Burden of Conscience By Raconteur27 Rated PG-13 Submitted: July 2002 All comments, good or bad, welcome. I don't own any of the recognizable characters in this story, but you already knew that. The idea for this story was planted in my head thanks to a debate on Zoomway's old boards regarding whether or not Superman could ever kill a person. (You can read the debate here: http://www.zoomway.com/boards/ubbhtml/Forum1/HTML/000624.ht ml ) The story deals with issues that might make some readers uncomfortable or squeamish, but for those who stick around to read it, I hope you enjoy it. Burden of Conscience Trask removed his sidearm from its holster, holding it up as he paced around Clark's crumpled form. Exhausted from the effort of destroying the Kryptonite, Clark lacked the strength to defend himself. "Now, let's see. Who should go first? You, or the human traitors who have sheltered you all these years?" Trask smirked down at his victim before turning toward the shed. Suddenly his weakened state became immaterial. No force on earth would keep him pinned to the ground while Trask threatened his parents. Summoning up the strength possessed by all creatures when facing certain death at the hands of a merciless predator, Clark lunged at the man, preparing for the impact of the metal slug that would no doubt come speeding out of the barrel of Trask's handgun. Instead, the only contact he felt was his own body colliding with Trask's. The older man was sent tumbling to the ground, but Clark was still in far worse shape. Trask picked himself up while Clark remained in a formless heap on the ground, struggling to breathe. Knowing that far more than his own life was at stake, Clark staggered to get back to his feet. "You're right, Superman, I don't need a gun," Trask said with that same arrogant smile on his face. Clark had no idea what happened next. He felt several blows compound the pain that was already coursing through his body, and once again, he was sprawled on the ground. He desperately clawed at Trask, dragging the other man to the ground with him. They locked up in a grappling hold but Trask got the better of him, slamming him against the wall of the shed. Clark felt the shed window behind him shatter before he staggered forward. He managed to land a few punches before Trask found a weapon: a shovel. Trask hit him once with the spade of the shovel and then again with its wooden handle. Trask knocked the wind out of Clark before he managed to wrestle it away from Trask. He shoved Trask hard, causing him to stumble. Clark looked at the shovel in his hands in disgust and dropped it to the ground. He advanced on Trask and landed a solid punch before grabbing Trask. They tumbled into the pond, breaking through the wooden railing on the dock, still struggling. The cold water was a shock to his body, but it barely had the chance to register; his muscles were in so much pain that the cramping up due to the cold wasn't likely to have a noticeable impact. He gasped for breath as he tried to keep Trask from holding him under water. Finally, he landed a left hook to Trask's solar plexus. As Trask doubled over, Clark, summoning up all his strength, hit Trask with a devastating upper cut, causing the older man to fall backward, up against a large rock. Clark gripped Trask's shirt tightly as he raised his fist. The older man looked up at him, his eyes cold and emotionless. "Go ahead, kill me, I would have killed you, Superman," he spat, clearly resigned to his fate. Clark angrily shook his head and threw Trask back into the water. How little this man understood him. "That's not how I work," he growled. He slowly slogged his way through the waist deep water and out of the pond, his body cold and aching. A police car pulled to a halt fifty feet in front of him. He felt his foot kick something loose on the ground and he looked downward. He looked up again to see the squad car door open and Lois jump out of the car. Her smile was suddenly replaced by a look of terror. "Clark!" she cried out. Time slowed as he looked over his shoulder. He saw Trask, a small pistol in his hand. Lois's cry was still ringing in his ears as Trask turned and moved his gun, which had been trained on him to aim at Lois instead. A cruel smile spread across his face. "It only seems fitting that I kill her first," he announced loudly. An eternity seemed to pass in the span of a heartbeat. He saw Lois's face, pale with terror. He wanted to cry out, but couldn't. Something wouldn't let him. He heard the deafening click as Trask cocked the hammer of the miniature pistol. He looked down again and lunged at the object he'd kicked moments ago: Trask's other gun. The sound of the shot firing hurt his ears. It echoed endlessly in the still air. He watched open mouthed and numb and still on his knees as Trask gripped at his throat. Clark heard the older man gasp for air as he dropped his little revolver and sunk into the pond. Moments passed in which Clark was still too shaken to even draw a breath. He heard sirens in the distance, but the sound was muted by the ringing in his ears: the sound of that shot. He looked down at the implement of death in his hand: Trask's handgun. His fingers trembling, he dropped the gun on the ground, backing away from the horrible thing and wiping his palms on his jeans, as though the act could get rid of the blood that was clearly on his hands. He stared at Trask's motionless body in the pond and scrambled to get to his feet. "Oh Clark," he heard Lois gasp. She started toward him, but he could only stare at Trask. Stumbling, he ran into the pond, toward Trask's body. It took only a moment for him to confirm that Trask was dead. He stepped away from the dead man's body, nearly falling as he did. The other squad car came to a screeching halt as he did. He waded out of the water as if in a trance, oblivious to Rachel Harris, jumping out of her squad car with her gun drawn, his mother and father rushing toward him, and Lois, standing, watching him. Her face was pallid and drawn. He heard her whisper his name but he did not acknowledge her. He drew in and let out a shaky breath as his knees started to buckle underneath him. He would never be able to remember what happened in those next few moments. He would never remember that it was Lois who was immediately by his side, helping him stand as his beaten and battered body protested against the effort. He would never remember Lois and his father helping him into the house and up the stairs. He would never remember that after his father helped him undress and get into the shower, Lois had waited outside his bedroom door, desperately wanting to ensure that he was okay. He would never remember her tears or her apologies or her thanks. All he would remember was the sound of that shot ringing in his ears and the image of Jason Trask, clutching at his wound and sinking into the water as he breathed his last. ******** Lois sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. She stared unblinkingly across the table at nothing in particular. "Lois, honey?" Martha asked as she placed a gentle hand on Lois's shoulder. Lois nearly jumped out of her skin at the simple contact. "Huh?" she asked, disoriented. "I'm sorry, Martha, I guess I'm just a little shaken up still." "It's all right, we all are," Martha said as she took a seat next to her. "Clark saved my life," Lois whispered almost inaudibly. She turned to the older woman. "Did you see his face when it happened?" She had no idea how to explain what had happened or how it was that she felt something in Clark die as he pulled that trigger. She didn't need to see the look in his eyes, or his pale and pained expression. She felt the tears prick at her eyes again. She could see him rushing to see if Trask was still alive, could see him wading out of the pond, his face blank. He hadn't responded to her or anyone else. Clark had saved her life by taking someone else's. He couldn't compromise on right and wrong, she knew that. Her partner's sense of ethics was too strongly developed for that. She hoped that she'd read him wrong; she hoped that that dull, listless look in his eyes was just the shock and not something worse. She was afraid. She was afraid that something wonderful inside her partner had died. She was afraid that she had killed it. ******** Clark pulled a T-shirt over his head and leaned against his dresser. "I killed a man, Dad," he whispered hoarsely. Jonathan stood in the doorway, a pensive expression on his face. "He had his gun trained on you, son, he would have killed you and Lois and then gone after us, if you hadn't." "I didn't even think about it, I didn't think about anything. I just fired; I didn't stop to aim or to think about trying to disarm him. I didn't care where I hit him. I didn't care if I killed him or not." He wanted to feel something, anything, but he didn't. He was numb. "You didn't have time to think; you just reacted and because you did, we're all still here," his father said quietly as he came stand next to Clark. "If Lois hadn't yelled out..." Clark shook his head. "You've been through an awful lot. You should rest, son." Clark merely nodded and tried not to flinch as his father pulled him into a hug. "I'm so glad you're all right," his father said. ******** Lois heard heavy footfalls on the steps. The slow thud of each deliberate step echoed in the otherwise quiet house. She looked up to see Clark, his eyes still dull and emotionless, walking down the stairs. She was surprised to see him down here. It had been hours, but she hadn't expected him to come back down at all tonight. Sheriff Harris had left a while ago, having taken statements from everyone except Clark. Jimmy was also at the police station, getting information and phoning it in to Perry. Clark shuffled into the kitchen, apparently oblivious to his parents and Lois, who had been sitting there for the past few hours. "We told Sheriff Harris that you'd go see her later," Jonathan explained. He leaned against the counter and sipped his tea slowly. Clark merely nodded. "Are they going to press charges?" he asked flatly. Lois couldn't help but gasp. "Clark, honey, of course not!" his mother exclaimed. "You did nothing wrong, son," his father said calmly. Clark turned to face them. The look in his eyes frightened Lois. She'd never seen that look on Clark's face before. She cast her gaze downward, suddenly afraid of making eye contact with him. "Dad, I killed a man," he said sharply. His words cut her. Clark had killed someone to save her life. She tried to swallow around the painful mass in her throat. "In self defense," his mother protested. "That man was going to kill you, Lois, your mother, Wayne Irig and me, son. I know it will take some time to accept it, but you only did what you had to." Absently, Lois realized that Clark's normally calm demeanor must have been the result of Jonathan's influence. "You should be resting now, we can talk about this a little later, when we've all had a chance to calm down." "This is going to be the same tomorrow as it is now. I killed another person. I didn't think about it, I just did it." His voice, like his eyes, was dull, betraying no emotion. "You did the only thing you could do, Rachel knows that, we know that. You did what any person in your position would do," Martha said quietly. "I can't just hold myself to the rules that everyone else follows, you know that!" he exclaimed. Lois was confused. Sure, Clark had a pretty rigid set of ethics, but what did he mean by that? "Clark," Jonathan began. Father and son exchanged a cryptic look. "I have to hold myself to a higher standard, or I'm no more than what Trask said that I am." "Honey," Martha started. "You know that's not true." "But it is," he replied gravely. "I want people to trust Superman. If he doesn't hold himself to higher standards, then he's nothing but a vigilante. Superman is not judge, jury, and executioner." Lois had been quiet until this point, but she was completely lost now. Why was he talking about Superman? "Clark, what do you mean?" she asked. "Jason Trask isn't the only person who died when I pulled that trigger. I killed Superman, too." Lois was more confused now than before. What was Clark talking about? "Clark!" his mother began. "I was Superman," he said flatly as though it was a perfectly normal thing to say. "Now do you get it? I mean I'm sure you're disappointed. What do you think of your hero now, Lois, now that he's a killer, now that he's just me?" He shot her a cruel look and stormed out of the kitchen. She felt her heart stop. His words and his anger had tore straight through her and it hurt. God did it ever hurt. He hadn't tried to hide the accusations. They were written plainly on his face. She'd destroyed Superman. She tried to say something but was too stunned. She stood up and watched him walk away. "Clark!" she cried out after him, but he didn't acknowledge her. The front door slammed as he made his retreat. She felt Martha's hand on her shoulder and she turned, mouth agape, to look at the older woman now standing beside her. Martha gave her a sympathetic look, but she couldn't hide the apprehension in her eyes. "Oh my god," Lois murmured. Clark was Superman? Superman was Clark? Clark was Superman. Superman was Clark. Clark had saved her when she was thrown out of the plane. Clark had swallowed the bomb on the shuttle. Clark had lifted that same shuttle into space. Superman was the 'hack from Nowheresville' who'd been foisted on her at work. Superman was the one she'd told about Claude. She'd stolen Superman's story, about Superman. Her thoughts were quickly spiraling off into absurdity. She'd gone square dancing with Superman and had bid her life savings on Clark Kent at a charity auction. Superman had won her a teddy bear at the Corn Festival and had jumped at a silly paper cut. Paper cut? Wait a minute, Superman didn't get paper cuts. "But he can't be," she murmured aloud. "I saw him get a paper cut yesterday. Superman doesn't get paper cuts." Clearly, Clark was delusional. That was it; Trask must have hit him quite hard. He wasn't thinking straight, that was all. "It was that damn meteor," Jonathan said acerbically. "It made him vulnerable, took away his powers." "What?" she asked incredulously. "Do you mean Trask was right about the meteor?" She looked at the Kents in disbelief. Surely they weren't serious. "Yes," Martha said simply. "Clark is Superman, and that rock Trask had nearly killed him." Lois fumbled with the back of her chair before she was able to pull it away from the table. "I think I need to..." she began before collapsing into her chair. "Sit down." She stared straight ahead at absolutely nothing. This couldn't be happening. Clark and Superman couldn't have been the same person. 