Hello everyone! Thanks for the reviews for last chapter, and sorry again for taking a little extra time on this chapter. But then, the every-other-day posting may become a little more usual, seeing as I have tons of details and scenes both in my head and written down, but as a chapter, I haven't even technically started chapter 27.
Chapter 26 is hot of the press and still steaming, so hopefully it's okay. Usually I like to let them sit for a couple days before posting, but...well, there we are. Hopefully it will still be up to par.
So, anyway...Enjoy.
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Chapter 26: Waking Up to a Bad Dream
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Lois took the elevator of her apartment complex, stopping on her floor. She had full intentions to go to her apartment, change her clothes, and head straight to work, but the sound of shouting stopped her stand-still right after the elevator doors closed behind her.
“Now, don’t you dare turn the blame around on me! You’re the one that left—too busy off in your own version of Frankenstein’s lab! Some father-figure you are!”
“Yes, and I’m sure that you were a much better example, passed out on the floor after one of your daily drunken fits!”
There, standing in the hall in front of her apartment, were Ellen and Sam Lane, both red in the face and screaming at the top of their lungs for the whole of the world to hear of Lois Lane’s family problems.
“Mom! Dad! What are you doing?” Lois hissed, hurrying forward. She wanted to knock them both over their heads and send them on their ways. She had things to do, and their squabbling meant nothing to her right now, except to add to her headache that had been steadily growing since two o’clock earlier that morning.
Her mother turned with a cry. “Lois! We’ve been so worried about you!” She lunged at her to give her a hug.
It wasn’t his hug. It wasn’t his arms—his touch. It wasn’t his eyes, watching her so closely, as if nothing else mattered in the world but her, and only her.
Lois had had her troubles with her mother for some years, and could honestly say that she experienced next-to-no homesickness when she had left home and gone out on her own. And seeing her now, when she was already tired, frustrated, and high-strung, was doing her no good at all.
“Well, there’s no need,” Lois said, walking right through her mother’s embrace. “I’m here, but I have to run off to work, or I’m going to be late.”
“Work?” Dr. Lane repeated. “They’re not giving you any days off after this?”
“I don’t want any work off,” Lois said, digging through her purse for her keys. “If I took a day off for every death threat, kidnapping, or other dangerous warning sign, my whole career would be a vacation. Besides, I’m fine, and I have work to do.”
“Ah, yes, you’re fine,” her mother said, her voice rising. “But do you bother to call us? No. We have to hear that you’d come back from that blasted newspaper you work for, and then you aren’t even home at this time in the morning! Where were you anyway? You look awful.”
You look beautiful, Superman had said, in that void of the white room. She had looked worse then, but he had still thought her beautiful.
“It’s not like you missed me anyway,” Lois spat, finding her keys at last and pulling them out with a furious jingle. “You found out I was back the same way you found out I was missing in the first place. It’s fitting, if you ask me. I’ll mark my life by the paper, and everything important I do will be tabbed by it until the day of my death. And I’ve been busy.”
She pushed between them and began opening her locks. A few seconds later she pushed open her door. She barreled in and her parents glared at each other before Ellen pushed forward to beat Sam into the apartment. Lois didn’t even look at them, but pressed into her room and closed the door behind her as she heard her parents’ voices begin to rise again.
So different from his voice—so low, so gentle and soft.
She grabbed the things she needed for a shower and stepped back into the main room, ignoring her parents who were now busy arguing over something else—or maybe the same thing. Lois didn’t really care. Her mind was busy elsewhere as she looked around at her apartment.
For the life of her, the sight of the empty couch sitting in the light of the sun made her heart ache.
Her mother seemed to notice the odd state of the room and turned on Lois.
“Why is your window broken? And why is your couch over there?”
“I lost my keys,” Lois said, sounding annoyed but also somewhat tired, suddenly. “I had to get in somehow, and I didn’t have time to bother with any locksmith.”
She had stuck him in a closet. She had hid Superman in a closet, while she broke into her own apartment.
His eyes…so afraid, but he had still been trying to get up when she returned. He was stronger than anyone even knew. Foolish man.
“Are you okay?” Sam Lane asked.
