A/N: This is a semi follow-up to my standalone fic "Enough" which was a speculation for the S9 finale "Salvation." You don't have to have read "Enough" to understand where "Midnight Sun" picks up, as long as you've seen "Salvation" you're good to go. I guess it's fair to say, this is what I think might happen at the start of Season 10. Hope you enjoy it!
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...
Eugene Halliday defined a sentient power as one who understands his true consciousness and grows toward his natural inclination, effectively embracing his fate. We are all capable of embracing our individual sentient power; it is a personal growth that is ultimately fueled by love.
When Dr. Fate revealed that this mysterious saviour would need me- that there was a sentient power that would save us all; I was in disbelief. How could I play a role in that future? Of course I connected the Blur to that prediction, but I could never have expected the connection to Clark.
Finding him barely conscious on the streets of Metropolis frightened me. I'd always assumed that the Blur was indestructible. He'd caught bullets with his bare hands, after all! And yet Clark was weakening before me and I desperately willed for a way to save him.
My heart pounded through my chest as I stroked the hair away from his bloodied face. Feelings of despair, fear, agony cursed through me. For all my brushes with death and danger, I was more frightened than I'd ever been before.
He shifted in my lap; every movement causing him to wince. "Lois…"
"Don't—Clark, please," I begged despondently. "You're hurt."
The Book of Rao had opened up a vortex, taking with it everyone and everything that had caused the destruction that had befallen Metropolis and the world. When Clark had used it he had intended to send himself toward a new destiny. Instead it left him behind with his chest rising ever more slowly and his eyes growing heavier. I knew… I could feel it. He was dying in my arms.
"Clark?" I cried out, imploring him to stay conscious. My words cracked between broken sobs. "Stay with me… please."
His eyes fluttered open and then shut again. I ran the back of my hand against his forehead and could feel him getting colder. "Lois…" His lips quivered, his face paled.
"Clark, please! Please…! Don't leave me!" Desperate, I clutched his body to my chest. I listened for his breath, hoped to feel a heartbeat pounding. Instead all I felt and heard was sudden stillness and silence.
I wept. I wept for myself, I wept for Metropolis and I wept for a future I'd only imagined and one that could never be. I rocked his lifeless body in my arms and mourned.
...
Tears had blurred my vision and despair clouded all reasonable thought. At some point, someone took Clark's body from me. In hindsight I probably should've fought them off, should have continued to keep his lifeless body next to mine. But instead my body shook in sorrow, unable to defend, unable to reason as rain fell around me.
Somehow I made it back to the Talon. My makeup smeared across my face, my eyes red and swollen. I could barely function, yet somehow my keys found their way into the lock of the apartment I occasionally shared with Chloe.
I tried to contact Mrs. Kent, but her secretary told me that she'd gone on a peacemaking mission to Kenya. When I'd asked for a number, insisting on the urgency of the situation, I was told that she'd be in the desert, unreachable for several weeks.
Her own son had died and there was no way to contact her. I reached below the couch cushion and pulled out a pack of cigarettes that I'd stashed away long ago, still in its original cellophane. I debated breaking my fast and stared down at the package, wondering if smoking just one would bring the answers I was looking for.
Instead I ignored the impulse and decided to try Chloe's cell again. It went straight to voicemail. Desperate for her to answer, my voice betrayed my condition. My message would surely come out warbled and worn. I'm sure she'd think me to be a woman possessed. I didn't care; I needed someone, needed my cousin to share in my grief.
A third call, this time to Oliver, left me likewise alone. Where was everyone?
I sat on the couch and rested my head in my hands, tears falling anew. It felt as though my entire world was crumbling around me and there was no one to guide me through it. How could there even be a funeral or a gravesite? I didn't even know who had taken Clark's body from me. Why was Clark's death shrouded in as much mystery as his life had been?
The silence of my apartment was broken by the shrill ring of the telephone.
I wiped my tears with the back of my hand and answered the phone. "Hello?"
"Lois?"
"Chloe! Where've you been? I've been trying to—"
"Lois, listen to me," she commanded. "I don't have much time. You need to go to the doorway." Confused, I did as she directed.
"What's going on Chloe? I've been trying to call you all morning."
"See that vent next to the door?" She asked abruptly, ignoring my question.
"Yeah."
"It should come loose." I pulled at grate of the vent. As Chloe had indicated, it fell into my hands. Stuffed inside the vent I found a folded piece of paper.
"What is this?" I asked.
"It's a map."
