Part 13:


Lois lay awake, unable to sleep. It didn’t seem to matter what she did; Clark still refused to speak to her or anyone else about what was troubling him. She could tell he was at war with himself. As though he hadn’t been fighting long enough already, she thought darkly. Every day, there was new reason to hope – glimmers of the old Clark. But every day, there was anger and hostility and shattered nerves.

Clark had drifted to sleep with a large arm draped over her lean waist. He'd pulled her close to him, instinctively, almost possessively – a sentiment that might have caused Lois Lane to bristle ten years ago. But she understood that with Clark, it wasn't an issue of power and control, it was about belonging. To him, it was just as important that he belonged to her. They fit together. Maybe it was because that was the way it was supposed to be, preplanned and foreordained. Or maybe it was just because they were two people who'd grown to love and understand one another in a way that no one else did.

She studied him intently as he lay in silent repose, a look of tranquility on his face. The corners of his mouth were turned upward in the faintest hint of a smile and she hoped that his dreams would stay pleasant, even though they often didn't. She'd come to understand it as a simple fact that he slept better after they made love. And she was aware, on some level, of the pathology of their changing relationship. It wasn't enough. The moments of peace he could find were nothing more than a temporary respite and certainly not time enough to begin to heal. Yet it seemed she could offer him no more. He wouldn't talk to her, he wouldn't tell her what had happened, and he never, ever told her about the dreams that caused him to wake with a start, his heart thundering so loudly she could hear nothing else.

Perhaps she should have pushed a little harder. Maybe if she were more insistent, he'd open up. But what he craved was that sense of calm, of contentment, not a chance to reopen old wounds. So he pretended, with single minded zeal, that his troubles would go away if he just ignored them long enough. She was an accomplice, she knew, and just as guilty in his self-delusion as he. Yet she could deny him nothing, especially not anything that could give him even a few precious moments of happiness. She knew it must have been a fact entirely peculiar to Clark, that while he made love in order to push his troubles out of his mind, he was still focused entirely on her. He knew exactly how to make her pulse race and her breath catch in her throat. He knew every sensitive spot and could destroy all semblance of coherent thought in her with a single touch or a single kiss. In the depths of his despair, he seemed to want nothing more than to show her how much he loved and needed her.

Nonetheless, she should have confronted the issue. When he reached for her in the middle of the night, she should have insisted that they talk. Lois knew that she wouldn't have ever needed to ask him to stop. If she simply didn't respond to his gentle ministrations, he would have instantly asked her what was wrong. So the prudent thing to do would have been to force herself to change the way her body responded to him; the ability to control her heart rate and breathing was a handy side effect of the powers. But she hadn't yet found that sort of resolve. She'd spent so long wanting nothing more than to be with him again. When he held her, she still felt like she never wanted him to let her go again, so how could she be the one to push him away? It was a character flaw and she knew it, but if she loved him just a little too fiercely, and wanted him just a little too badly, was that really the worst thing in the world? Weren't there worse things you could say about someone than 'she adores her husband?'

Lois knew, deep down, that that wasn't the question. It wasn't about how much she loved Clark, it was about whether she had the courage to help him see the problem, and to show him that he didn't have to face it alone.

********

“Lois, can you give me a hand with this?” Jonathan called from the barn. He spoke barely above a conversational tone, but Lois heard him easily from the den. Clark and Jon had headed out almost an hour earlier to catch bugs or frogs or turtles from the pond. She could have sworn that her little boy was more at home in the mud than anywhere else. Despite all the difficulties they were going through, it made her so happy to see Clark and Jon connecting and sharing something that was uniquely theirs. Closing her laptop, she got up to help her father-in-law.

“What’s up?” she asked as she pushed open the barn door. She stopped suddenly as she saw the sleek, oblong capsule that had brought Clark back to her.

“Given all the reporters who’ve been snooping around here, I wanted to make sure we hid this properly,” Jonathan explained.