“I’m fine,” Lois snapped, gathering her irritation around her again. There was no need for them to come barging into her life now. There was no good they could do. She only needed one person, and she needed to find him. She headed towards the bathroom again and locked the door firmly behind her.
She showered, glad for the sound of the running water to block out whatever was going on in the next room.
Clark’s parents had come all the way from Smallville, and despite the fact that Clark had gone through quite a bit himself, it seemed, and had to deal with his father’s illness at the same time, Lois couldn’t help but be jealous of him.
He had his mother. Lois hadn’t known Martha Kent long, but she was the kind of mother she had always wanted. She was understanding, caring, accepting…Clark clearly cared for her as much as she cared for him, and they didn’t mind showing it.
He wondered if they ever fought. Somehow she doubted it. She just couldn’t see Clark standing up to fight with his parents. Besides, he seemed just too polite to fight with anyone.
At least Clark had someone, now. As for Lois…even Superman had left her.
Who did he have?
She shut off the water, dried herself off, but didn’t unlock the bathroom door until she had finished with her hair, makeup, and everything else for work except her shoes, which she had forgotten to bring from her room.
She opened the door slowly, creeping out as if she might not be noticed, but the living room was almost eerily silent.
Like the white room. Like when he had stopped breathing. When she had found that he was gone…
She looked up, almost afraid to find the dead body of one, or maybe both, of her parents on the ground from their latest skirmish. Or maybe they had left, seeing as she had been in the bathroom for some time. But to her surprise they were both in the kitchen, each standing quite calmly if not exactly comfortably, and holding a separate cup of coffee. They looked at her, silent as she stared back.
“Lois,” Ellen said softly, and a bit awkwardly. “I…we made you some coffee. And a bit of breakfast. Just some eggs and toast, before you head to work.”
“We’re sorry for…well,” Sam tried. “We’ve just…you’re our oldest daughter and…we know you have a tendency for trouble, but this is the first time…you went missing like that.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but perhaps it was the first time Lois being MIA had been reported in the paper while she was still actually missing. So to Sam Lane’s knowledge, it was the first time.
“We were really worried.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Lois blinked slowly, but didn’t move beyond that. She had fallen in the shower and cracked her head. She was dying, and hallucinating. Or maybe she was already dead. Or maybe this was just a really strange, unreal dream.
She couldn’t take kindness. Not now. She had to keep going.
Mad-Dog Lane.
“I’m fine. I’ve got to go to work,” she said, trying for her frustration, irritation…all of that. Without that she was just too tired…
Her mother stepped forward. “Lois…”
“I said I’m all right,” Lois said. “But my business with Bureau 39 is not over. I have a story to solve.”
Superman was still in danger. And whoever was responsible for hurting him was still out there.
“What did they want you for anyway?” Sam interrupted. “This Bureau 39 place. Yesterday’s paper said they wanted to question you about Superman.”
“What if they did?” Lois said, allowing herself to get a bit defensive and thus a bit angry. Anger was good. It kept her going.
“It’s not…safe to be associated with him, clearly, if it’s going to make you a target,” Ellen said, though more gently than her ex-husband.
Not safe.
Not safe to be associated with him.
Like he was some sort of…criminal. Or some wild animal with some sickly disease…
That was it. It was the perfect thing her mother could have said to make her very, very, very…
Angry.
Immediately all sign of exhaustion or uncertainty vanished. “Not safe to be around him,” Lois snarled. “Why? Because he’s an alien? Or because he’s a good man?”
“Well you have to admit that his alien status does have something to do with it!” Sam threw back, settling into the familiar mode of fiery argument with ease. “He’s from a different planet. You don’t know anything about him. How can you put yourself to such risk? I don’t like the idea of you being a…a friend. He’s an alien, and you can’t know what he really wants, besides people like Bureau 39.”
“You know, you are sounding a lot like Bureau 39 yourself right now!” Lois turned into her room, grabbing the first matching pair of shoes she saw and her purse.
Memories of her childhood crashed into her like waves against a white cliff. Memories of loud arguments, of empty houses, of loneliness, of tears against a damp pillow on a dark night.
They had never been there for her before. She didn’t need them now.
She came back and brandished the shoes at her father, and though they were not stiletto heels she looked dangerous enough anyway.