'Yeah, sure, Clark's the before, Superman's the way, way after,' the irritatingly little voice inside her head taunted her. Clark was the strongest man in the world and Trask had almost killed, him, would have killed him and all the rest of them, if Clark hadn't shot him first. Superman, her hero, the one perfect being in the universe, had done something she never thought he would do. He had killed a man. And he'd done it to save her life. She buried her face in her hands; this was just too much to deal with now. "I'm going to make sure Clark's okay," Jonathan said softly. She didn't look up, but she could hear his footsteps as he left the kitchen. ******** Clark stood outside the shed, surveying the area. The sun had set and it was cold. He felt himself shiver. The police department had cleaned up pretty quickly; the only reminders of his fight with Trask were a broken window, a splintered wooden railing on the dock and a few busted bales of hay. They'd poured a neutralizer in the pond and had taken away the body. The evidence of death was gone. He supposed the presence of Hank, Rachel's deputy, along with the known fact that Trask was trying to kill them all, had quickly dispelled any notions of needing to investigate this as a possible homicide. But it didn't matter how you spun it or what semantic rabbits you pulled out of a magic hat. Any way you sliced it, he'd killed a man today. He'd taken a human life. In a split second, he'd snatched away another's existence. Trask no longer existed because of him. He had extinguished a human life. It didn't matter that Trask had been an evil maniacal man; it hadn't been Clark's right to kill him. He had taken a life in his hands and snuffed it out, just like that. No thought required. Staring out at the now calm glassy surface of the pond, Clark could still Trask, clutching his throat; there had been a lot of blood--on his neck, on his hands, in the water --too much blood. It didn't matter that it was gone now. To his eyes, the pond was still tainted with Trask's blood. Tainted with the blood that he'd spilt. Clark looked down at his hands. The hands of a murderer. He never thought he'd use his hands to destroy life. It certainly had not occurred to him when he'd created Superman that he would one day use these hands to take a life. It was funny; they didn't look any different now than they had before. But that brought up another unwelcome thought. Superman. There was no question in Clark's mind. He could no longer be Superman. It didn't matter whether or not he wanted to continue being the Man of Steel. He could no more be Superman than he could bring Trask back from the dead. Clark stood outside the shed, surveying the area, with nothing but the faint reminder of burnt gasoline in the air and the echoes of a gunshot only he could hear. He heard footsteps behind him and reluctantly turned around; it was his father. "Clark? Come on inside, son," his dad said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. Clark didn't turn to look at him. "It's getting cold and you need to rest and get your strength back." He was relieved but not surprised that his father didn't insult him with questions about whether or not he was okay. "Is she all right, Dad? Is Lois all right?" Clark turned to face his father. He needed to know that she was okay. He'd almost lost her today. It wasn't the first time he'd saved her life, but it was the first time when he was without his powers and not in control of the situation and it had scared him. He'd never been so afraid before. "She's shaken up pretty badly," Jonathan replied. "Confused about all the stuff you said, too." Clark nodded miserably. "I shouldn't have done that, I know," he admitted. She was probably furious with him-- angry about his deception, but probably a lot more upset over the fact that he'd so thoroughly destroyed the hero she'd created. She didn't realize it, but he wouldn't have had a clue how a super hero should behave if it weren't for her. It was her image of what Superman should be that he strove to measure up to. Superman was a paragon of virtue, even if he was taking his cues from a certain intrepid reporter. Clark had figured out the rescuing and crime fighting stuff on his own, but he'd been unprepared to have his creation be made into a celebrity and a role model. For that, he'd needed Lois's vision of what Superman was supposed to be. Superman had taken on a life of his own, with his own ethics - a mix of Clark's beliefs plus Lois's projections. The result was simple to explain yet tough to uphold. Superman was incorruptible; he'd never lie or cheat, and he certainly would never kill, under any circumstance. His morals were absolutes. It was black and white; there was no room for gray in the middle when you were the most powerful being in the universe. Superman had to live by moral absolutes because people had to be sure they could trust him. He couldn't expect people's trust if they questioned his ethics. He had to prove to them that he posed no danger to them, that his own morals were constraint enough over his powers. He'd shattered that trust today by proving that Superman's morals were not absolute. They were relative and situational and there was a whole lot of gray between the black and the white. He'd destroyed the hero and the monster that had been raised in his place was nothing more than a vigilante. The world did not need to be terrorized by an omnipotent, jack-booted thug who took the law into his own hands. He'd killed Lois's hero twice. First, by exposing him as nothing more than a simple man and second, by showing her the flaws in that man. "Come on," his father said again, intruding on his dismal thoughts. Wordlessly, Clark turned around and followed Jonathan back into the farmhouse. He wondered if he could make it through the door and into his room without seeing Lois. He couldn't face her now, couldn't face the anger and the hurt he knew he'd see in her eyes. ******** Lois sat awake in the Kents' living room, unable to sleep. It was nearly three in the morning and she had to leave for the airport at seven. Clark was not going with her. She had already talked to Perry about what had happened. He'd spoken to Jimmy earlier that evening, so the news was no surprise to him, but she figured he would need confirmation from her. He'd also taken her off the story, claiming she was too close to it. For the first time in her career, she hadn't had the heart to protest. Instead, she'd called Eduardo as Perry had instructed and told him the details of what had happened, leaving out everything about Clark being Superman, of course. She had felt that painful lump in her throat come back with a vengeance, first when she told Perry about the shooting, and again when she'd described it to Eduardo. Neither man had been able to believe it. She finished giving Eduardo the details and gave him the number for the Smallville Police so he could get the information from the officers and the police reports, and hung up the phone. In the interceding seven hours, she hadn't been able to do much of anything. Martha and Jonathan had tried very hard to help her make sense of an extremely confusing situation. She knew that they'd been through a horrible ordeal, too, but their patience and support seemed ceaseless. She'd done nothing wrong, they insisted, and she'd saved their boy's life, they pointed out gratefully. As much as she wanted to believe them when they said that Clark wasn't angry with her, but instead with his own powerlessness in that situation, she knew better. Nonetheless, she was grateful for their kindness. Lois had insisted to Martha that she'd take the couch, giving Clark the space and quiet he needed. When Martha and Jonathan went off to bed, she remained downstairs. She couldn't concentrate on anything-the television, a book, the newspaper-for more than a few minutes. She was tired, but restless and anxious. She couldn't sleep; she couldn't even close her eyes. Her stomach was churning painfully. All she could think about was Clark. She was pretty certain that the shock of realizing that Clark was Superman had definitely not set in. She was still having a tough time reconciling the two very disparate images and personalities into just one man. Under any other circumstances, she would have had so many questions. Who was he really? Where did he come from? Why was he here? She'd never suspected that Superman had a secret identity, and now that she knew, she couldn't even tell which had been the secret identity-both personas had been so real to her. But that point was rather moot. Superman was dead. Clark had said it himself. There weren't two men anymore, just one. She'd annihilated one man, and whether the other would recover from the wounds she'd inflicted remained to be seen. Clark hadn't said it aloud, but she hadn't just killed Superman, she'd obviously wronged him severely as well. She looked up at the ceiling, wondering if he was asleep. She doubted it. Lois had seen the tortured look in his eyes. He wouldn't be sleeping tonight either. ******** Clark sat at the base of the stairway, his head in his hands. He sighed and looked up; Lois lay on the couch, tossing and turning fitfully. He felt an ache deep inside, gnawing at him. Clark watched her shift restlessly. It was almost dawn and he hadn't even tried to sleep. He watched her, knowing it would be the last time he would see her in a while. He wasn't planning on being there in the morning when she left. He could see the pained expression on her face. "Clark," she murmured, still asleep. She called his name again and again. He stood up, unable to see her in pain. Clark wanted to go to her, to do something, anything, but he knew there was nothing he could do. He took a step forward, more out of instinct than intent. He stopped. If she woke and saw him there, well, he didn't want to think about the ramifications. Clark knew that she wouldn't want to have anything to do with him. He'd almost lost her today--almost lost her in a situation that was all his fault. He'd brought the people he cared about into danger. He was so grateful that she was still alive, but he knew that she wouldn't be able to forgive him for destroying Superman. He grimaced at the irony of the situation; he'd told her everything, had told her who Superman really was, and now she'd probably never know how much she meant to him. But none of that mattered. She wouldn't want anything to do with him, knowing that her once perfect hero was really nothing more than a bumbling, green reporter from Kansas. He was angry, not at her, but at having failed her so colossally. She would never look at him the same way again, as Clark or as Superman. She might have treated the two very differently, but she was starting to trust Clark as well, he'd seen it in these last few days. That trust was gone, though. She had set such impossibly high standards for Superman. She'd thought him to be perfect and he was nothing of the sort. But if he wasn't perfectly good, he couldn't be trusted, not with his powers. He'd been cruel to her earlier and he'd had no right to behave like that. She'd done nothing wrong. She wasn't at fault for his destruction of Superman; he'd done it all himself. But at that moment, he'd been incapable of sparing her from his own self-loathing. Somewhere, deep inside, he was angry with her, but through no fault of her own. She'd called out, distracting Trask and causing the madman to turn his gun on her instead. If only she hadn't seen Trask, if only she hadn't yelled out, Trask would have killed him instead. Hank was already there and Rachel was on her way; he told himself that they could have disarmed Trask and taken him into custody. If only Trask had shot him instead. Lois had saved his life but hadn't been able to save her hero. But if Trask had shot him, Superman would be dead anyway, he'd reminded himself. Dead in body, yes, but not in spirit. Superman would have died, virtue intact. He wondered if his parents would have told Lois the truth then. At some point, she would have figured it out herself, she was too smart not to. He wondered, if he had died, would she remember him fondly? Would she miss him at all? Would she still be angry with him, angry with him for making her believe that her hero was a demigod and not some lowly guy from Kansas? He needed to derail his own macabre train of thought. He could ponder these same morbid ideas all he wanted and it would accomplish nothing. The sun was coming up and Lois would probably be awake soon. He'd told his father to say goodbye to her for him. As quietly as possible, he slipped out through the front door. He didn't want to be around when she left. ******** Lois sat on the plane, fighting the tears that threatened to spill. She'd said her goodbyes to Martha and Jonathan. "Tell Clark...tell Clark, I'm sorry," she had asked them. "He wanted to come and say goodbye to you..." Jonathan began, clearly not intending to finish the platitude. She had merely nodded. She had been up early, having dozed off sometime in the hours before dawn, and Clark had been gone. Now, as she sat on the jet as it rumbled down the runway at Wichita Airport, she wondered for the thousandth time if he'd be okay, if he'd be able to get past what she'd done to him. Lois would be in Metropolis by noon and Perry had warned her against coming in, but where else was she going to go? ******** "Lois, I thought I told you not to come in here!" Perry exclaimed as soon as she stepped off the elevator. She sighed. "I've got work to do, Perry," she explained, exasperated. Lois walked into the bullpen, silently noticing that everyone was giving her an even wider berth than usual. Ralph, the Planet's own slimeball in chief, caught sight of her and surprisingly looked down instead of giving her his trademarked sneer. The usually chatty research assistants, gathered around the coffee machine, were suddenly very quiet. Eduardo merely gave her a sympathetic looking half smile, while Cat raised an eyebrow at her and shot her a knowing look. What exactly it was that Cat knew, no one else, including Lois, seemed privy to that information. Aware that just about every pair of eyes was on her, Lois made her way to her desk. She paused for a moment before sitting down, glancing at Clark's empty desk. Lois booted up her computer and pretended that she didn't notice that the normal din and hum of the newsroom was absent. Were they planning on going back to work soon, or were her colleagues going to spend the rest of the afternoon gaping? Jimmy shuffled over to her desk minus his usual enthusiasm. "Hey Lois, is CK all right?" he asked. "I don't know, Jimmy," she answered, knowing that the young man had grown quite fond of Clark. Clark had always treated him like a friend and an equal and in return Jimmy had admired and respected and genuinely liked Clark. "Lois!" She looked up at the gruff sound of Perry's voice. "My office. Now." Her shoulders sagged slightly. Perry sounded ticked and she wasn't sure she could talk to him at the moment. But it wouldn't do to keep him waiting. She walked into the editor's office, like a prisoner marching to her execution. "Close the door," Perry barked as soon as she entered his office. She complied; knowing that behind that door was a newsroom of disappointed gossipmongers. Reporters had an innate need to know everything and took office gossip to a higher level than most other professionals. Perry stood behind his desk, frowning. "What's up, Perry?" she asked, trying to sound calm and collected. "Have a seat, Lois," he said, gesturing toward the beat up old couch in the corner. He sat next to her on the sofa. "Are you all right, Lois?" he asked earnestly. "I'm fine, Perry," she said with a shrug. "Huh. Well, I uh, I know you're probably mad at me for taking you off the story, but..." he started to explain. "I was too close to the story," she finished for him. "I know. It was the right thing to do." "It was?" he asked, surprised. "I mean I'm glad you can see that." He