And then a couple more.
And then a few more.
And then light was bursting through the crevice and Dr. Weeks’ face, still framed by his bucket hat, appeared upside down.
“Hello!”
“Hello!” replied Clark.
“Nice to finally see you,” Lois said.
Dr. Weeks looked mildly chagrined. “It took quite a bit of engineering to get to you. We had to stabilize what was left of the structure before we could move much. It was difficult for twenty people to walk across a room without a floor.”
“You let the whole dig team in?” Lois asked with surprise.
Dr. Weeks looked at her with a raised eyebrow that reminded her a little of Clark. “
Of course, Ms. Lane.” Then he reached toward her with one arm. “Can you wiggle out of there?”
“Well, I–”
But Clark was already moving, disentangling himself and rolling a couple inches toward her left, trying to give her space to crawl out.
Dr. Weeks slid back a few inches, too, giving her room.
She extricated her left leg out from under Clark, and got as far to the right as she could in their little gap before rolling over to her stomach practically in place, pressing against him again. Slithering toward the light between the rocks, she reached out and grabbed Dr. Weeks’ hand. He started to pull her out as she worked her way under the rock. But just before she ducked beneath it, she looked back at Clark, suddenly not wanting to leave him alone in the tiny, perilously balanced cavern.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured her.
“See you up there,” she said.
“See you up there,” he agreed.
And she half army crawled through the gap in the rock, Dr. Weeks pulling her along until her feet were clear. She found herself in another narrow gap, and felt a wave of claustrophobia hit her, the panic lodging in her chest.
“Keep going, Lois,” Clark called. “You’re almost there!”
His voice was just as soothing as it had been the last time the dark and rock and fear of being crushed had gotten to her.
She kept going.
Dr. Weeks was backing out of the small tunnel, and after a few feet, he was able to crawl along on his hands and knees instead of his belly. “It gets just a little wider up here,” he explained. “If you can get just past me, it opens up, and the men can haul us out.”
Her limbs were uncoordinated after being pressed into one place for so long, and her left leg was asleep, but she forced herself to crawl further forward, practically dragging her left leg behind her, eager to get to whatever the surface of this was.
When the space opened widely enough for her to raise herself to her knees, she felt a little rush of joy.
They were going to get out of this, just like Clark had promised her.
But then there was an enormous echoing crash behind her.
She turned her head back and was hit in the face with a wall of sand and dust.
And she realized that the pocket they’d been in must have finally collapsed in on itself.
Suddenly the only thought in her head was that she and Clark had
just told each other how they really felt, and her curse was already coming for him. Lex had made it to the wedding, but what if her curse had escalated so fast for Clark that all that mattered was that she loved him?
Her shrill scream tore through the tunnel and the continuing echo and the rock itself.
“Clark!”
She immediately pushed herself backward, hard, aiming to cover a lot of distance quickly, screaming his name again.
“Clark!”
“I’m okay!”
Her relief at hearing his voice moved through her entire body. She practically
felt her adrenaline drop off.
“Where are you?” she called, needing to see him.
The dust was still thick—thick enough to make her cough-–but she backed still up further into the narrowing tunnel toward him.
“I’m here. It’s okay.”
She felt his hand on the back of her leg, and turned to see him just a few inches from her.
“What happened!?” Dr. Weeks urgently called from ahead of them.
She inhaled to reply and ended up in another coughing fit.
“The pocket collapsed,” Clark called around her. “We’re alright.” Then he squeezed her calf reassuringly. “Keep moving. This really isn’t stable.”
She gave him a last look and then crawled quickly forward.
The little tunnel only continued on a little way after it expanded, just as Dr. Weeks had promised. And then the top opened up and she was in a pit about as tall as she was, just wide enough for two people to stand. She managed to just pull herself up off her knees, and Dr. Weeks put a hand beneath her elbow, supporting her the rest of the way. She looked up to see the pit lined with workers, who all looked overjoyed to see her. Zaid called out to the man in rapid speech and then he and another large man reached down into the pit for her. She reached out and grasped Zaid’s hand with hers, and he called back behind him, lowering himself flush with the ground and wrapping his other hand around her upper arm. The second man, also low to the ground, reached down, urging her to take his hand. When she did, he secured his other hand around her upper arm as well.
Dr. Weeks put his hands on her waist and said, “I’ll give you a boost and they’ll pull you up, alright?”