“Listen, Daddy. I’ve tried to let you into my life for years now, but I’m through! You can’t come barging in with your opinions and idiotic prejudice! You don’t even know Superman. Don’t you dare try to judge him!” She stomped past him and her mother both and opened the door to the hallway. How could they judge him? They didn’t know him. They hadn’t heard him in the white room, as he tried to comfort Lois and wipe away her tears even as he suffered through agony and fear that no one—no one—should ever have to endure.
They hadn’t seen the pain in his eyes. The selflessness, even through that fear.
How dare they try to judge him?
She turned back to them, her eyes blazing with fury. “Clean up after yourselves and make sure to lock up before you go.”
And with that, she left.
She slammed her door behind her, and immediately heard her parents begin to shout at each other on the other side.
Something in her gave a slight twang, but she stifled it.
She didn’t need them. And she had work to do.
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As soon as Lois left, Clark went to his room and clumsily pulled on a pair of trousers and a button-up shirt, foregoing the tie and the usual vest and coat. Everything else was a blur of nothing until he and his mother arrived at the hospital and were escorted to the IC unit.
Jonathan had suffered another heart attack during the night before slipping into the current coma that held him under. The doctors said he didn’t have much time left.
Clark hovered uncertainly above the washed-out body of the man he knew as his father. He watched him dying, helpless as his mother held Jonathan’s hand and murmured soft nothings, her voice shaking.
There was nothing he could do.
Was this what it meant to feel normal? To feel so helpless?
The flowers around him seemed too bright for the white walls. The window to the outside revealed a beautiful day, with hardly a cloud in a perfectly blue sky.
It should have been cloudy, stormy, or dark. Things shouldn’t be so bright—not while Jonathan Kent lay dying.
Martha had him sit down, and together they talked to Jonathan. They talked about hard times, good times, happy times, sad times. Both she and Clark had to stop more than once due to the threatening of tears.
About the first time Clark had gone into superspeed, and Jonathan had had to search half the night to find the boy, who was huddled in a neighbor’s cornfield, lost and terrified.
About watching football on their old television set, and the time when Clark got so excited he floated right up to the ceiling and broken his head clean through the plaster before realizing that his feet had even left the ground.
About countless evenings of laughing, talking, or just sitting there in loving, comfortable silence after a good day’s work.
Words floated through Clark, hardly touching him--only brushing past before fading in empty air. He just watched his father. Watched the faint rise of his chest with each breath.
Clark felt like glass, sitting there. Brittle glass, heated so hot and then stuck under a stream of freezing water. He was going to break, to shatter, to scatter into a million pieces. He didn’t know what he was going to do.
His life was falling apart.
He closed his eyes, trying to close in on himself, to not think of now. But he couldn’t escape the pain. The pain of memories. The pain of what might be. The pain of white rooms, or the pain of happy laughter.
It was all the same.
He sat down for a time, but his hands began to shake and he felt numb—too numb. He stood, mentally pacing in a whirl of empty whiteness.
He didn’t know what to do. To cry, to hope, to pray…
The short beeping of the heart monitor marked its steady beat. Like a distant drop of grains of sand, marking time in a shrinking hourglass.
An hour passed. Another hour trickled by. Clark’s leg ached.
“Clark,” Martha spoke, her voice soft and breaking. “Come sit down, Clark. Come and talk to him.”
Clark hesitated. “I…I can’t, Mom.”
It felt too much like goodbye.
“Come sit down, Clark.”
But even that kind of goodbye is better than none at all.
He sat down next to his mother again, and reached forward with a shaking hand to take his father’s.
His hand was cold.
“Dad,” he whispered, reaching up to fix the covers a little higher. “D-dad, I—”
The heart-monitor beeped away.
“Can you hear me?”
They always said that they could.
“I—I love you, Dad. I…I might be a hero of the world, but…I’m nothing. You made me…you made me the man I am. I…I love you Dad.”
Jonathan Kent’s heart pattern flat-lined.
Clark stared, unmoving. The heart monitor was stuck on a long, terrible drone.
Time stopped.
He distantly felt hands lift him up, pull him away as nurses rushed in with a defibrillator. He felt his mother in his arms as they counted down the shocks.