nodded slowly but said nothing more. "Perry?" "Huh?" "Was there something else?" she asked. "Oh, well, I spoke to Clark today," he began. "He's gonna stay in Smallville, at least for a while. I told him to take his time and put him on medical leave." "Oh," was all she could say. "I know I don't have to tell you that he was pretty shaken up," Perry continued. "But I think he'll be back soon and I told him his job would be waiting for him." "Okay," she said softly, feeling a sudden sense of loss. It was as if the possibility of losing her partnership with Clark was only now dawning on her. She'd never needed a partner and she hadn't wanted one, but then she'd been assigned to work with a rookie reporter who had just fallen off the turnip truck as far as she was concerned, and suddenly, having a partner wasn't so bad, as long as that partner was Clark. She'd fought it at first, but she'd grudgingly had to admit that their writing styles complemented each other. He was smart and hard working, and most importantly, he wasn't intimidated by her. He was the perfect partner for her because he could put up with her, he respected her, and intellectually, he was her equal. Sure, he was inexperienced and she thought, a bit na‹ve, but he was dedicated to his work and he had talent, real talent. And now she knew that Clark Kent was so much more than what he appeared to be. Clark Kent had saved hundreds of people's lives. He'd saved her life, several times already. He was a hero and an icon, a larger than life personification of everything good in the world. He was hope. Or at least he had been. And then she'd destroyed him. She was so sorry. She had destroyed the one thing in the world that gave people hope. Clark Kent, the hack from Nowheresville, as she'd put it once, showing her prejudice and snobbishness, used to be Superman. He also used to be her partner. Surely he wouldn't want to continue that, not after what she'd put him through. Their partnership was over, and she realized that she was losing more than just her hero. She cleared her throat. "There are some leads I want to look into," she said. "Something I was working on before Clark and I...before we left for Smallville. I should get back to work." Perry nodded in understanding. "Lois, if you need to take any time off..." he started. She merely shook her head. "I need to work, Perry. I'll be fine." She left the editor's office and returned to her desk. Lois needed to work; she could always bury her troubles in her work. Whenever her personal life was in turmoil, she'd simply concentrate on her work. She'd been doing that quite a bit for the last few years. ******** Over the next few days, things at the Planet went back to... well, not normal, exactly, but back into a routine of sorts. The old Lois Lane was back: single-minded and completely focused on her work. But it wasn't the same as before. Before, her colleagues mainly ignored her and talked about her behind her back when they thought she was too engrossed in work to notice. Now, instead of indifference, she got looks of sympathy from some and looks of contempt from the rest. The newsroom seemed suddenly divided in half over some issue revolving around her and she wasn't happy about it in the least. "Hi Lois," Cat said, gushing with sympathy, as she passed Lois's desk. Lois merely sneered at her colleague. "What, no insult, no petty barb, today, Cat?" she shot back. Cat looked confused at Lois's retort. "What's with everyone?" Lois demanded. "Half the newsroom is treating me like I killed the class hamster, and then there's you, and all this, this niceness, why are you being nice to me, Cat? Why are you treating me like, like..." Lois's face fell. "Like I just lost my best friend," she finished flatly, slumping in her chair. The sympathetic smile was back on Cat's face. "He'll be back," she said. "Give him a few days, he'll be back." ******** Clark spent the days after Trask's death wandering around the farm. He'd gone in to talk to Rachel at the police station. Trask's death had been ruled a justifiable homicide and the case had been firmly closed. Rachel had been forced to focus much of her energies on placating the Feds who had taken over the larger investigation into what exactly Trask was doing in Smallville. Rachel had told him in passing that everyone regarded Trask as certifiable and that the investigation was focused mainly on how a psychotic like him could get as far as he had before being stopped. There was little chance of anyone discovering anything concrete on the meteorite or Trask's theories. Of course Lois knew, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He wasn't certain what she would do about it. His mother had told him that she and Lois had a fairly long conversation after he'd stormed out of the house. He hoped that despite his compounded stupidity, Lois would have realized the importance of keeping the secret; not for his sake, he couldn't have cared less what became of him, but because of his parents. Their lives would be destroyed if everyone knew. Of course, it would put to rest questions of what had become of Superman, but he wondered which end was more fitting for the hero -- having people think he'd simply abandoned Earth, or letting them know that their hero was a killer. If the truth came out, he'd probably be chased away, perhaps people would demand that he leave Earth entirely. He'd go, of course, he wouldn't try to defend himself, but he worried about what would become of his parents in that scenario. Would they be blamed for his actions, would they be seen the way Trask had painted them, as human traitors, harboring the greatest threat to humanity? His parents. They'd been sympathetic, had given him space, and had let him know that they were there if he needed to talk to them, but he didn't know how to make them understand. They kept telling him that he'd done the right thing and that he'd had no choice. Clark wanted to believe them, but how could he? They were worried about him, he knew that, but he couldn't just turn off the guilt and the anger, not even for them. He tried to work around the farm, to help out any way he could, but he just couldn't stay busy enough. His mind was always free to contemplate the exact moment when everything had gone wrong. When he'd destroyed his own plans and the hopes of an entire world. He remembered angrily confessing to Lois that he'd destroyed the hero she'd helped to build. He could only wonder how she was taking it, but he knew that had to be hard on her. He'd made a mess of everything, and every day he was being tortured for it. As bad as the days were, the nights were worse. He hated the nighttime. Nightmares plagued his sleep. It was always the same horrible dream, over and over again. He was standing by the pond, facing Lois, his back to Trask. Sometimes his mind played it out exactly as it happened. The sound of Lois's voice calling his name, Trask's menacing expression as he retrained his gun on Lois, the pounding of his own heart, the deafening sound of that gun, the bullet finding its target, Trask sinking into the water, his eyes open, his mouth agape, his hand covering the quickly draining wound on his throat, the blood in the pond, clouding up the water; his mind's eye conjured up every detail. Sometimes it was different. Sometimes he missed or Trask fired first and he'd find himself rushing to Lois's side to catch her as she collapsed to the ground. She would never say anything. She'd just look at him, as if questioning why-why had he failed her? Sometimes it was her blood on his hands instead of Trask's. Those dreams never went any further than that. The excruciating pain of watching Lois die in his dreams, holding her in his arms, watching her suffer, unable to do a damn thing about it, was enough to startle him awake. Those nights, it was hard to fight the tears. The thought of letting Lois die was enough to send him tumbling into blind panic and to give him a glimpse of a living hell he'd never before imagined. And sometimes, when he shot Trask, the older man didn't die right away. Instead, Clark would rush into the pond, just like he had that day, to find Trask glaring at him. With his dying breath he would curse Clark. "I've exposed you for what you are, alien. Others will rise up and take my place to protect Earth from you and your kind. I haven't died in vain." His words were always venomous. And the Trask who haunted his nightmares was right. He had exposed Clark for what he was. Not the front man for an alien invasion, but a powerful menace no less. Clark had arrogantly thought that his absolute power would not corrupt him, that his sense of right and wrong was too solid. But he'd fallen, like so many others before him. Although he was without his powers at the time, he'd proved that he was not above killing. Superman had shattered his own indestructible code of ethics. His moral absolutes proved to be less than absolute and that meant one thing. Superman had killed the most important thing that he stood for and so Superman had killed himself. Clark couldn't have continued being Superman if he wanted to. Everything he thought he stood for, everything he hoped to do, it all meant nothing, if he was unable to uphold and abide by his own moral code. If Superman proved himself to be no more immune from human flaws and failings as the average person, he had no place holding the kind of power that he did. In one moment, he'd turned a great force for good into a force of destruction. He'd taken a human life. He'd crossed an ethical Rubicon he'd never intended to go near and there was no turning back now. The hero was dead and all that stood in his place was one horribly flawed man who seemed doomed to forever be haunted by those dreams. For some reason, there would never be any mercy in those dreams. No matter what, Trask would never just kill him. It would have been the only way for him to escape the situation without blood on his hands. If Trask had just killed him, he wouldn't have needed to go after Lois or his parents. Trask would have gotten what he wanted and he, Clark, could have been relieved of his guilt. But even in his dreams Clark was forced to endure the burdens of a heavy conscience. Even in dreams there was no refuge from his guilt, only new and old ways to experience it, over and over again. He desperately wanted to stay away from Metropolis, to simply close the book on that chapter of his life and move on as if it had never happened, but he knew better than that. He could never forget about Lois, about working at the Planet, about those few weeks when it seemed as those his dreams for a simple, but fulfilling life were on the verge of coming true. He'd even started to wonder if Lois was *the* one. It would never happen now. He'd irrevocably destroyed that possibility, but he still had to go back to Metropolis, to at least work out two week's notice, get rid of his apartment, tie up all the loose ends and then move on. ******** "Lois, have you got me any leads on where in Sam Hill Superman's gone to?" Perry barked across the newsroom from his office. "Not yet, Chief," Lois called back. She knew full well that neither Perry nor anyone else would ever get the elusive story on Superman's disappearance, but she was in no position to tell him why. She got up from her desk and started toward the elevators. "I sure as hell hope you're going to get me that Superman story," Perry yelled, appearing in his doorway. Lois let out an exaggerated sigh. "Mayor's press conference," she announced. "You remember, the assessment on the city's rescue services is being released today." Perry grunted, seemingly less than satisfied. Was she responsible for the fact that it was a slow news day and that the one front that Perry and every other editor in Metropolis wanted the exclusive on was a dead end? Well, she had to plead innocent on the first count, and on the second...she knew that if it hadn't been for her, Superman would be in the skies where he belonged, doing good deeds and making headlines. She turned back toward the elevator and before she could press the 'down' button to summon the car, the doors slid open. She took a step backward, nearly tripping, and found herself suddenly unable to speak as her grim-faced partner, (or was it ex partner, already?) stepped out of the elevator. She stepped aside, waiting and hoping for him to acknowledge her. He looked up, as though only now realizing that she was there. The serious expression was gone for a moment. She looked into his eyes, their dark, soulful depths betraying a sense of loss and agony and shame. She knew that she couldn't begin to understand the depth of his pain, but there was no mistaking the haunted look on his face. It was like she could see right inside him and it was clear that something important, something sacred, something deep inside of him, something that made him who he was, had been ripped away. "Lois." She heard him breathe her name, almost as if he hadn't meant to do it. A tiny muscle in his jaw ticked as he concentrated on regaining his serious and controlled visage, but at the same time, his eyes searched hers, seeking something, and when he turned away, looking at the floor, it was clear that hadn't found it. She had taken something away from him, it made sense that he wanted her to give it back, but how could she? How could she undo the past? She felt her breath escape her in a ragged sigh. "Clark." Her voice wavered on that single, simple word. She wanted to say something to him, but there was nothing she could say. She knew that he'd heard her, but he did nothing to acknowledge the fact. His shoulders sagging, his posture screaming defeat and at the same time, a quiet resignation to that defeat, he walked away from her. She felt an ache deep in her chest, a pain she swore she would never feel again. She felt her heart break, a heart that she thought she'd trained to grow cold. It was only now, when it was shattering, that she realized how cold she had grown. She tried to suppress a shiver and rushed into the waiting elevator. ******** Clark walked to his desk, aware of the dozens of pairs of eyes focused on him. He responded to the sympathetic smiles and the 'hellos' with a softly spoken 'hi' or a nod of acknowledgement of his own. He booted up his computer and made his way to the coffee machine to pour himself a cup. Clark looked around the newsroom. The setting had become so familiar over these last few months. He'd grown to feel at home here, as if this newsroom was exactly where he belonged. But now, it was as if the high, vaulted ceiling of the newsroom was collapsing on him and the walls of the expansive, open design were closing in. The bullpen was suddenly a restrictive enclosure and the confines of the fifth floor of the Daily Planet building, home to some of the finest reporters in the country, were too much to bear. He needed out of this place and away from all the familiar elements that were slowly suffocating him. He needed away from these people whom he called friends, this office where he felt so comfortable, this job that he enjoyed so much and that desk, just across from his, belonging to a woman he'd spend the rest of his life trying to forget. Clark wandered back to his desk, knowing full well that all of his stories had been reassigned. He'd been gone two weeks and anything he'd been working on before then had been