She walked around the small ship, letting her fingers brush over the burnished metal surface. The capsule suddenly opened. Lois stepped back, regarding the ship curiously. She peered inside at the cramped space where her husband had slept through his months’ long journey. A compartment near the nose of the craft caught her attention. Lois looked at her father-in-law, who merely shrugged, as if to suggest she open it. She gingerly opened the compartment to find Clark’s small overnight bag and an unfamiliar metal box. She removed the box and opened it. Inside were several globes, smaller than the one Clark had discovered years ago containing the messages from his birth parents. A brief flash of disappointment surged through her when she touched the surface of one of the globes and nothing happened. These were Clark’s, she reminded herself. They were probably deeply personal. It would be up to him to decide whether or not to share with her what was on them.

“I’m sure Clark will want these,” she said as she closed the lid to the box, suddenly wondering why he’d left them in the capsule for so long. Perhaps he’d forgotten about them. Reluctantly, she placed the box and the overnight bag down near the door to the barn.

“Let’s get this capsule buried,” Jonathan suggested. Lois nodded. With another quick glance at the box that undoubtedly held countless secrets and perhaps some much needed insights into what Clark had gone through, she lifted the small space ship easily and carried it around to the back of the barn. She buried it deep enough to keep nosy reporters or curious neighbors or whatever horrible entity that would eventually rise up to replace Bureau 39 from ever finding it. It felt strange to cover up and hide this strange artifact that had kept Clark safe, guiding him home across the galaxies.

Wiping the dust from her hands on her jeans, she regarded her handiwork for a moment, x-raying the ground to make sure the capsule was still there. “Come on, I think Martha left some lemonade for us in the fridge.” Her father-in-law’s voice interrupted her ruminations. Lois smiled faintly and followed him to the barn to retrieve Clark’s belongings before heading back to the house.

Upstairs, she took more care than was necessary to place the metal box on the dresser. She stared at it for a long moment, tempted once again to open it. It didn’t matter how many of her questions would have been answered by the contents of the box, she told herself, she couldn’t open it. She sat down on the bed, still staring at the box, now across the room.

Lois nearly leapt out of her skin when the bedroom door opened. “You startled me,” she said with a nervous smile.

“Everything all right?” Clark asked, seemingly puzzled.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Jonathan and I, um, buried the capsule.” She nodded toward the box on the dresser. “I found the box inside. I figured it was something you would want.”

He was oddly silent for a long moment. “Thanks,” he mumbled absently. He showed no interest in the box, barely acknowledging it was there. “Jon and Dad are downstairs.” He gestured toward the door.

Lois nodded. “Let’s join them.”

********

After Jon had gone to bed, he sat in his old tree house for hours, listening to the cicadas. It had been days since the press conference. Since he’d hit Lois. He’d put off actually doing something about it. But he didn’t know how much longer he could keep going like this. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep assuring his parents or his wife that he was strongly considering going to speak to someone.

He closed his eyes and just listened, until he could hear the heartbeats of sleeping hummingbirds, and the sounds of water striders walking on the pond. When he was a kid, it had been one of his favorite sounds in the world because no one else was able to hear it. It was a soft, even ‘thump,’ as the tiny appendages of the insects made contact with the water, never breaking the surface tension. He could even hear the rustle of the microscopic hairs on their legs as they moved across the water. Like the water striders, he could hear the worms as they burrowed in the earth, and could feel the charged ion particles in the air before a lightning strike. He could smell the rain when it was still miles and miles away. The world worked in ways that only he could experience and that had been a source of comfort to him for years when he was younger. But now, those sensations brought him no happiness. Instead of being able to connect to the world he once knew, all he could do was replay in his head, over and over, the way his homecoming should have gone. He should have crossed the fields in long, purposeful strides toward the farmhouse, healthy, happy, and strong. He should have been able to sweep his wife up in his arms, spinning her around easily as he held her close. He should have been there for her when their first child was born. He should have been the involved and anxious dad-to-be of happy stereotypes.

But nothing was the way it was supposed to be.

It kept coming back to the same thing. He’d hit his wife. The violence of New Krypton had followed him home. The picture perfect return that he’d been thinking of for four years, it didn’t happen that way. And all the relief and happiness that he and his family were supposed to feel, why was there so much hurt and confusion and anger?

Why was it so damn hard to have the only thing that he’d wanted for four years?