Counting, waiting, balancing on the edge of nothing…
The heart monitor’s terrible line stayed unbroken.
“He’s gone,” the doctor said. “Time of death: 8:43 am.” He caught Clark’s eye. “I’m sorry.”
Jonathan Kent was dead—passed out of the world with his wife and his son by his side.
Gone.
Gone. Just like that, the strongest man Clark knew…was dead.
Just like that, there was one less person in the world who knew him, who cared for him, who loved him.
Gone. Empty. Broken.
Shattered.
Martha collapsed in his arms, weeping, and Clark stood straight and tall, numb, but holding her, realizing for the first time how fragile his mother really was. His father was gone. His mother…he had to take care of her. He had to be strong, for her.
Even if it felt as if half of his heart had just been ripped from his chest.
He wanted to scream, to weep, to push off from the earth and disappear into the depths of space and vanish into nothing.
It couldn’t be real. Everything had gone so fast…too fast…
Trask. Logram. Lois. His Father…
Screams. Painful shards of loss, of agony, of fear.
Innocence shattering into pieces of sharp white…
Flashes of black, white, green, grey, red…
A dream. A terrible, dark, hope-forsaken nightmare.
But no. It didn’t fade. It was true.
And there was no waking up from this.
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Clark didn’t remember later how they managed to get home. He was faintly aware of helping his mother down the hall, down the elevators, to a cab, of her helping him out of the car, up the stairs, and into his apartment.
He was distantly aware of how quiet his apartment was, and the seemingly loud click of the door as it closed behind them. He looked at his mother as she stepped slowly towards his couch to sit down. She looked pale and a hundred years older than her age.
It was ridiculous. He couldn’t imagine his father just…not being there.
It was almost laughable. Laughable in a bitter, helpless, terrible way that made him want to break out and scream and curse and weep. Just last week his father had been just fine. Just last week everything had been fine.
Now, where Jonathan Kent was there was just...nothing.
Just scraps. Some clothes, the farm, the house. Things carrying his ghost—the memories of him.
That was all he was now—nothing but memory, and that terrified Clark. Memories faded, grew potted, disappeared.
And he was just…gone.
He would never see him again. Never ever evereverever.
He would never have his father over for dinner again, or be able to fly down to see him. He would never be able to go out to the barn and help him with the tractor. He would never be able to go home and have his father casually ask for some super help, and then listen to him crack a joke about it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
His mother. She was getting a bit older, too, but she still had a good many years ahead of her yet. She was alone, now, on that farm. Isolated. And for how long? Years? Even decades, sitting in that cold, empty kitchen—her husband dead and her son off saving the world?
He would never see his father at his wedding.
That thought stopped him short, tearing through him like a jagged knife. His father had always hoped that he might have a normal life. He had always wanted to settle down, to have a wife, kids…family.
But no. The alien nature that he had been uncertain of—that he had avoided thinking of besides a curious glance now and again—ripped away the greater chance of him being married at all. But even if he did, his father couldn’t be there.
He would never be able to bounce Clark Jr. on his knee, like he had lightly teased Clark about.
But Clark had seen it. Jonathan Kent had wanted grandchildren as much as Clark wanted children.
So many dreams shattered. So many hopes torn into pieces and scattered into the air.
How did people do it? How did they go on? How did they survive? He had seen tragedy enough in his life, but he had never felt it so closely--never had it happen to him.
How did they do it?
Was it possible for Kryptonians to die of a broken heart?
He didn’t know. But he couldn’t. Even if it were possible, he couldn’t.
You’ll be all right.
Clark leaned against the wall, shutting his eyes.
I wish I knew that, Dad.
You’ll be all right.
But Mom…
You have the most gentle heart as anyone. Don’t let a little fear get in the way of the good you can do.
I can try. I can hope…
That’s your true strength, Clark Kent. My son.
Dad…
He was gone. All that remained was memory, but those memories were so sharp Clark could almost feel his touch, hear his gentle yet somewhat gruff voice, see his strong face and loving eyes.
But he was gone.
I can try. I can hope. That was all he could do. Do what his father would want him to do…because he was his son. No matter what, he was his son.
TBC...
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