finished up by someone else. The news wouldn't sit around and wait for him indefinitely. Now, with an empty story load, he'd be waiting for Perry to assign him something. He desperately hoped that it wouldn't be some puff piece. Clark was pretty sure that Perry would lob him a softball, or a 'confidence booster' as the Chief would call them, something that wouldn't require any real effort or concentration on his part and nothing that would cause him any stress. "Clark, can I see you in here?" Perry asked from his office doorway, as if on cue. "Sure, Chief," Clark called from his desk. He unenthusiastically made his way to Perry's office. "I'm glad to see you back here, son," Perry began as soon as Clark closed the door. Clark took a seat in front of Perry's desk and the older straightened in his chair. "I can't say that I know what you went through, but I know it wasn't something you can just walk away from and be okay. I want you to take your time, you don't need to rush back into this and if you need to talk to someone, like a professional, the Planet will take care of everything," Perry explained sympathetically. "Thanks, Perry," Clark said. "I appreciate it, but I just don't think this is where I should be now." "If you need more time, Clark, you've got it," Perry replied quickly. "I need to get away from this place, this city," Clark continued. "I need to get out of Metropolis." "I know it hasn't been very long, son, so I'm hoping you'll reconsider that and think about what I said about taking some personal time before you make any rushed decisions." Clark shook his head. "I can't stay here," he said firmly. "I hope you're not doing this to avoid dealing with something, son. Let me tell you right now that you can't run away from trouble. You understand? There ain't no place that far." In the deepest corner of his mind, Clark knew that Perry was right. It didn't matter where he went, he'd be haunted by the events of that day. But he was still determined to bury Superman and the remains of the life that he'd started to build here. He couldn't even pretend to go on living unless he laid them to rest. He nodded reluctantly. "I know, Perry. There are just some things I need to think about and figure out and I know I can't do that here. I'll work out my two weeks' notice, though." "Hell, son, you've proved to be one of the best damn chances I've taken as editor of the Daily Planet. You're a good reporter and one the Planet doesn't want to lose. You know that we've got bureaus all over the world; maybe I can find something for you somewhere else. Would you be willing to take a transfer?" Clark nodded slightly. "Maybe, yeah, I think so." He was conflicted. He wanted to make a clean break from everything that could possibly remind him of this failed experiment in having a real life, but at the same time, he loved this job. He wasn't concerned about whether he burned these bridges because he wasn't planning on ever crossing them again, but the Daily Planet was an incredible organization to work for and taking an assignment abroad meant that he could get as far away from Metropolis as possible without having to look for another job. "All right, son, if this is what you want, I'll start making calls. It'll probably take a few weeks to arrange it. We could use you around here until then, but if you need to leave now..." Perry said somewhat reluctantly. Clark shook his head. "No, I'll keep working until then," he said. "Okay son, I'm not happy to see you go, but if this is what you need to do, then I hope everything works out all right." "Thanks Perry, for everything," Clark said as he stood from his seat. "It's like I told you before, son. I back my reporters up, one thousand per cent." Perry gave him a halfhearted smile. "Your partner's down at City Hall covering the press conference," Perry said absently, his attention now turned to the copy in front of him on his desk. "Is it something major?" Clark asked. He had no idea what had been going on in Metropolis in the last two weeks. If it were breaking news, he'd have no choice but to go. "Not really," Perry replied without looking up. "I'm not sure if you've heard, but Superman's been gone these last few weeks and no one knows where he is. A lot of folks had been saying that the city's rescue services were getting too dependent on him. The annual rescue services assessment comes out today and the Mayor's holding a press conference." "Do you think Lois needs me down there? I mean, I'm sure she can handle it," Clark spoke hesitantly. He'd seen Lois for a few seconds when he'd stepped off the elevator and that in itself had been sheer agony. He didn't know if he could endure working with her, seeing the anger and disappointment he knew he would find in her eyes. If he were honest with himself, he'd know that he deserved it and so much more. That dull ache that haunted him day and night and left him feeling cold and sick and empty inside had been nothing compared to the sharp, excruciating pain that threatened to tear him apart every time he saw her or heard her voice. Everything about her reminded him of what it was that he'd destroyed. Being near her made him want to die. Perry looked up from his desk, frowning. "If you want to work, son, I need to know that I can count on you to work on the stories I need you to cover," Perry said somberly. Clark fought back a sigh. "I'm on my way, Chief." Perry nodded curtly and turned back to his paperwork. Clark left the editor's office and made his way to the elevator, hoping that he might be able to make it through the press conference without running into Lois there. Maybe if he hid in the back and didn't ask any questions he'd get lucky. He sighed again, wondering if it would be possible to avoid Lois entirely for the next few weeks. ******** Perry heard a knocking on the door behind him. "You wanted to see me, Perry?" He recognized Lois's voice and spun his chair around to face her. "I wanted to tell you that Clark's leaving," he said. He watched the color drain from her face. She took a step backward, bumping into the doorframe. "No," she whispered, shaking her head slowly. "No, Perry, you can't let him!" she exclaimed emotionally. He wasn't expecting this. He thought that she'd probably take it hard, but her emotional response surprised him. "Reassign us, end our partnership, transfer me to another division, Perry, do whatever he wants, just don't let him go." Transfer? Had he heard her correctly? Lois was the top reporter on the city beat and she took no small amount of pride in that fact. Was she asking him to transfer her out for Clark's benefit? And why would she think that that would keep Clark at the Planet? Did she think that she was the reason why he was leaving? He frowned, come to think of it, Clark had seemed quite reluctant to go when he'd told him to join her at the press conference. Had Clark hidden his real reasons for wanting to go? Was Clark leaving because he couldn't work with Lois? Perry had read the police reports and had heard the whole story from Jimmy and from both Lois and Clark and as far as he could tell, his reporters had saved each other's lives. What else had happened to them over those three days in Smallville? What was destroying his best reporting team and making his top reporters miserable? Perry looked up at Lois again. Her expression was full of guilt and shame; it was the same expression that Clark had worn when he'd come in here a few hours earlier. He shook his head. "Clark said that he needs to get away from Metropolis," Perry explained, knowing he wouldn't be able to get at why Lois thought she was responsible for this. "I offered him a position abroad in one of our international bureaus, and I think he's going to take it, but it'll take a few weeks to arrange. I was actually hoping that you might be able to convince him not to go." Perry was already fairly certain of how she would respond. Lois shook her head again. "I don't think there's anything I could do to make him stay," she said softly and Perry suddenly realized just how tough this was going to be on Lois. He'd known from day one that pairing the two of them up would be good for both of them. Clark would quickly learn the ropes partnered with Lois. He'd shown initiative and his writing was impressive, and if he were tough enough to work with Lois, he'd have a bright future as an investigative reporter. And Lois, well, he knew that Lois would be unhappy with partnership, but while she was without peer as an investigator, Perry felt that she was holding something back when she wrote. She'd been cynical and sometimes unable to see the human side of the stories she worked on. Her work was superb, award-winning even, but he'd thought that pairing her hard edge with a softer touch would improve even her work. Perry had never been more right about anything in his life. In a few short months, they'd turned out some of the best work he'd seen as an editor. The partnership had succeeded even better than he'd expected and it had changed not only his best reporter's work, it had seemingly changed his best reporter, herself. The changes had been subtle, but real. Now Lois, who had fought tooth and nail against being assigned a partner, was suddenly placing the well being of that partner above her own career. "Well, I ah..." Perry began, dragging a hand through his thinning hair. "So you don't think that you and Clark will be able to work together for the next few weeks?" "I guess that's up to him," she said softly. "Lois, what happened?" Perry asked. Lois shook her head slightly. She stood up and walked to the door and turned back to face him. "He killed a man in order to save my life, Perry, and he hates me for it." She walked out of his office. ******** It hadn't been easy to avoid Lois at the press conference. He'd hid in the back and refrained from asking questions when he thought of several things he really wanted to ask about for the story. He was thankful when Lois asked them herself. He quietly took notes while she grilled the Mayor about the readiness of Metropolis's emergency crews. Clark felt a pang of guilt; if it hadn't been for Superman's disappearance Metropolis wouldn't be facing a public safety crisis. Metropolis had done okay without Superman, he tried to tell himself, the city would adjust and return to normal in his absence, and soon Superman would be even less than a vague and distant memory. He'd taken a cab back to the Planet after the conference was over to find that Lois had beaten him back. She was already typing at her computer when he entered the newsroom. He didn't go over to her desk the way he would have before. There was no doubt in his mind that she would blame him for this problem, and rightfully so, but there was nothing he could do about it. Superman was dead. Nothing could change that. Clark sat down at his computer and started to collect his notes. They could work independently and simply put everything together at the end. It wasn't their usual style of collaboration, but under the circumstances, it was the best possible way to handle the situation. At one point, Perry called Lois into his office. When she came out several minutes later, she was visibly upset about something, but she immediately returned to her desk and to her work. She stopped typing a while later, and simply sat at her desk, staring at a blank terminal. After a long while, she stood up and walked to his desk. Her eyes were red, but she held up her chin. It hurt to look at her. It hurt to be anywhere near her, knowing how much she hated him. He tried to focus on his own computer terminal but she stood next to his desk, as if challenging him to continue ignoring her. He forced himself to make eye contact. It was all he could do to keep from crying out and throwing himself at her feet and begging her forgiveness. "We need to put together the piece on the press conference," she said evenly. He merely nodded. When he did, he could see a flash of what must have been anger flit across her expression. They spoke perhaps a dozen more words to each other as they put the story together. Lois stood stiffly besides his desk while they put the main article together. Normally, he would have been hovering around her workstation, sitting on the corner of her desk or standing behind her chair, his arm across the back of it, while they worked. The awkwardness that settled between them was palpable. Eventually, they finished the article. Clark skimmed it for the last time, knowing that the editors would have more work than usual with this one. The transitions weren't as smooth as they normally were, and there were probably places where the whole thing could have been tightened. It was an okay piece of journalism, but nothing like some of the stuff they'd done before. He tried to tell himself that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Now that he knew that there partnership wasn't working anymore, he knew that telling Perry he wanted to leave was the right thing to do, for everyone concerned. "Perry's going to want a sidebar on the impact of Superman's disappearance," she said at last. "Would you..." he began, somewhat pathetically. She nodded briefly and turned to go back to her own desk. He owed her a great deal for keeping his secret. Since returning that morning, Clark had skimmed the papers from the last few weeks. Lois's work had always reflected a certain professional air toward the super hero's disappearance that was absent from the work of just about all other journalists. She never denounced Superman for 'running away,' or used her space in the paper's columns to make public pleas for his return. He'd even seen a few pieces on the Op-Ed page that he thought were her work, advocating the 'Man of Steel' for the work he'd done and declaring that given Superman's record of helping others, that he probably had a very good reason for staying away. Of course, he could never be certain about the authorship of those columns and they were often the voice of a lone wolf amongst a very large pack of others who seemed to want their pound of flesh. He needed to get away from all this. A new city, a new job, and no icon in the red and blue suit to have to measure up to were exactly what he needed. He knew that Perry was right, he couldn't run away from his problems, but maybe he could put distance between himself and the sources of his problems. Maybe then he'd have the space he needed to deal with them. Maybe, everything would get better when he left this place. And maybe he was the king of self-delusion. ******** Late that night, Clark sat in front of his closet in his apartment on Clinton Street. He stared at the red and blue suit in his hands. He was really starting to like this place. The suit he was holding was one of the copies of the original that his mother had made. He tightening his grip on the spandex and tore the suit to ribbons, letting the tattered fragments fall to the ground. He took out all the other suits and did the same to them. The pile of fabric at his feet grew. He reached into the closet a final time and pulled out the last one. He bunched up the material in his fists, but couldn't tear it apart like the others. It was the original suit. The one his mother had designed. The shield on it was the one that they'd found with him in the ship. This suit was a part of him, and as much as he wanted to, he couldn't bring himself