He’d made his son cry. Repeatedly. He’d snapped at his mother. He’d ignored his father’s advice. He’d alienated his friends. And the way he’d treated Lois…

He had no interest in reliving what had happened on that damned, desolate rock. But if it was what he needed to do in order to protect his family, how could he not? Clark sighed, his head throbbing. He shouldn’t have felt headaches any longer. Without a thought, he shot up into the night’s sky, feeling the wind against his skin. Floating high above the ground, he tried to think about something, anything other than how badly he’d failed. It was almost surprising to him how natural flying felt. He’d expected it would have taken longer to readjust, but even though his powers had only fully returned a few days before, it was almost as if he’d never lost them.

His thoughts started to drift back toward all the “what ifs” that had plagued him almost since the moment he returned. But worrying over the past wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to get him back the four years with his family that he’d lost. It wasn’t going to help him figure how to put his life back together. He drifted upward, not a part of the Earth. Not a part of the stars…

After a long while, he flew into his bedroom window to find Lois already in bed. She had probably been sleeping, but she was awake by the time he landed. “Hey,” she said softly.

“I’m going to call Dr. Friskin tomorrow,” he said. He watched as emotions seemed to war within her. Relief finally seemed to win.

She nodded wordlessly and stretched out her hand to him. He crossed the room and took her hand in his. As he stretched out beside her, he told himself he was doing the right thing. He couldn’t keep living like this. And he couldn’t live without his wife and family. Something had to give. Something had to change.

“I love you,” she whispered as she placed her head on his shoulder.

He dropped a kiss on the crown of her hair and pulled her closer. “I love you, too,” he replied.

********

“Dr. Friskin?” he asked as he paced nervously in his parents’ den.

“Yes?” He vaguely recognized the good doctor’s voice, though they hadn’t spoken in years. He’d called her direct number, something she’d given to Ultrawoman in order to protect the superhero’s privacy.

“It’s Superman,” he said, anxiously waiting for her response. There was a long pause before she responded.

“It’s good to hear from you, Superman,” she said. “I hadn’t realized that you’d returned.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck. Why was this so difficult? “Well, the uh, war ended and I wanted to get back as quickly as I could…”

“Of course,” she replied reassuringly. “What can I do for you?”

“I, uh, understand you have some expertise in dealing with war experiences…” he trailed off, trying to find words to finish the thought.

“I can rearrange my schedule to meet whenever is convenient for you, Superman,” Dr. Friskin responded.

His heart pounded a little more rapidly, his mouth suddenly dry. Just the thought of actually having to speak to the therapist was driving his anxiety level to dizzying heights. “Tomorrow?” he managed. “Is tomorrow okay?”

“Of course,” she replied. “I imagine after hours would be preferable. Does seven work for you?”

“It does,” he said, waiting until he could hang up the phone to exhale a shaky breath. ‘Most powerful being in the universe? Yeah right,’ he thought.

********

He had less than half an hour before he was supposed to be at Dr. Friskin’s office. It would take him only a minute to get there, though he’d have to avoid the crowded flight paths and well watched skies over Metropolis if he wanted to keep Superman’s return quiet for now. He sat on the bed, his old costume in his hands. It didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem right to even hold this anymore. He wasn’t Superman. He couldn’t even remember what it meant to be Superman. Putting the costume on would have made him an even bigger fraud. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, though. It was Superman, not Clark Kent, who had an appointment with Dr. Friskin.

God, how was he going to do this? How was he going to just spill his guts, rattling off all the things that were haunting him like they were items on a grocery shopping list?

And how the hell was he going to keep Superman and Clark Kent separate?

How was he going to explain all the things going horribly awry in his personal life when Superman didn’t have a personal life? He was getting another headache. The Man of Steel wasn’t supposed to suffer from migraines.

There was a knock at the door. He turned around as his wife entered the room. “You okay?” she asked.

“You know what it’s like when you really don’t want to do something?” he asked, almost rhetorically.

“Yeah,” she said softly.

“I don’t even know what I’m going to say to her,” he continued.

“Just take it one session at a time,” Lois replied. “You don’t have to try to fix everything today.”

He laughed humorlessly as he stood up. “Maybe this isn’t the best idea…”

“Clark, please,” she begged him, placing her hands on his.