"But Chloe—" I interjected. This was ridiculous. I wasn't in the mood to go on some scavenger hunt. "I need to talk to you about last night!"
"Just listen, Lois!" She yelled, her voice tired and frustrated. "The map will lead you to the Kawatche Caves… it's near Miller's Bend. You need to come now. I'll meet you there. Dress warmly."
"Chloe you don't understand… Clark's—"
"He needs you, Lois. He's asking for you." And with those final words the phone disconnected.
I stared down at the map that lay before me and shook my head. What in the world was going on?
...
"I knew you wouldn't dress warmly," Chloe said as she greeted me at the hidden opening of the Kawatche Caves. "Here." She handed me a sweater, scarf and hat. "You're going to need these."
"Chloe," I said. "I can appreciate the gesture, but its 85 degrees outside. It can't be that cold inside those caves."
She shook her head. "You'll see."
"What are we doing here anyway?" I asked. Rather than answer my question, Chloe turned and led me into the caves, collecting on her way a lantern that sat at its opening.
"Chlo—there's something I need to tell you about Clark. About what happened to him last night."
"I know Lois," she said simply.
"What do you mean?" I asked, confused. No one could've known.
"I know about what happened to him last night Lois."
"But how—?"
"Put the sweater on."
Furrowing my brows in confusion, I did as she suggested. We rounded a corner and slid through an opening in the rock formation. There in the center of the room was an octagonal table with all kinds of symbols inscribed into the stone.
Before I had a chance to process what was before me, Chloe pulled a small disk from her pocket.
"Hang on," she said with a smile lifting her hand over the center of the table.
As though magnetically attracted to its center, the disk hovered briefly in the air before it was pulled downward. Immediately the room was engulfed by a brilliant blast of blue light and a gust of wind that very nearly threw me off my feet. I pursed my eyes shut and felt a sudden blast of cold wind hit me. The air was bitterly cold and I felt my breath hitch in my throat as a chill ran throughout my body.
Opening my eyes I looked around to find a desolate arctic landscape with Chloe at my side watching my reaction.
"Kinda crazy, no?" She said laughingly.
"Kinda crazy? Chloe this is beyond crazy…" Before me stood a huge structure made of ice. It was as though giant icicles jutted out from the snow capped floor and toward the sky in a pyramid formation. It glistened in the sun like a jewel amid the snow.
"C'mon, before you catch your death." She pulled at my elbow and led me toward the ice structure.
...
The trek to the ice pyramid was challenging. I hadn't brought boots and my socks were wet through from the snow. The chill in the air went straight to my bones, making my teeth chatter.
As we entered, it was as though our surroundings had transformed. The bitter chill in the air had dissipated in favour of a warmth that I figured must've come from the sun's rays which poked through the pyramid's apex.
"Over there," Chloe said pointing. I followed her finger and came to a raised platform of ice that partially encapsulated a body within it.
There laid Clark, a bandage wrapped at his arm and across his chest. I gasped in disbelief. "Clark!" I could feel tears springing fresh at the corners of my eyes. I couldn't move; frozen in place as shock overcame me.
Was his chest rising and falling? Could he actually be breathing? Was Clark alive?
"Chloe?" I said barely audible, shaking my head and looking to her for answers. "Is… is that…?" I couldn't even finish my sentence.
She nodded her head in reply. "He's alive, Lois."
It wasn't possible. I opened my mouth to reply, to seek out answers, to understand the miracle that lay a few feet in front of me. He had died in my arms last night, but there Clark lay breathing and very much alive, seemingly asleep in fact.
Chloe excused herself and I was finally able to move my feet toward Clark, closer to the platform.
Once I was next to him I looked down at his serene face. It was him! Despite the yellowed bruising around his eyes and the bloodstained bandages that hid his devastating wounds, it was Clark. My Clark. The rising of his chest, the occasional fluttering of his eyelashes sent my heart soaring. It felt like a dream. This was so impossible; it was nothing short of a miracle!
"Clark?" I whispered, strangely afraid. I reached my hand toward his. Clark's eyes stirred ever so slightly. I ran my thumb along the top of his hand, feeling the softness of his skin, the ridges between his fingers. "Can you hear me?" I tried again. "Please… Clark…."
Then, guardedly, Clark opened his eyes, partially squinting in to the sunlight that shone down from above us.
"It's really you!" I declared, beaming. "You're really alive!"
He smiled slowly, the movement clearly sending a pain cursing through his body. "I'm…" Clark breathed in heavily, his voice raspy. "I'm glad you came."