to destroy it. Instead, he threw it a trunk of his old stuff and shoved it to the back of his closet. Clark walked around his apartment. It was a great apartment, big and open and he'd been able to fix it up the way he wanted. It wasn't in the best part of town, but that meant the rent was low. Besides, it wasn't like he'd had a lot to worry about. Clark had tried to tell himself that the fact the proximity to Carter Avenue in a much better neighborhood had nothing to do with his decision to rent this apartment, but even then, Lois had been paramount in his mind. He shook his head; he'd been setting himself up for heartache right from the beginning, but he couldn't have helped it. In a few weeks, he'd leave this apartment and this city and that woman behind forever. He'd been happy here, but there was no way he could stay. He'd already gone over all the reasons and the explanations and he knew that it was the right thing to do, but that didn't make it any easier. Clark sighed again. He didn't want to think about this anymore, it hurt too much. ******** Lois sat at her desk, typing. It would be a few hours before she'd be able to start making phone calls. She may not have limited herself to normal business hours but it seemed that all the people she needed to interview did. The newsroom was quiet; Perry wasn't even in yet. She sighed in frustration. Lois hated guilt. Whatever she was feeling, she could ignore it by doing more work, whether she was hurt or angry she could always simply set aside her feelings and focus on her job. But guilt didn't work that way. There was no way to ignore guilt. No amount of work, no extreme use of her abilities to focus on one thing at the detriment of all others, was enough to make the guilt go away. Instead, she spent an awful lot of time thinking about what had happened. Lois had started to put the pieces together slowly, trying to figure out how it was that Clark Kent had fooled everyone. More importantly, she was putting the pieces together and realizing that there had been a real man in that red and blue suit. Superman hadn't been some stoic Spock-like alien, flawless and omnipotent. He may have been physically invulnerable, but he was as emotionally vulnerable as anyone else, probably more so than most, given how gentle and caring Clark was. He'd been hurt badly, so very badly, and it was her fault. And it didn't look like there was anything she could do to put back together what she'd torn asunder. He was leaving the Planet because of her. She knew how much this job meant to him, and he was going to give it all up because he couldn't stand being around her. She'd destroyed his life as Clark Kent as well as his role as Superman. How could she have done so much to hurt the nicest, most caring person she'd ever met? She hadn't been able to sleep the night before. Lois had simply lain awake all night. She'd wept bitterly despite all of her previous resolutions to never cry over a man again. This time, the tears were shed for the pain that she'd caused someone else. She didn't know if this was irony or just poetic justice. Her whole life, she'd probably been too self-centered to ever feel such guilt and remorse. Would she have ever cried for someone else before? In the small hours of the morning she had wandered around her apartment miserably. She had been too tired to sleep or to think, or to do anything except feel guilty. Lois had to get out of her apartment. She would do nothing except drive herself insane there. She showered and dressed, applying more makeup than usual to hide the dark circles under her eyes. The first cold gray rays of light were filtering into her apartment as she had left. Now, she was at the Planet, trying in vain to work in the quiet confines of the bullpen. The workday may not have started for anyone else on the regular daytime shift at the paper, but being here at least gave her some distraction from the thoughts plaguing her mind. She got up from her desk to fetch her third (or was it fourth?) cup of coffee of the morning. The elevator chimed softly and the doors quietly slid open. It was probably Perry, she thought to herself. She looked up to see a man exit the elevator. It wasn't Perry, it was Clark. Lois watched him slink out of the elevator and into the dimly lit newsroom. He had his hands in his pockets and his posture declared utter defeat. He looked like a man who didn't even know who he was anymore. She looked down at the floor, avoiding eye contact. Maybe if she turned around nonchalantly, she could pretend that she hadn't seen him and didn't know that he was there. It was worth a shot, she thought as she turned back to her desk, pretending to be engrossed in the notes in her hand. She took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. She'd been so distracted by his sudden appearance that she'd forgotten the milk and sweetener. Oh well, this was a cup of coffee she'd have to drink black. Lois sat back down at her desk and tried to work, but it was infinitely more difficult with Clark in the room. He'd avoided her entirely, giving her a rather wide berth, probably in hopes that the newsroom was big enough for both of them to work quietly and not have to interact with each other or even acknowledge each other's presence. They'd made eye contact once, by accident, and that was it. She'd looked across at him briefly and had caught his eye. He'd turned away quickly, but it had taken her a little longer to do the same. The sadness in his eyes was overwhelming. Never before had she felt such pain at seeing someone else's suffering. She now felt a perverse desire to look over at him from time to time, as if to remind herself of what exactly, she'd done to him. Every time she'd surreptitiously glance over at him and to see the melancholy look on his face and the way his shoulders sagged, she was reminded anew of the pain she'd caused him. Once or twice, she'd seen him look over at her from the corner of her eye. She couldn't read his expression from that angle and she didn't want to turn and face him, but she had no doubt that his mind was also on her crimes. She knew that if she turned to look, she'd see an anger and a resentment that were totally foreign to the old Clark she once knew. The Clark she'd destroyed. She sighed. Yesterday had been difficult, but at least they'd been talking, well, sort of. Now, he was completely ignoring and avoiding her. With the exception of the night editor, who had made herself busy elsewhere, newsroom was empty; there was no one here to maintain a pretence for, Lois reminded herself. Despite his every right to hate her, he hadn't been outwardly cold to her yesterday, his sadness had been apparent, most likely to everyone in the newsroom, but he hadn't singled her out to be especially cold toward her. It just wasn't in him to isolate her from all of her colleagues by suddenly giving her the brush off, even if she deserved it. She almost wished that he had. If he'd been cold and resentful toward her yesterday, it would have settled it once and for all for the gossipmongers. They would have realized that she was directly responsible for what had happened to Clark and then that half of the newsroom that still showed her pity and sympathy would have turned the way they should have. With the newsroom empty, there was no need to maintain the appearance of a cordial working relationship, and he wasn't doing anything to hide the fact that he didn't want to be around her. She would have rather that he yelled at her, blamed her, whatever; anything would have been better than the silence. Now, he simply looked like he didn't even care enough to get mad. Lois didn't believe that she'd been capable of destroying Clark's innate compassion and concern, not even she could do that. Nonetheless, he seemed miserable here. Her presence was causing him misery. She'd replayed the incident a hundred times in her mind, but had been unable to figure out what she could have done differently. Perhaps Clark had had a plan. Maybe he'd known about Trask's gun and her presence had forced his hand before he'd been prepared to. But then, he'd seemed totally surprised by the whole turn of events. All she knew was that Trask had pulled a gun on her partner when Clark's back was turned and she'd reacted. She'd been certain that Trask was going to shoot Clark. She'd had to warn him, she'd had no choice. Somehow, that didn't change things. Clark was too gentle to hurt a fly and she had realized how strong his ethical code was. Morals were absolutes to him. Killing, no matter why, was wrong. There was no justification for it. And yet he'd done it. He'd violated an ideal that he lived by, that he'd worked to uphold as Superman, and he'd done it to save her life. She'd had a long time to think about it, and she'd realized why Clark was Superman. The more she thought about her partner, the more obvious it became that he couldn't not help if he were able. He needed to do good, it was part of who he was. With the incredible powers he had, it was only a matter of time before he'd find a way to use them to help. Apparently, he'd found that way when he moved to Metropolis. It had taken her a while to figure it out, which was the real man and which the secret identity, but she had approached it the way she approached all her investigations. She asked herself every question imaginable, approaching the subject from every possible angle, and struggled to find the answers. Clark had to be the real person; it was the only way the evidence made any sense. She'd seen enough proof to know that he grew up and lived in Kansas, that he considered the Kents his parents and that his life as Clark was very important to him. Lois also knew that Superman had only appeared a few months earlier. Superman didn't have close friends or people he obviously cared about, he didn't appear to have any hobbies, and no one knew what he was doing when he wasn't out saving the day. He was distant and reserved despite his eagerness to help, and she finally knew why. Superman was a disguise for Clark. Of course, he was much more than that; he was an outlet that allowed Clark to use his powers for good, but he probably maintained that distance, that aloofness, to keep people from wondering too much about who the man inside the suit really was. And while she'd recognized that Clark was more man than super, what he'd lost, what he'd been forced to give up as Superman, was devastating. She could only begin to guess at what being Superman had meant to him. Lois could see in her former partner a burning need to do good. He was driven to help people the way she was driven to be a reporter. She imagined that having Superman taken away had hurt him as much as it would hurt her to have journalism taken away from her, probably even more so. Journalism was her personal passion. Sure, her work often had beneficial results for society, but for the most part, the world would keep turning just the same. If she were forced to give it up, someone else could take her place and expose the truth. But Clark's passion was an altruistic one. What he did, first and foremost, was help others, and he did it in a way that no one else ever could. How many people were alive because of him? How many tragedies had he averted? How many families had he saved from the grief of losing a loved one? She hadn't meant to do it, but she'd taken that away from Clark, and she'd taken Superman away from the world. And even though her actions weren't intentional, how could he do anything but resent her? He'd saved her life, and she was grateful, but that didn't mean that he had to be happy about it. Whether he regretted it or not, saving her life had cost him and the world something that neither should have been forced to give up. Was her one little life worth that? She gasped at the realization that it wasn't. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Clark turn to look at her, and she tried to hide the sudden shock that had overcome her. She turned back to the stack of research on her desk and attempted to look busy. In the background she heard the 'ping' that signaled the arrival of the elevator. She heard Perry and Jimmy's voices along with several other people who stepped out of the car, and sighed with relief. The newsroom would soon be full and there would be enough to distract her from Clark and the guilty feelings that would overwhelm her every time she saw him. Or so she hoped. ******** Clark sat at his desk in the darkness. It was late and the newsroom was deserted. He'd been back at the Planet for a week now and it wasn't getting any easier. He stared down at the letter on his desk from Takuo Kazami, Bureau Chief, of the International Daily Times, Asia Headquarters. It was a welcome letter to the Bureau's newest editor. Him. Perry had arranged the transfer. The International Daily Times was an international English language newspaper published by the London Times and the Daily Planet and read worldwide. After the home offices of the Daily Planet and the London Times, the Asia Headquarters in Tokyo was the largest bureau, and it was his soon to be place of employment. The Asia Headquarters had a handful of full time reporters and researchers working for Mr. Kazami, along with an editor, who was generally an American and English expatriate. The last editor was about to finish his stint in Tokyo and Clark would be taking over his job. He was being sent more for his English and grammar skills than for his reporting abilities, but did that matter now? He was getting away from Metropolis and he'd have a steady job. That was enough. He spoke only enough Japanese to get by as a tourist, but he was certain that he could pick up the language quickly. He had two more weeks in Metropolis and at the Daily Planet. As far as he was concerned, he couldn't get away from this city quickly enough. He was tired of hearing the speculation about what had happened to Superman. He was tired of the looks of concern and sympathy he got from his coworkers. He was tired of being near Lois and knowing how much she must despise him. In the last few days, the quality of their work had fallen into a downward spiral. Perry had rebuked them and informed them of his surprise and disappointment at the increased amount of work they'd left for their editors. Clark wished that he could care more, but he just didn't. He knew that he and Lois had very complementary writing styles and that with a little effort on their part, they could achieve just the right balance of razor sharpness and empathetic softness in their pieces; but now, their differing styles merely clashed as they couldn't handle the necessary cooperation to interweave their writings. They were working together less and less these days, and even when they cooperated on a large story, they generally divided up the work and worked separately. His work had crumbled to mediocrity and it didn't matter. He didn't want to be this apathetic, but he simply couldn't make himself care. Clark was merely killing time after closing the book on this chapter of his life. He was done with Metropolis and he was done with this job, and he wished more than anything, that he could be done with the constant thinking about Lois Lane, but he doubted that he was that lucky. He was tired and he was sick and he was ready to consider all of this history. He sighed as he looked at the letterhead again, in both English letters and Japanese characters. He should probably buy a couple of Japanese textbooks and learn as much as he could before leaving. Clark almost wished that he'd spent more than a week in Japan during his travels after college. The trip to Okinawa had really been nothing more than a side trip during his much longer trip to China. Then again, having to learn a new language would be a decent distraction for him. It would keep him occupied for at least a little while. Surely having something to work on would help keep him from thinking about all the things he was trying to escape. The thought startled him. He was running away. Clark had sworn to Perry that he wasn't simply tucking tail and running off, but that was exactly what he was doing. He'd found a problem he couldn't solve, so he was ignoring it and burying his head in the sand. He admitted that he was probably a coward, but what difference did it make? It wasn't like he could stay and fight through this, there was no way to fix this and there was nothing left for him here. He could stay and put himself through hell for no reason, or he could start over somewhere else. That was the only logical thing to do. It was settled; this was the right thing to do now. He belonged in Tokyo, not Metropolis, and if he could help it, he'd never come back here. Clark stood up and tucked the letter into his jacket pocket. In a few weeks, he'd be leaving this newsroom for good and taking with him nothing but a few memories and a lifetime's worth of regrets. ******** It was the same dream again. The one he had every night. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears. Trask was behind him, Lois in front of him. Her voice echoed through the otherwise still air. He could taste the bitter fear in his mouth. Trask cocked the hammer of his pistol. Clark dove to the ground, grabbing Trask's other gun, rolling and firing from a kneeling position. He didn't aim. He hadn't had a chance to aim that day when he'd killed Trask, and it was the same in his dreams. He squeezed the trigger, without a thought in his head. *Thud* He landed on the bed with a crash, his heart still pounding in his chest. Every night it was the same. He had fired that gun at Trask without really knowing what he was doing. He didn't have the time to aim and even if he had, it probably wouldn't have helped much. Clark wasn't expecting the massive kick of Trask's oversized automatic weapon. He'd never fired a weapon before and never wanted to again. His previous experience with weapons involved only disarming and destroying them. Clark despised guns and he'd never expected to use one. That his use of a gun had resulted in the ending of someone else's life haunted him day and night. He got out of bed and wandered out to his kitchen. Maybe a warm glass of milk would help him calm down. He was having a tough time sleeping through the night. Without his regular patrols to occupy the hours, there was simply too much time on his hands. He couldn't sleep, even if he wanted to. And despite the long nights spent wide-awake, he'd never become tired enough to require more than a few fitful hours of sleep. Too many nights resulted in him sitting on his couch in front of the television screen blaring inane infomercials. He sat down at his kitchen table with a glass of milk, trying, as always, to get the images out of his head. Two gunshots. There had been two gunshots that day. Rachel had informed him of that a few days after it had happened. He didn't remember hearing the second shot, but the forensic reports had confirmed it. Trask had discharged a round from his little pistol. The police had found the bullet lodged in a tree a hundred feet away. That bullet had been meant for Lois. Trask had had his finger on the trigger. Clark could only wonder what would have happened if he had missed, if he'd hesitated. Had Clark's shot been what caused Trask to squeeze that trigger? Or was Trask in the process of doing it himself? That gun had been pointed at Lois. And when Clark had shot Trask, Trask's arm had flown upward, the bullet finding a far more innocuous target. Day and night, he'd think about that second shot--the shot that had been drowned out by the echoes of his own shot. As time passed, that shot monopolized more and more of his thoughts. His dreams, once blurry, had started to focus on that one moment and that bullet. The exact replay dreams still dominated, but more and more frequently, he'd find himself obsessing over that split second. He hated the fact that he'd killed a man, but wouldn't it have been far worse if he'd missed or if he'd waited a moment longer? Could he have stopped Trask another way? Could he have bargained with the madman? He would never know. And that made him feel powerless. He'd never felt so helpless, so impotent. He was used to being in control, to having the strength to defuse any situation. This time, he'd been weak and disoriented and he hadn't had time to think. Clark had been afraid-- incredibly afraid--and he'd reacted. What else could he have done? But the anger and the frustration remained, and he was learning just how hard it was to live with it. These nights would continue to haunt him, regardless of where he was. He wasn't going to be able to escape his own thoughts. ******** "You got a minute, Lois?" Perry called from his doorway. Lois looked up from her desk. She was just about to call it a night. Everyone except Perry had already left for the evening and the night editor would be in soon. "Sure," she replied, turning off her computer. Perry walked over to Clark's desk just across from hers, his hands in his pockets. "It's about Clark," he began. "I found him an editor position in the Asia bureau. The job opens up in about a couple of weeks." "So that's it; he's really leaving," she said softly. Perry merely nodded. "It just isn't fair," she whispered. "You're pretty upset over this," Perry commented, leaning against the front of Clark's desk. "He's my partner!" she exclaimed. "Or at least he was," she added sadly. "And he saved my life. I owe him a lot." "I know," Perry added gruffly. "That boy sure will be missed around here." He picked up Clark's nameplate and studied it for a moment before replacing it. She resisted the urge to pound on her desk with her fist. It wasn't right. Clark didn't deserve this. He was leaving a job that she knew he loved and he was being forced to give up being Superman, all because of her. After all that he'd done for her, for the whole world, this was how he was repaid. At the same time, she knew that he was miserable here. "Isn't there another way, Perry?" she pleaded, already knowing the answer. Perry shook his head. "Clark was pretty adamant about getting away from Metropolis. He's just not happy here anymore." Lois sighed. "Besides, I was hoping you had a suggestion," Perry continued. "I know you two haven't been able to work together recently, but hell, I don't know..." Perry ran a hand through his hair. "He's always respected you, Lois, looked up to you as a reporter, I don't suppose there's anything you could say to him..." "If there was, I already would have by now, Chief," she replied. "I know. I ah, guess I was just grasping at straws." Neither one said anything for a long moment. "He doesn't hate you," Perry said finally. Lois looked up somewhat startled, wondering where that comment came from. "Huh?" was all she could say. "That boy could never hate you, Lois. He said he needed to get away from Metropolis, not you." "Then why can't he work with me, or talk to me, Perry? I want to believe that, but I just can't." Perry sighed. "I don't know what happened between you two, but my gut tells me that you're both blaming yourselves for an awful lot. I know you don't want to talk to me about it, but you two should try to talk to each other, even if he still leaves, at least then you'll have the truth. It's getting late, you should get out of here, get some rest," her editor drawled. Lois nodded quietly and finished packing up her briefcase. Perry made his way up the ramp and held the elevator for her. ******** Over the next week, the weather grew colder and everything seemed bleaker, if that were at all possible. Metropolis was in for a long and miserable winter, it seemed. Superman was becoming a distantly fading memory and hope of his return was all but extinguished. Crime rates had inched back up in his absence. Superman was already gone and Lois was only a week away from losing her partner as well. The world around her was changing. She supposed that it was going back to normal, back to the way it was before either Clark or Superman showed up. And she hated it. She could hardly deny that the city, that her world, was a better place after the arrival of both of them. Now everyday at work she saw him, saw how miserable he was. Part of her wanted him to stay, and part of her acknowledged that he'd be happier once there was adequate space between them. He needed to get away from her and it was selfish of her not to recognize that. Lois found herself in the unusual position of believing that what she wanted didn't matter, at least not compared to what Clark wanted and needed. Today was no different from the day before, or the day before that one. They hadn't worked together at all recently. Her attempt the night before to finally land an interview with Lex Luthor had failed miserably. Again, the billionaire had sidestepped the entire issue of an interview and had turned his attention to trying to charm her. She wasn't sure what he wanted, whether it was good PR through some puff piece or if he was trying to get her into bed, but she wasn't interested in either prospect. Perhaps in another time or under other circumstances, the attention of a handsome, intelligent, and powerful philanthropist such as Lex would have been flattering and exciting, but now it was merely annoying. She had neither the time nor the inclination to respond to Lex's attempts at courting her. Her thoughts were generally occupied by issues of greater weight --like the myriad ways in which everything around her had gotten worse because of her. She was wallowing. She hated wallowers, but there she was, wallowing. But what else could she do? She couldn't exactly put the past behind her and move on, not after something like this. It wasn't her pain and suffering to bury. It was Clark's and as long as he suffered, she deserved far worse. Lois looked over at his desk. His brow was knitted and he was frowning in concentration as he stared at his computer screen. She sighed for the umpteenth time that day. If only she could go back and change the past. She wasn't even sure how she would do it, but this couldn't have been the way it was supposed to be, could it? But there was no fate. The situation she found herself in was the result of a bunch of random events and her own actions. There was no guaranteed fairy tale ending to this story. The hero hadn't won. And as much as she wanted to, she couldn't go back and rewrite the past to her liking. She couldn't cry 'not fair' and change reality to better align it with the ideal. It was a hard lesson to learn: finding out that you have to live with the consequences of your actions, no matter how awful they might be, but she only wished that she was the only one who had to deal with those consequences. 'But what else could I have done?' she would often ask herself angrily, after delving deep into a state of regret and self-recrimination. She and everyone else were living with the consequences of her actions, but what choice had she had? What else could she have done in that situation? She couldn't have simply done nothing; she had had to warn Clark. Yet despite her best intentions, she'd set off a chain reaction of events that had led to Clark killing Trask. Life simply wasn't fair. That was the other lesson she'd learned. ******** Clark tried to focus on his work, he really did. But what was the point? This was the last story he'd ever work on-- a piece about the rate hikes at Metropolis Gas and Electric-and his heart just wasn't in it. He reread the story for the third time. It wasn't a hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism, but it was passable. It would get buried in the thick of the City Section, a rather pathetic swan song for his career as a Daily Planet reporter. Beginning in a few days he'd be Clark Kent, resident thesaurus, dictionary, grammar primer and spell checker. He sighed and sent the story to Perry. His colleagues didn't know he was leaving, though he doubted that they'd be surprised. He'd asked Perry not to disclose the details of his sudden departure and the editor had grudgingly complied, though he'd explained to Clark that he was going to tell Lois, given that she had been his partner, it was information she needed to know, Perry argued. Lois. He sighed. She filled his mind, day and night. Seeing her at work was torture, seeing her in his dreams at night was worse. He could run away from Metropolis but he couldn't run away from her. But surely nothing could be as bad as having to see her everyday, to have to be reminded by her presence, of what had happened. He wouldn't be able to forget, but maybe he could just put the thoughts away, a little at a time. Maybe after a great long while, he wouldn't think about those things any more. They'd always be there, in the background, but maybe he'd be able to keep them there, tucked away in the darkness. "Clark." The sound of Perry's voice startled him. The editor was standing in the doorway of his office. He gestured for Clark to 'come over here,' and Clark obliged. "Son, I'm awful sad to see you go," Perry began as soon as Clark closed the door behind himself. "The newsroom won't be the same without you." The editor leaned against the front of his desk. "Thanks Perry," Clark replied. He stood in front of Perry with his hands in his pockets. "I know it's a bit early, but your story's in so you can head out now if you want, I'm sure you have things you need to do." Clark nodded. "I guess I do," he replied. "Son, talk to Lois, before you go," Perry said. "Chief, I uh..." Clark stammered, surprised. "I mean it, Clark. Lois thinks you hate her. Whatever happened between the two of you, she needs to know the truth." Clark stifled a gasp. How could Lois possibly think that? She was the one who had every right to hate him. Perry must have been mistaken. He didn't think their editor knew much about what had happened that day, no more than what everyone else knew, anyway. Maybe Perry had read Lois wrong. But then again, maybe Perry was right. Maybe Lois did think that he hated her. He ran an agitated hand through his hair. "It's not that easy, Perry," he began. "It never is, son," Perry replied. "Now, if you ever need anything, call me, and I want to hear from you as soon as you get settled in. Let me know how the job is working out, how you're liking Japan and all that." "Sure, Chief," Clark replied. Perry stepped forward and shook Clark's hand. "Good luck, Clark," he said with a slight smile. "Thank you, sir," Clark said. ******** He sat in his apartment, killing time on his last evening in Metropolis. His stuff was all boxed up and most of it had been taken to Kansas to be stored at his parents' home until he settled into his new apartment in Tokyo. His apartment looked a lot bigger when it was empty. He looked at his watch again. It felt