His heart broke at the plaintive tone in her voice and the haunted look in her eyes. God, he was such a coward. Why, given all he’d put her through, was he thinking of backing out now? He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It’s just the nerves talking. I should get going.” He changed quickly, putting on the suit, but putting on yet another disguise on top of it. Only Dr. Friskin was supposed to know that Superman was back, after all. He pressed down on the fake goatee, pulled on a baseball cap, and dark sunglasses. “I’ll be back in a while.”

Lois took his hand again and squeezed it gently. “I love you,” she said simply.

“I love you,” he replied.

With no small degree of trepidation, he lifted off the ground and flew out the window, heading back to Metropolis for the first time in more than four years. He had to fly higher than usual to avoid being spotted, but there was no mistaking the city as he approached it. Even at sixty thousand feet, Metropolis made its mark. The island’s countless skyscrapers jutted out, creating a tableau that had been burned into his memory long ago. He dropped into the alley behind the tree-lined street where Dr. Friskin’s office was. He kept his head down, hoping the disguise would work well enough to keep anyone from noticing him. Clark made his way to her office, waiting impatiently for the elevator in the mostly empty building. He ducked into the men’s room down the hall from her office. Checking to make sure the floor was deserted, he spun into the suit, trying to ignore the feeling of nostalgia the familiar action brought. His heart pounding in his chest, he knocked on the door to Dr. Friskin’s office.

********

"Superman," Dr. Friskin greeted him warmly. Clark entered her office, uncrossing his arms as he did in order to shake her outstretched hand. He'd unconsciously gone into defensive Superman posture, but was forced to abandon it immediately. You weren't supposed to be aloof and distant in a shrink's office, were you? "Have a seat," Dr. Friskin said as she gestured toward the almost clichéd psychiatrist's leather couch.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me," Clark said, keeping his Superman tone.

"My pleasure," Dr. Friskin said with a smile as she pulled out a notepad and pen. "It's good to see you back."

"It's good to be back," he replied earnestly, stretching out on the couch.

"Superman is back on Earth, but I'm guessing all is not yet right with the world?"

He sighed. "Not exactly."

"Trouble readjusting?"

"Something like that."

"Tell me what you’d like us to work on.”

“I don’t sleep well,” he said flatly.

“Are you having nightmares?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Mostly reliving stuff that happened.”

“Anything else? Changes in mood?”

He tried not to snort. “Yeah. I get angry a lot easier than I used to.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know,” he said, fitfully playing with the edges of his cape.

“Superman, your hand is shaking.” He could hear the concern in her voice.

“It’s been like that for a few years,” he said, clenching his hands into fists to make the trembling stop. “It comes and goes.”

“I think we have enough to get started. Why don't we begin with the circumstances of your departure? It seemed rather sudden."

"It was," Clark admitted. "I found out about the whole thing just a few days before I had to go."

"So I take it that it was a surprise."

"More like a shock. For a long time, I thought I was the only survivor of Krypton. Then one day, these people showed up, claiming to be Kryptonians, in need of my help." He could hear the sound of Dr. Friskin's pen scratching on the notepad.

"People are often asking you for help. You're someone people are used to depending on."

"True, but it's usually not a bunch of people from a long dead planet asking me to be their leader and help them avert a civil war."

"And how did this make you feel?"

Clark smiled wryly at the good doctor's use of the line that psychiatrists had made famous. "To be honest, confused, surprised, and…a little scared."

"Entirely reasonable," Dr. Friskin confirmed. "I imagine that having to depart in such a hurry forced you to leave a great many things in your life unsettled."

He recognized the opportunity Dr. Friskin was creating for him to open up. Unsurprisingly, he found himself reluctant to take it. "Yeah," he admitted. "I mean, yes. I wasn't expecting to just drop everything one day and run off and possibly never return."

"So did you believe that you weren't going to return to Earth?" There was more scratching as Dr. Friskin continued to take notes.

He sighed again. "I knew that I was going to do everything I could to come back. This is my home. But I also knew that on New Krypton, I wouldn't have any powers. I'd be as vulnerable as any human being and that world was in the middle of a civil war. There was more than a passing possibility that I wasn't going to come back."