She nodded, but called out, “Clark?”
He waved from just inside the tunnel. “I’ll be out right after you.”
“Ready?” Dr. Weeks urged, clearly anxious to finally get them all out of there.
“Ready,” she confirmed.
He called something back to Zaid and the other man.
They nodded.
In rhythm, Dr. Weeks said, “Wāḥid…Itnēn…Talāta!”
On the last word, which Lois guessed was ‘three,’ Dr. Weeks lifted her at her hips, and Zaid and his counterpart hauled her up and to the surface.
She got her hands onto the floor, pressing her feet against the rocks stacked to make the pit wall to try to climb up. Then Abo was there, catching her under her arms, and pulling her all the way out and several feet away from the pit’s opening. When he set her down, she told him, “shukran,” which she’d picked up as ‘thank you’ over the last few days. A wide smile overtook his face, and he bowed his head politely, releasing her, and stepping away.
She immediately discovered that her legs wouldn’t support her, and Abo stepped back in to catch her, lowering her to the ground. Her left leg was still completely numb and her muscles were stiff and sore all over, screaming to be stretched. As she went to rub life back into her upper thigh, she realized that her white linen pants weren’t covered in that greyish dust the way she’d thought they’d be. They had acquired some kind of circular brick-colored stains. And as she pressed her palm to it, she realized it was wet.
How had that happened? There had been nothing wet in the tunnel.
Blood, her mind finally supplied, and she stared at her palm in shock.
Abo started to call out to someone, and she looked up to see that Clark was standing near the edge of the pit, talking to one man–probably thanking him for helping him out–and rotating one of his shoulders to stretch it.
But when Abo shouted back toward the group, Clark’s head snapped toward them.
When he saw her, she swore she saw his skin turn white even beneath the thick coat of dust.
He was at her side in seconds.
“It’s fine,” she assured him, and herself. “The linen is so thin–it looks a lot worse than it is.”
But he didn’t seem to be listening. In one motion, he tore the lower leg of her pants nearly up to her knee and immediately called out a string of words in Arabic.
She rolled her eyes. Of course Mr. Photographic Memory spoke
much more Arabic than he had let on.
One of the men brought over a light, which she assumed was what he’d said to them, and she put her clean palm on his arm.
“Clark, it’s fine. I just scraped my legs getting out of the tunnel.”
Her hand was stinging, and she pulled it away, gripping a fist to try and make it feel better. Apparently she’d scraped her hands in the tunnel, too.
Clark caught her motion and looked down at his arm where her handprint was stamped on his skin in blood.
He made eye contact with her for the first time since kneeling beside her, and she thought he looked more afraid than he had below fifteen feet of ancient limestone.
Dr. Weeks had made it over to them by that point, and stopped short, seeing her.
“Do you have medical supplies?” Clark asked quickly.
“Basic first-aid,” Dr. Weeks said, taking off his bucket hat to run a hand anxiously through his hair.
“Great,” she said. “These scrapes are starting to sting.”
But Clark asked, “Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“Hospital!?” she asked, with the clear opinion that he was overreacting.
“Luxor,” Dr. Weeks supplied. “Luxor General is right across the river.”
“How do we–”
“We have a truck.”
“Get it,” Clark said in a voice with a surprising amount of command. “I’ll bring her.”
“Clark, I’m fine,” she tried again, but she was too tired to inject much demand into it, which she belatedly realized only worried him more.
He put one arm tenderly under her knees and another around her back. “Hold on,” he told her gently.
She automatically moved to put her arms around his neck, but realized that her hands were bleeding. She looked at them skeptically and he nudged her with his shoulder. “Go ahead,” he encouraged.
She frowned, but he smiled reassuringly at her and she put her arms around his shoulders, finding something somehow familiar and soothing about the motion.
He rose steadily with her, though it looked like he was concentrating, and once he was standing, he lightly readjusted her.
“I think I can walk with help. My leg’s just asleep,” she said, already straightening her good leg to try and hop down.
But he held her tighter. “I’ve got you,” he promised.
He had promised her this already, she realized, when they’d been down beneath the rocks.
Someone to rely on.
Someone to have her back.
And since she’d accepted it then, she accepted it now. So she settled herself in, tucking her head into his shoulder in a cozier version of her position beneath the rocks and let him carry her up out of the perpetual night of the tomb and into the fresh, clear air and the brightness of day.
