This is chapter 5, right? <checks> Good!
Thank you again for the reviews. Keep them coming, people. They're the ink I use to write this story. Without them I'd be in a sorry state indeed.
<considers mentioning that she would have to use her own blood for ink, but considering that they just decided that she *did* have a heart, she resists...kind of>
Enjoy.
Chapter 5: Dreams, Chocolate, and Superheroes He was trapped. Hands and eyes caught and pried at him, opening him up to the world, to the ever-watching eyes. He struggled against them, but a light was blinding him, pinning him on the cold metal table beneath him that burned his skin through his Suit.
“Alien! Freak!”
“They’ll dissect you like a frog!”
“The alien…”
“Look at this…”
“He’s the frog you dissected in your fourth grade elementary school class.”
“An alien.”
“N-no,” Clark stuttered, lifting his arms to try to ward off the pressing masses around him—to block out the painfully white light. Lois. Where was Lois? He grasped for her desperately, but there were only empty eyes and clutching hands. Dr. Logram’s face emerged from the press and grabbed his arm, twisting it and shattering it between his fingers. Clark screamed, and blood poured from between the doctor’s hands as he leered down at him.
“Amazing,” he breathed, his palms slick with Clark’s blood. “It’s a miracle.” Clark jerked awake, gasping out a strangled scream as he sat up abruptly despite the pain. His eyes darted about the room as he clutched his injured arm, pushing back against the white wall behind him as if trying to disappear into the nothingness.
“Superman!” Soft hands touched him and he recoiled sharply, hitting his still-tender head against the wall. His vision exploded in white.
“Superman—it was just a dream. Superman.” The hands came again, but they were warm, and delicate arms wrapped around him and held him as he shook. Lois hushed his cries until his shaking stilled. He lifted his head to find Lois looking at him with wide eyes, so beautiful and dark…so concerned. For him.
He nodded, signifying that he was all right—well, more or less. Lois stepped back as he gingerly moved so that he was sitting, his back propped up against the wall as he sat on the bed. He wiped his sweat-damp brow with an unsteady hand. Lois sat beside him, watching him. Her hair was ruffled as if she had just awoken.
“S-sorry,” he mumbled.
Lois was inwardly seething. She had been sleeping herself when she had been awoken by Superman’s distress, and when she tried to wake him he had recoiled back in pure terror. She wanted nothing more than to string out the men responsible and unleash the strength of her fury upon them. They were lucky if the least they got was being locked away for the rest of their mortal lives. “Don’t be sorry,” Lois snapped. Superman flinched and she immediately softened her tone, albeit only slightly. “It’s not your fault.”
Superman didn’t answer, his head bowed so low to his chest that his dark hair fell down to hide his eyes, and Lois wondered after a few seconds if he hand not fallen back asleep. But then he spoke, though it was barely more than a whisper.
“Yes it is. They’re right, Lois: I’m an…alien. I’ve endangered you by ever coming close to you. You…you shouldn’t have come here, Lois. They just wanted me, and…even if they kill me…Lois…Lois…” He trailed off. “I’m going to ask them to let you go.”
Lois bristled like an angry bobcat, and it was fortunate that Clark was already so battered and bruised or he would have been in for a heavy beating.
“Don’t you
dare,” Lois nearly snarled. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. These men are evil—their leader tried to kill Clark and me only a few days ago in Smallville. They’re crazy, like the Klu-Klux-Klan or Al Qaeda. You can’t blame yourself for a few men’s stupid, blind prejudice!”
Clark blinked up at her, surprised by the ferocity of her tone.
She stomped to the far wall and back again, growling under her breath like the mad dog that she was known by many to be. Finally she stomped towards him, lifted a tray bearing two bowls of some creamy off-white soup, and plopped down to sit by him.
“Here,” she said coldly, but despite her tone she didn’t shove the bowl into his hand like her manner would expect. She held it steady until she was quite sure that he could hold it on his own, and watched him like a hawk while he lifted the first bite to his mouth.
They ate in silence, sitting side-by-side in a colorless world on a too-hard mattress.
Superman cleaned the bowl out completely and bent to put it back on the floor, but Lois took it from him before he could bend over too far, almost as if she could tell how the world spun around him as he began the motion.