"I see." He could hear the frown in Dr. Friskin's voice. "So you were forced to confront your own mortality as well as leave behind the place you thought of as home and a job that you've told me before that you enjoy very much. Does that sum it up?"

He turned his gaze away from the fascinating pattern of speckles in the ceiling tiles to look at Dr. Friskin. She continued looking down at her notepad, deep in thought. So much for hoping her expression would give him a clue as to what she was expecting him to say. Why wasn't telepathy one of his powers? "Well…" he began, letting his voice trail off.

"What about people?" she asked.

"People?" he repeated.

"Yes, the people in your life that you had to leave behind."

"Oh." He bit back yet another sigh. He realized he was fidgeting with the edges of his cape and immediately dropped it. He folded his hands over his stomach, willing the nervous ticks to go away.

"This isn't something you're comfortable talking about, is it?"

"No," he admitted reluctantly.

"Why is that?"

He struggled to formulate a response in his head, but everything he thought of sounded stupid. "I don't talk about the people I care about," he said simply. "It's too dangerous. If the criminal element knew the people I was closest to, they'd try to use them to get to me."

"Well, Superman, anything you say in here, stays in here. Everything you tell me is in the strictest confidence. Now you said there are people whom you care for. Would you care to tell me a little about them?"

He looked up at the ceiling again, studiously avoiding eye contact. "No,” he admitted. “Not now, anyway,” he amended.

“All right,” she replied. He was almost stunned by the fact that she let the issue drop.

She started to write again and he resisted the temptation to x ray the pad to figure out what she was writing. She scratched away at the notepad for what seemed like an eternity. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I believe you haven’t returned to duty, is that right?” she asked after a long while.

“That’s right.”

After yet another long pause, she continued. “If it is at all possible, I’d like you to hold off on going back to work for the time being.”

Her statement was hardly surprising. Even he knew he was in no condition to go back to being Superman. But it still stung to hear her say it out loud. “All right,” he replied, trying not to sound too dejected. “It seems like Ultrawoman has everything under control.”

“Good. And I’d like us to speak no less than twice a week, at least at the outset.”

“Okay,” he heard himself agreeing, though he wasn’t sure he could handle the idea of two or more sessions a week on the shrink’s couch.

Dr. Friskin finally stopped writing and looked up at him. “We have a lot of ground to cover, but I think it is important for you to know that you're not the first person who has had difficulty adjusting to regular life after a long exposure to traumatic events. Members of my profession love labeling things. They take natural, ordinary, human responses and give them names like post traumatic stress disorder because the shorthand is a useful way of thinking of a grouping of symptoms. Unfortunately, it makes patients think that there is something 'wrong' with them, that their responses aren't normal.

"If you're having difficulty adjusting back to your own life, it's not because there's something wrong with you, Superman. In fact, if you weren't having difficulty, that would be more troubling. Our brains have developed ways of responding to trauma, unfortunately, these responses aren't entirely healthy in the long run. They're absolutely normal, but they aren't good coping strategies. It's just like what happens when the body goes into shock – it's a temporary coping mechanism that can have serious negative consequences if it is not treated. Unfortunately, our brains are no better than our bodies at dealing with overwhelming trauma. Just like we have to treat shock, we have to treat the psychological shock and come up with better long term strategies for dealing with difficult or painful events. Next time, I want to start talking about what happened up there so we'll have a better idea of how you can deal with those events."

He tried to let the words sink in. Her reaction hadn’t been all that different from Tao Scion’s. His physician and old friend had often told him that the brain’s mechanisms for surviving trauma, the very things that kept you alive, weren’t something you wanted turned on the rest of the time. When the trauma was over, those mechanisms were highly destructive. But sadly, there didn’t seem to be any sort of magic switch to turn him back into “regular” Clark. He sighed as he stood up, trying to project the Superman persona even though he felt decidedly un-heroic. He didn’t know what he was expecting, perhaps that some sort of burden would have been lifted. But all he felt was…numb.

“Thank you, Dr. Friskin,” he said.

“Is the same time on Thursday all right?” she asked.

Clark nodded curtly before gesturing toward the fire escape. “Would you mind if I used the window?”