late, but it was barely nine o'clock. Clark walked to his window and stared out at the rain pounding the asphalt below. He wondered where Lois was. Was she at home? What was she doing? Was there any small chance that she was thinking of him, or had she forgotten him already? He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He needed to get out of his apartment. Maybe he needed to go for a walk. Forgoing the umbrella, which he didn't need and which was packed anyway, he left the apartment. It was inevitable that he'd end up outside Lois's apartment building a few minutes later. He hadn't thought about where he was going at all, but there he was, looking up at her building. He pushed the rain soaked locks of hair out of his face as he stared at her window. Her lights were on; she was home. Maybe Perry was right. Maybe he should talk to her. He was halfway up the stairs before he realized what he was doing, but he didn't stop. He just kept going. Clark found himself standing outside her door, unsure what to do. Should he knock or should he simply turn around and walk away? He lifted his hand and knocked softly on the door. Immediately, he heard the locks begin to turn and the door opened. "Clark!" Lois exclaimed, sounding surprised. Her eyes looked red and puffy. "Come in, please." She sounded almost desperate. He walked into the apartment silently, stopping just inside the entry; he was still unsure of what he was doing there. Clark tried to think of something to say. She hadn't slammed the door in his face, which was probably a good thing, he thought, but how was he supposed to begin? She drew in a shaky breath. "Perry told me that I should talk to you, but I was sure that you wouldn't listen." He searched her expression for the hatred, the anger that should have been there. It wasn't. Instead, all he saw was an incredible sadness. He didn't understand it. Why wasn't she angry to see him, and why was she sad? "You can't go, Clark; there has to be another way. You shouldn't give up everything you've worked so hard for!" He started to really listen to what she was saying. It didn't make sense; she didn't want him to go? She in fact, was making it quite clear that she wanted him to stay. He tried to block the thoughts out. If anyone could convince him to stay, it was her. Then again, there was practically nothing he wouldn't do for Lois. Actually, there was absolutely nothing he wouldn't do for her. He already knew that. "I thought I would be the last person you'd want to see," she continued. He just kept staring dumbly, caught completely off guard. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about you, about what happened. I can't imagine what you're going through, and I hate that I'm the reason for it. I don't know what I should say to convince you to stay, but you can't leave like this." Why was she making this so difficult? Why couldn't she just hate him? Why couldn't she want him to leave? How was he supposed to deny her? This was wrong; he shouldn't have come here--not because Perry had been mistaken, but because he'd been right. Was this Perry's trump card? Was this his editor's last ditch effort to keep Clark from throwing away his life in Metropolis? "I'm sorry, this was a mistake," he began as he started to back away. He wasn't ready to deal with this. He hadn't even considered the possibility that she'd actually want to talk to him, let alone that she'd try to convince him to stay. Dammit, he couldn't stay. He needed to leave and she was making it impossible. He knew that it would hurt to see her, knowing it would be for the last time; he'd never even thought about how much it would hurt to hear her ask him not to go. "Clark, wait, we need to talk," she pleaded with him. "There's nothing to talk about!" he snapped, turning toward the door. He needed to make her hate him. He needed her to realize that she ought to despise him. He deserved no better. "Please," she cried out. He could hear the emotion in her voice. She was near tears. He hardened his heart to her pleas and walked away. The rain was cascading down sheets and he didn't care. It pounded loudly on the concrete and asphalt and the distant rumble of thunder added to the deafening cacophony. The drops on his glasses obscured his vision. He took the glasses off and snapped them in half effortlessly. Clark tossed the broken halves out into the darkness, not caring where they landed. He heard them clatter somewhere in the distance. Frustrated, he ran his hand through his dripping wet hair and screamed out loud, sobbing. The click of the door behind him startled him. Clark silently prayed that she would just go away and leave him alone. He didn't want to have to see her right now. "Clark, please, look at me," she said quietly. He slowly turned around, anger burning in his gaze, his expression grim and unrelenting. He saw her shiver and had to stop himself from moving toward her. If she wanted to stand out in the rain, so be it. He wasn't forcing her to stand around out here in this insane weather until she caught pneumonia. If she got sick it would be her own damn fault. "What is it?" he asked coldly, trying as hard as he could to convey a sense of annoyance at her presence. Why couldn't she just leave him alone? "I wanted to tell you I'm sorry," she said between sobs. She looked at him with those big brown eyes that made him want to hate her and at the same time, reminded him that he never could. "You have nothing to be sorry for," he replied, turning away from her again. Maybe she would get the message and leave him alone. "Yes I do. I hate myself for what I've done to you, Clark. I destroyed the best person I could ever hope to meet, and I'll never be able to forgive myself." He squared his shoulders, resolved not to turn around and grant her that victory. It didn't matter that her very words made his heart ache even more. "I'm responsible for a lot more than destroying Superman. Because of me, the best man I've ever known can't even look himself in the mirror anymore." "You didn't do anything to me," he snapped, his back still turned to her. "You're not the only one who regrets saving my life that day. If my dying would have prevented this, I wish you had let Trask shoot me." "Lois," he snarled angrily. "My life isn't worth it. I wasn't worth it, I'm sorry. Oh god, I'm so sorry." He heard her sniff, as though fighting back tears. "Never say that," he shouted over the sound of the rain. She sobbed quietly. "I don't blame you for hating me," she whispered. "Dammit, Lois, stop saying that!" he demanded loudly. He grimaced, the tears starting to form in his eyes. "I don't hate you. I could never hate you. I hate myself. I hate myself for destroying Superman, for proving Trask right. You called out; you saved my life. If it hadn't been for you, Trask would have killed me. Instead, I killed him. It's over, it's done with and it's time for me to move on." "The price you paid was too high. I made you give up part of who you are," she murmured. Clark turned around, and glared at her, his eyes narrowed. He growled through gritted teeth. "I'd sell my soul to save you!" "That's what you did, isn't it?" She shook her head and bit her lip. "You gave up the best part of yourself." He stepped toward her, backing her against the door. He covered her lips with his and kissed her fiercely. It wasn't a gentle kiss or a loving kiss or even a passionate kiss. It was a demanding, angry kiss. He felt her gasp and he backed away. He stared at her, his eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but he turned away and walked off into the darkness, not willing or ready to hear whatever it was that she wanted to say to him. He forced himself to keep going and not to turn around, even when he heard her cry his name, even as she sobbed and pleaded with him not to go. Lois watched him storm off, still stunned by what he'd said and what he'd done. She crumpled to the cold, wet, ground and shivered as she sobbed. She hated herself now more than ever. The rain pounded down on her mercilessly and she didn't care. For the first time in her life, she knew what it meant to care about someone more than you cared about yourself, and she learned just how painful that could be. Lois would have given anything, suffered anything, to make Clark whole again. ******** He walked quickly through the rain and was soon jogging and then running. His feet pounded on the concrete without rhythm or cadence. Clark bit his lip and grimaced, fighting the tears and the urge to simply fall to the ground and give up. He ran, not using superspeed, but he ran all the way home. But it wasn't home anymore. In a few short hours, the apartment wouldn't be his any longer. He unlocked the door and entered the darkened apartment. He closed the door behind him and rubbed savagely at his eyes, which were welling up with tears. Clark crossed the desolate and darkened room to the phone in the corner, still plugged into the jack. Maybe he should call her and apologize, he did owe her that. He picked up the phone and began to dial her number, but stopped suddenly. It wouldn't do any good. He couldn't fix what he'd destroyed. The image of her face, the tears in her eyes, the pleading tone of her voice as she begged his forgiveness stung him. How could she ask his forgiveness? She'd done nothing wrong. Besides, who was he to offer forgiveness? He couldn't call her. Not now, probably not again ever. Hearing her voice would be far too painful, besides, there was nothing to say. She claimed not to hate him, but that didn't make him any less deserving of her hatred. He could still see the gentle, plaintive expression on Lois's face; he'd felt her reaching out to him, and he'd desperately wanted to reach back, to cling to her and beg her forgiveness and ask her to make all the nightmares and the haunted thoughts disappear. Instead, he'd pushed her away and shut himself off from her. Well, he'd exposed his own wounded soul first, but in the end, he'd had to reject her offer of comfort and salvation. No matter how much he wanted her to, Lois couldn't save him from himself. Frustrated, angry, and powerless, he slammed the phone back onto the cradle, crushing both into splinters. He dropped the mess of plastic and electronics in his hands and sunk to the floor, his back against the corner. He felt his breath catch in his throat as his lip quivered. A single tear rolled down his face, but he didn't have the energy to fight it. Clark's body shuddered with a sob. His head hanging down in shame, he cried without restraint. He gave up, unable to check the tears any longer. For weeks, he'd fought them off, but he couldn't do it anymore. Clark cried for everything he'd lost and everything he'd destroyed. He cried until he was exhausted, until there were no tears left to cry. ******** A knocking at his door woke him. He opened his eyes and stretched himself out of the pitiful ball he'd curled up into and walked to the door. Light was filtering into the room through the windows. He'd slept until morning. Out of habit, he X rayed the door before opening it. It was his parents. With no small amount of trepidation, he opened the door. He'd been avoiding his parents for weeks now and he had no doubt that they were worried about him and disappointed in him; but he simply didn't know how to deal with them, how to tell them what was going on in his life. "Clark, honey, I know you told us not to come, but we had to," his mother exclaimed as soon as she saw him. He stepped aside and nodded mutely as she walked into the apartment and hugged him. He managed to hug her back, hoping she wouldn't notice what a physical and mental wreck he was. "Hi, Mom," he said somewhat pitifully. His father entered the apartment right behind Martha. She stepped back and Jonathan placed a reassuring hand on his son's shoulder. "Hello, son," his father said gently. "Don't be mad at us," Martha urged. "I'm not," Clark managed weakly. He scrubbed a hand through his disheveled hair. He was still wearing the same clothing from the night before. It had pretty much dried since then, but he was still a mess. "Give me a second to get cleaned up, okay?" he asked before retreating to the bathroom. He returned a bare few minutes later, having showered, shaved and dressed. He hoped that he'd managed to scrub away most of the outward signs of his misery, though he doubted that he could hide it from his parents. His mother was opening all of the cabinets in his kitchen, only to find them empty. "Goodness, you don't even have any coffee left," she said as he walked into the kitchen. He mumbled an unintelligible response, but she continued as if she hadn't heard anything. "I'll go out and get some coffee and bagels," she announced. "Mom, I can go, it'll be quicker," he protested, but she raised a hand, gesturing him to stay put. "Nonsense, I'll be back soon," she said. Martha grabbed her coat and was out the door before he could say anything more. Clark sighed and leaned against the countertop. His parents' unexpected visit had surprised him and his equilibrium was already so badly shot that he couldn't adjust to this seemingly innocuous change in circumstances. "Are you all right, son?" his father asked. Clark shrugged. "I'm fine, Dad," he said. Jonathan leaned against the counter across from his son. "It may seem like the right thing to do now, but you know that you can't run forever, right?" "Dad," Clark protested. "It's a lot more complicated than that, you don't understand..." "I understand better than you think," his father countered softly. Clark merely gave him a quizzical look. "I was never called to go to war," Jonathan continued. "But both of my older brothers were. I've told you about your Uncle Joseph. He was the first Kent to ever go to college. He was something. Everyone respected him. I looked up to him, wanted to be like him. He became an officer in the Marine Corps when the war in Korea broke out. Your Uncle Russell enlisted a few days later. They left together and that was the last time I saw my oldest brother." Jonathan swallowed roughly. "Russell came home two years later; he'd been wounded badly. He was just twenty-one years old. You probably want to know what this has to do with you, right?" Jonathan asked with a sad smile. Clark nodded slightly. "You'd probably find it hard to believe, but Russell was a practical joker. He'd been the class clown his whole life. He was always smiling; always had a great story, and he never took a damn thing seriously. He and Joseph couldn't have been more different." Clark struggled to remember his Uncle Russell, a man he'd always regarded as brooding and serious. He vaguely recalled being little and asking his father why he didn't keep a hunting rifle around like the other kids' dads, and not understanding when his father explained that he didn't keep a gun because they bothered Uncle Russell. "The man who came back from that war wasn't my brother. From the day he came home, to the day he died, I never saw Russell smile, not really anyway, not the way he used to before the war. He was a nervous wreck when he came back. Couldn't hold down a job, couldn't concentrate on anything. He drifted away from his family and his friends and turned his back on the woman he loved, and who loved him." His father looked downward and sighed. "Russell didn't mean to do it, but he destroyed her life as well his own. He spent