Lois didn’t speak at first. She looked at Superman sideways, noting how his face was still far more pale than his usual healthy coloring. She watched as he reached up and tried to brush his hair back into its usual style, though despite his best efforts it still seemed to want to hang over his brow. It didn’t look bad that way, Lois decided. She hesitated in the long silence, not wanting to pry like those horrible ‘doctors,’ but realizing that if she overstepped her bounds it wasn’t like he was going anywhere. He would have to stay put until she could apologize, at least.
“It’s good to know that you do eat,” Lois said slowly. “The doctors—” She saw Superman’s complexion turn pasty and quickly amended her words—“
They said they didn’t even know if you ate, or slept, even. Then I was surprised to realize that I’d never even thought to ask you.” Clark shifted, uncomfortable. His arm was still screaming with pain, with the reminder of why he was there—how he was different—though now at least the pain was somewhat manageable. Lois saw his discomfort and turned the topic slightly. “So, what’s your favorite food?”
“P-pardon?”
“Your favorite food,” Lois repeated, though she was pretty sure he had heard her the first time. “You can go anywhere. You’ve probably been to more countries than anyone else who ever lived, and you’ve only been around for a few months. Or is there some Krypon-food that puts Earthly victuals to shame?”
“Uh…I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“I love Chinese food,” Lois offered. “Have you been to Lotus Garden? It’s just in Metropolis, but it’s amazing. I’ll have to order take-out sometime and have you over—it’s heaven. Ooh—and chocolate. Flyboy, if you haven’t had chocolate, I have to introduce you to it. It’s the reason for Earth’s being.”
Clark had indeed been to Metropolis’s Lotus Garden—a little family-run restaurant in China Town—before, but he didn’t say so. He smiled the slightest bit at the chocolate comment, then realized Lois was waiting for a response. Well, she thought he had only been on Earth for a short amount of time, so of course she would assume his experiences were rather limited. But still, there was no harm in answering honestly about something like this. “I, uh…I enjoy Chinese, too, but I think Italian is my favorite. Spaghetti. There’s this little shop in Venice, and their pasta is superb.”
“Spaghetti?” Lois repeated, grinning to herself at the absurdity of the situation. “But you have tried chocolate?”
“I can say I understand your love of it, Lois.”
Lois nodded. “Good,” she said. “When we get out of here you can bring me some chocolate, then. The real kind, not the plastic brown stuff from the grocery store. Real chocolate. Swiss chocolate. And I’ll order some take-out pasta and you can come over and we can watch a movie.”
She was taking it for granted that they were going to get out of there at all, and while Clark had his doubts, he felt his spirits rise with casual utterances. After all, Lois
did have more experience in these sort of situation.
“A movie?” Clark stopped still in the conversation. Lois was talking to Superman—the injured alien whose spirits she was trying to keep from falling to the pit of despair. Not Clark Kent. Not her normal, farmboy, Mr. Green-jeans, I’m-from-Kansas partner . She was talking man she swooned over…well, usually. Right now she looked as if she was trying very hard to keep from whacking him over the head, Clark realized suddenly. He was somewhat confused to the sudden change in attitude. “What is it?”
“You’re getting that look on your face,” Lois said, her eyes narrowed.
“What look?”
“That look. The superhero look. The ‘I’m going to back off now before anyone gets too close’ look. The ‘Don’t touch me—I am Superman” look. Look, Superman, I’ve been around you for almost two days straight now, and even though you’ve been out for most of that, I’ve seen right past that little game of yours. You can take off that mask for me—I’m never going to fall for it again.”
Clark blinked at her.
“Look, I understand why you might distance yourself like that. I mean, you’d be mobbed if you tried to settle down for too long, and it would ruin you—I mean, the image you’ve created. A hero: unbreakable, solid, unmoving, confident. That’s nice and all, but…you can’t be surprised that I’ve seen past that over the last couple of days.” She squeezed his hand. “You are a person too, no matter how noble the things you do are.”
Clark was shaken by her firm words. But he frowned. He slipped his hand from hers for a moment to brush his hair back from his face again, but in vain. It was almost the exact same thing he had been wanting to tell her since she had first stared at Superman with those star-struck eyes. That awe-filled expression was gone now, he noticed, and was replaced instead by something far deeper and intense. It frightened him.
He glanced at her. She claimed to have seen past the mask, but there was no recognition of him in her eyes. He supposed at the moment he looked too miserable to be recognized even as Clark Kent, no matter how mortal he appeared.
The conversation tired him out. He was frustrated with his own weakness, but Lois just forced another drink of water on him and told him that he needed to sleep—he had lost a lot of blood, and sleep, food, and lots of water was what he needed most.
TBC....
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