“Not at all,” she replied. “I’ll see you Thursday.”

He nodded again in silent acquiescence before darting out the window. Clark started for Kansas but abruptly changed course. He’d been back for two weeks and had barely ever left the farm. Now that he could fly again, why shouldn’t he see some of the things that he’d missed all these years? This world had once been his to explore, after all. He turned sharply southward, heading toward the Amazon, to a place so warm, wet, and heavy with life that it was the antithesis of New Krypton.

********

Scanning the house, he was surprised to find his bedroom empty. Perhaps she was on a patrol. He looked more closely and found her in the den, curled up in the corner of the couch with a book. He landed on the back porch, shrouded in darkness. Opening the door quietly so as not to wake his sleeping parents or his son, he made his way to the one lit room in the farmhouse.

He knew that she must have heard him approach, but she didn’t look up from her book until he spoke. “Hey,” he said softly.

She closed the book and looked at him, her expression inscrutable. “Hey,” she replied, just as quietly. “How’d it go?”

“Okay, I guess,” he replied.

She looked at her watch, seemingly puzzled. “Were you there this whole time?”

“No,” he admitted. “I just needed some space, to think.”

Lois nodded in understanding. He didn’t know why he’d expected her to push more on the issue. To demand to know where he’d been. Perhaps it was because for the past four years, he’d constantly had to provide an accounting of where he was and with whom and when to the seemingly hundreds of people who always needed to know even the tiniest details of his life.

“I’m going to head to bed,” he said.

“I’ll be there after I finish my patrol,” she responded.

He started for the doorway once more. “I know it’s hard,” she said, causing him to pause. “The first few times I talked to Dr. Friskin, I wasn’t sure it helped much. But it got better.”

He nodded and walked out the door.

********

Lois spun into the suit as she flew high over the farm. He’d been gone for hours, but she knew that he would want space. She certainly had when she first started speaking to Dr. Friskin. The last thing she would have wanted after those emotionally draining sessions was to re-rehash all the things she’d had to talk about. But he’d almost seemed like he’d expected her to be mad at him.

She found herself guessing a lot more these days as she tried to figure out his moods. But that shouldn’t have surprised her. The man she was living with—the one who’d come back to her—was so different from the man she’d said goodbye to four years earlier. He was still Clark Kent. But in some ways, he’d become like a stranger to her. He didn’t have her husband’s patience. Or his sense of humor. He was closed off when the man she’d married trusted her completely.

Lois knew she couldn’t expect everything to go back to being the way it was when he left. Time hadn’t, in fact, stood still while he was away, even though it should have. She knew that he wasn’t the only one who was different. The last four years had had a profound impact on her, too. But there they both were, expecting the other to behave just as they would have four years ago. Neither one seemed to understand they ways in which the other had changed. And she knew it would take time.

But knowing it would take time didn’t make her any less impatient. She wanted that easy sense of partnership back. She wanted the marriage they’d hoped for.

Lois headed toward the bright lights of Metropolis in the distance. She was almost hoping to bust up some crimes tonight. Getting some of the ne’er-do-wells off the streets of her beloved city would make her feel better.

********

"All right, Superman, why don't we start with your experiences on New Krypton?"

"Just jumping straight in, huh?" Clark asked with a hint of bemusement in his voice. He sat on the leather couch, neatly gathering his cape as he leaned back.

"Well, I was never one for beating around the proverbial bush." Dr. Friskin uncapped her pen and set it to that familiar pad of paper.

"Where should I start?"

"Well, if there are any particular events that stood out in your mind as being more significant or traumatic than others…"

"Why don't we leave those until a little later?" he asked uneasily.

"That's fine, we can come back to them."

"How about I start at the beginning?" he offered.

"That seems as good a place as any," she replied warmly.

He began with an explanation of New Krypton's unusual political arrangements and how and why he'd found himself at the head of that arrangement. "It wasn't something I was prepared to do. I've never wanted to…rule… over people," he concluded.

"Hmm…" Dr. Friskin frowned, seemingly deep in thought. "You've never considered that with your strength, you could affect political change in the world?"

"No," Clark replied emphatically.