years fighting a losing battle against that war and what it did to him. He died of cancer twenty years later, angry and bitter and alone. Laura never got over losing him. She died a few years after he did. That war destroyed all three of their lives and it took away both of my brothers," Jonathan said sadly, tears welling up in his eyes. "And we had to watch. We had to sit there and watch Russell die slowly, a day at a time, and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it. Laura tried to help him, but he shut her out just like the rest of us, and we lost him. And now, well, it feels like I'm losing you, too." His father frowned as he struggled to maintain his stoic mask "Dad," Clark began in earnest. He'd never seen his father this emotional. When Clark's grandmother had died, his father had been sullen and despondent, but quiet in his grief. It wasn't like his father at all to be so openly emotional. "This isn't like that..." "I know that you think it's different," his father replied. "But all the nights you can't sleep, all the time you spend thinking about what happened, the nightmares, the anger, the guilt, shutting out your mother and me, not talking to your friends, you know what I'm talking about, right?" Clark said nothing: a silent admission. "It's textbook Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Clark, and I can see it written across your face just the way it was with Russell." "You think this is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?" Clark demanded. "You think I'm suffering from some, some kind of psychological problem?" "Clark..." "No, Dad. This isn't shell shock. It wasn't war," Clark said angrily as he began to pace in the narrow confines of the kitchen. "I killed a man, how do you think I should feel?" He sighed and ran an agitated hand through his hair. "I just don't know. I don't know what to do, Dad," he admitted plaintively. "I feel like, I feel like I don't even know who I am anymore. All I know is that I can't stay here, I don't belong here and I need to move on. I'm sorry this has been so hard on you and Mom, I just don't know what I'm doing anymore," he confessed mournfully. He watched his father step toward him. Jonathan embraced him in a fierce hug and Clark hugged back, as if clinging on for dear life. He closed his eyes and tried to shut out the self loathing and the guilt and the anger and tried to go back to a time when he was a little boy and a hug from his mother or father was enough to reassure him that all was right with the world. His father stepped back and looked at him, grim faced. "Are you sure you don't want to come back home?" he asked. Clark nodded. "I need some space, some time to think," he said. "Don't be a stranger," Jonathan replied. "You know your mother worries about you." "I know," Clark admitted. As if on cue, there was a knock at the door--it was his mother. He pasted on a fake smile and tried to beat back the stirred up feelings of anxiety as he opened the door. "Breakfast," she announced as Clark took the tray of Styrofoam coffee cups from her. She produced bagels and donuts from the paper bags she was carrying and spread them out on the kitchen counter. The conversation remained light while they ate. His mother asked him what his new job would be like and what he thought of moving to Tokyo. She asked him if he was sure that this was the right thing to do and he assured her that it was. He didn't mind his parents' concern; not really, it was comforting to know that they cared. Or at least it should have been. He didn't really want anyone else's concern. He didn't want them to worry about him. Clark almost wished that he could cut himself adrift, but he knew that he couldn't. He could never do something that would hurt his parents like that. He didn't want sympathy, but he wasn't going to upset them. They finished eating and his parents wished him a safe journey and reminded him to call and visit often. His parents said goodbye to him, giving him time to turn his keys over to the landlord and get to the airport. They left his apartment to spend the day in Metropolis before flying back to Kansas. Alone again, he reminded himself that he was doing the right thing--that he'd made the right decision. ******** If he'd thought that life had been miserable before, he was now discovering how much worse it could get. Clark sat on a plane bound for Tokyo, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He hated flying like this. He hated it with a passion. His parents' unexpected visit had taken his mind off Lois, at least for a while, but now, he couldn't stop thinking about her. Clark felt ill. The guilt was tearing him apart from the inside out. He supposed that some good had come of last night; at least he'd told Lois that she wasn't to blame, that he didn't hate her, although given the other things he'd done and said, he wondered if that message had been lost. She might not have hated him before, but after last night, he was positive that she did now. Perhaps it was all for the best. He needed to burn down every bridge, sever every tie. The siren call of Metropolis was too seductive, too tempting; he needed every possible reason to never return there. Believing that Lois hated him served as vital leverage. The plane began to bounce as they hit a patch of turbulence. Clark sighed uneasily. He was seated in the middle section of a crowded 747 with no legroom and away from the aisles and the windows. The passengers around him had all been asleep; though the jostling of the plane had awoken a few of them. They were somewhere over the Pacific, still a few hours away from Honolulu and his last connection. Clark was in hell. ******** Lois sat on her sofa, her legs tucked underneath her and a cup of tea in her hands. She sipped the warm liquid as she stared out the window at the rain. She'd taken the day off. Perry had been understanding, but she was certain that he'd been surprised, too. He'd have to tell everyone today that Clark was gone. Clark had really done it. He'd left. She couldn't help but relive last night over and over again. Clark had told her that he didn't hate her, he'd told her angrily that she wasn't to blame, and she could tell somehow, she could see it in his eyes that he was telling her the truth. Lois couldn't forget that raw, pained look in his eyes when he'd said that he'd sell his soul to save her. She'd been taken aback by that declarative statement and yet that was nothing to the shock she'd suffered when he'd kissed her. She'd kissed Clark before; he was a great kisser, she thought absently, gentle but with a latent hint of passion burning beneath; that day on Trask's plane had proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But yesterday, his kiss had been fierce and devoid of passion. It wasn't cold, exactly. It was far too emotional. She'd been able to almost feel what he was feeling: confusion, anger, frustration, and tension. And sadness. Incredible sadness. As he'd backed away from her, he'd stared at her with those deep, troubled eyes of his. He was the ghost of Clark Kent, haunting her, day and night. She'd watched a single tear fall from his eye and roll down his cheek. It was soon obscured by the falling rain, but she knew what she'd seen, and the image was burned into her mind. Clark truly was the best person she'd ever met. Lois had never known anyone that selfless, that kind. To know how much he was suffering was quietly tearing her apart. He didn't hate her. But how could he possibly hate himself? How was it that he couldn't see how special he was? 'Gee, Lois, and you were the one putting him down a few months ago,' her conscience snapped irritably at her. How could she have been so blind? How could she have missed the connection between Clark and Superman? How could she not see that all the wonderful things that made her fall in love with Superman were embodied in her partner as well? Perhaps she was simply too shallow and too much of a slave to her own stereotypes to admit that an ordinary man could truly be as extraordinary as Clark. She saw what she expected to see in him and nothing more. And now, she was learning just how much more there was to that Kansas farm boy. She felt a tear slip down her face; Lois had been crying a lot lately. The relief that came from learning that Clark didn't hate her had been short-lived. He was half a world away now, most likely suffering quietly and alone. But if he didn't hate her, why couldn't he stay? Why couldn't he keep being her partner? Why was he making himself go through this alone? ******** Clark sat at his desk, editing the copy on his computer screen. His brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of a colloquialism that he wasn't familiar with and that clearly hadn't translated well into English. He reread the sentence several times before the meaning of the phrase finally dawned on him and he quickly replaced it with something that would make more sense to the many English- speaking readers who got their news from the International Daily Times. He looked up, staring out the high-rise office window at the crowded and impressive Tokyo skyline. Tokyo was a city like many others, loud, busy, crowded, and exciting. Unlike many other major cities, though, Clark couldn't hide here. He stuck out in a land where according to a popular proverb, it was the nail that stuck out that got hit with the hammer. Tokyo was unique in many ways, unlike anywhere else he'd ever been, but it held no allure for him. The bright lights that put Times Square and Piccadilly Circus to shame, the crowded streets, and fast paced lifestyle should have been intriguing, but he found himself overcome with apathy toward his surroundings and just about everything else. The easy access to some of the world's greatest fish markets and exotic cuisine was something he hadn't taken advantage of, mainly because he rarely ate. He'd been in the city for almost a month, and despite the fact that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed every single night of the year somewhere in Tokyo and that he really liked that particular work, he hadn't even bothered considering going to see it. Clark had down just about everything possible to avoid drawing attention to himself. He went to work in the morning, taking the subway from his small apartment to the office building that was home to the International Daily Times as well as the regional bureaus of Agence France, the Associated Press, and other major international news services. The International Daily Times Asia Headquarters was larger than a typical regional bureau. The paper was the standard bearer for English language international news and so its regional offices were more than simply sorting locations for newswire and syndicated articles. Its staff consisted of two full time reporters, a part time stringer, an intern, the bureau chief, his secretary, the night editor, the regional correspondent, and Clark. The business of the office was conducted in English, but his Japanese was near perfect already, though there were still plenty of slang and informal expressions with which he wasn't yet familiar. Clark didn't fit in here. He was, at best, a very polite houseguest in Japan. He'd learned the language, taken pains not to rock the boat or breach any of the important traditions or social mores, and had done his best to remain unobtrusive, but this wasn't a life. Trying to be a ghost didn't change the fact that he was a stranger in a strange land and a lonely one at that. Being alone had done little to calm his nerves; it had in fact exacerbated his agitated state. Loud noises, like cars backfiring, caused him to jump, his heart rate spiking in response and his mind and body both going into immediate panic mode. Mercifully, there were far fewer gun crimes in Tokyo than there had been in Metropolis. The sound of gunfire was enough to make him go rigid with tension and fear. He still couldn't sleep, and now suffered from daytime flashbacks instead of simple nightmares. The smells of gasoline and smoke were enough to trigger the flashback attacks. The vaguest reminders of that day were enough to send him back to that afternoon. He'd relive every detail: the sounds of the gunshots, the smell of smoke in the crisp autumn air, the cold, wet clothing that clung to his skin, the burning pain in his lungs from the kryptonite, the dizziness and the nausea, the taste of bile in his throat. He'd been home a few times since coming to Japan. Clark knew his parents worried and it wasn't too much to ask of him to go home occasionally to see them. Nevertheless, each trip home would only cause him greater psychological exhaustion. The farm, too, would often trigger the flashbacks; the smell of the air, the sounds, they were no longer comforting symbols of home. He couldn't even venture out to the duck pond anymore-the memories it evoked were so intense as to totally incapacitate him. It was a terrifying experience, to be captive to waking nightmares like that. It was as though he'd been evicted from the driver's seat in his own mind. He'd been shanghaied by specters and paranoia. His life had turned into a runaway train heading for the end of the track and he was a hapless passenger, waiting to be obliterated in a spectacular crash. The lack of control was totally foreign to him; the feeling of impotence filled him with fury and at the same time caused him to cower like a child. And sometimes, it was like he'd stepped outside himself, and was watching the entire tragicomedy of errors happen to someone else. As much as he wanted to muster up some sympathy for the poor bastard fumbling for some measly control over his own existence, he couldn't. When he wasn't gripped by fear, he was overwhelmed by nihilistic morbidity and ennui that were equally foreign to him. The battle between his fear and his apathy raged within him. There were nights he had to fight back the tears for fear that if he started crying, he wouldn't be able to stop. The sounds of sirens and calls for help were driving him insane. More frightening, there were times when he just couldn't make himself care about anything at all. He couldn't see the point to anything, and he couldn't have cared less what happened to himself or the world around him for that matter. He felt no desire to interact with his coworkers, to visit his parents, or keep in touch with his friends. All he wanted was to be left alone. His colleagues at the office seemed perfectly content to give him a wide berth and paid him little mind. Mr. Kazami was a hands off editor who allowed his staff to work independently and he interfered as little as possible. He generally had his hands full coordinating with the other bureau chiefs of the paper, anyway. The two full time reporters on staff were both bachelors in their early thirties and typical workaholics. Being reporters, though, they gossiped like little old ladies and so had known all about Clark well before he'd started working in the office. They exchanged formal pleasantries with him, but no more. They probably thought that he was well out of earshot when they spoke about him. Koichi Yoshiro, the senior reporter, had remarked on occasion that Clark may have been an American, but the only thing loud and obnoxious about him were his ties. The two men speculated a bit as to whether or not Clark had always been so aloof and so unlike the stere