"Why is that? Why is Superman so non-partisan, so apolitical?"

"I can't let myself seem like…I'm taking sides. There's plenty for me to do without getting into that sort of mess. Besides, I can't do my job effectively if people don't trust me."

"Trust is very important to you, isn't it?"

"It's everything. If people don't trust me to do the right thing, to make the right decisions, I'm nothing more than a monster. These powers mean I have to work that much harder to earn people's trust. If they're afraid of me, what good am I?"

"So your experience on New Krypton was doubly frustrating, being without your powers and being asked to engage in an inherently divisive undertaking?"

"Right. Most of the time, I felt like I was in over my head."

"But not all the time?" she asked, turning the question around on him.

"No. There were a couple of times when it felt like the experiences I'd gained here were actually useful. There was an evacuation of a settlement that had been attacked. It was a lot like any other humanitarian disaster I'd faced, so I just tried to do what I would have done in other circumstances. I wasn't able to deal with it as effectively as I could have with my powers, though."

"How important are your powers? Do they define you?"

Clark sighed. "No. I mean, I'm not just the powers, but they are a big part of who I am. Being without them made me feel like I was missing part of who I was. It's like, if I were an artist, and I'd lost my sight, I wouldn't be able to do things that used to be a big part of who I was. Or if I were a musician or a carpenter and I'd lost the ability to use my hands. My powers are the same way. There's more to me than the powers, but without them…I wasn't the same."

“Let’s stop for now,” Dr. Friskin said. “But I’d like to see you back here soon.”

“All right,” he agreed as he sat up. “Monday night?”

“That will be fine.”

“Thank you, Dr. Friskin. For taking the time to help me. I know you must be busy.”

“It’s my pleasure, Superman,” she assured him. “I’ll see you on Monday night.”

********

The metal box had been left untouched since the day she brought it in from the capsule. It just sat there, practically taunting her. Secretly whispering, I know what you want to know. All you have to do is open me. Lois Lane hated secrets. She hated thinking that something big, something monumental was being kept from her. It’s why she was so good at being an investigative reporter. Of course, that had been ages ago. She didn’t go undercover anymore. She didn’t do stakeouts or sting operations. She hadn’t picked a lock in years. Though Ultrawoman had kicked down more than a few doors.

She ran her fingers lightly over the box’s lid. God, how she wanted to open it. She wanted to figure out how to activate those little globes. She couldn’t know for certain what sort of information would be on them, but she knew it would help her understand what Clark was going through better. She sighed, remembering how Clark had accused her of spying on him when he was with Jon to make sure he wasn’t going to have a meltdown. The trust in their relationship was somehow so fragile now. She wasn’t going to break it.

She was about to leave the room when the window was opened from the other side. Clark stepped into the room, dressed as Superman. Something about the sight of him in the suit still took her breath away. He was still the world’s purest symbol of hope. He was, in every conceivable way, her hero.

“Hey,” he said quietly, his tone so unlike the one Superman used.

“Hi,” she replied. “Everything go okay?”

“I guess.” His tone was noncommittal. He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t think this is going to work,” he said flatly.

She looked at him, puzzled. Lois couldn’t read the expression on his face and it frustrated her. She used to know her husband so well. “I can’t tell Dr. Friskin what’s wrong unless I tell her about us.”

It made sense. Granted, the way he worded it made it sound to her like what was wrong was them. “So tell her,” she replied.

“Tell her what, our secret?” he asked skeptically.

“You don’t have to tell her everything,” she replied.

“If I tell her about my invulnerable wife, she’ll know it’s you and from there…she’s smart enough, she’ll probably put it all together.”

“I know.” Lois knew it was certainly possible, but Dr. Friskin already had more than enough information to destroy Ultrawoman, if that was what she intended to do. Of course, nothing the good doctor had ever done even hinted at the possibility that she would betray Ultrawoman’s confidence. If running this risk was what it took for Clark to get the help he needed, so be it.

“I don’t want to do this,” he confessed. She walked across the room and pulled him into her arms.

“I know, sweetheart,” she whispered.

“I just wish there were another way,” he murmured as he held her tightly. Lois closed her eyes and hugged him just a little tighter.