"Oh, Clark," I said shaking my head, my mouth turning up in a smile. "I would go anywhere if it meant seeing you again."
"I'm sor—sorry."
"Sorry?" I clasped his hand tighter, confused by his sudden apology.
"That—" his breathing laboured, he took a moment to collect himself. "That I didn't tell you before… about me."
"Clark, I know. It's fine. Really." I struggled to assure him that I wasn't upset about his newly revealed secret of having been the Blur. "I understand."
He ran his thumb against my own, a soft smile crossing his face. "I'm glad," he said finally. His eyes began to flutter shut again, exhaustion taking control of his body.
"You'll come back…?" He managed to ask, his voice a mere whisper of sound.
"Yes," I said softly, running my free hand gently along his forehead. "Everyday, Clark. Everyday."
...
Upon our strange return to Smallville via the mysterious portal that I still didn't quite understand, Chloe offered to buy me a coffee at the Talon, swearing she'd explain everything when we were back at the apartment. I had so many questions, first of which was how Clark managed to have come back to life.
"He was dead Chloe! I felt his heartbeat stop." I shook my head at the previous night's memory and the shattered feelings that had brought sorrow to my core.
"You understand that Clark has powers that are beyond that of any normal person?"
"Right, he's a meteor freak," I said matter-of-factly.
"Yeah…" She said hesitantly. "About that… Do you remember a man named J'onn taking Clark from you?"
I shrugged my shoulders. The night was such a blur to me that I wasn't even quite sure how I'd found my way home.
"He took Clark and brought him to the Fortress… the ice castle you just visited," she added, noting my confusion. "This is going to get weird for you Lois. I just need to you to listen and bear with me."
Chloe began to explain Clark's adoption by the Kent's, the origins of the Fortress and how it was the last remnants of his home planet. The fact that Clark was really from a distant galaxy and was not just another meteor infected Smallville resident stunned me. I never would've imagined that someone who had—has—such genuine human qualities could be an alien. Truly, it was apparent that the generosity and love of the Kents had influenced Clark beyond what even I'd initially believed.
"Clark's body was built to absorb solar energy. Dr. Emil says it's like this photo-volatic system that converts the sun's rays into super strength, speed, heat vision… you name it. All those powers because the Earth has a yellow sun."
"But I still don't understand what all this has to do with Clark going all Lazarus on me."
"In the summer the Arctic has the sun visible continuously, even through most of the night—"
"The midnight sun..."
Chloe nodded. "J'onn took Clark to the Fortress and it essentially has been recharging him, bringing him back to the land of the living."
I stared down at my coffee, now cold in my hands. "Will he be okay?" I asked, hopeful.
"Truthfully? I don't know. It's never been this bad with him."
I nodded, understanding. "When can I see him again?"
...
Over the next few weeks, my days were spent following new leads at the Daily Planet. According to my sources in Suicide Slum, Tess was on the prowl again making trouble among the local gangs. Yet according to government records, she'd been declared dead at Metropolis General the night the Kandorians disappeared—her body missing from the morgue.
Then there was Oliver. Chloe had been putting in countless hours at Watchtower trying to track down the whereabouts of Green Arrow. So far her searches had left her empty handed with a few sightings along the West Coast that pointed toward a freelance artist named Kyle Rayner.
At the Daily Planet I occasionally had to fend off Franklin Stern, creating lie after lie rationalizing Clark's absences from his desk. After a few days I became a pro at it, even managing to hack in to Clark's computer (who used their girlfriend's birthday as their password anyway?). I even submitted a few feature pieces on Clark's behalf just to keep Stern at bay. If Clark was doing his job there was nothing he could fault him for—especially since he knew that Perry White carried more clout with the new Daily Planet investors from Wayne Industries.
At night I would visit Clark at the Fortress. Chloe had shown me how to access the key on my own and gave me tips on how to more precisely tapper my landings when transporting myself into the Arctic. I'd eventually managed to land virtually at the entrance within the first few days.
Clark's condition had improved. His wounds were almost healed, he wasn't as lethargic as he'd been earlier and he was able to walk short distances around the Fortress. The only problem was that his powers hadn't yet returned and I could sense his masked frustration over it.
Tonight was the night that Clark swore that he'd return to Smallville, whether it was via the portal key or super speed. He declared that he couldn't spend another night at the Fortress, the silence of the Arctic was too deafening.
"So is it weird not being able to hear the littlest noise?" I asked from the comfort of the Kent farm's living room couch, Clark's arm draped over my shoulder. My body curled in to his side, I welcomed the feeling of his fingers as they ran the length of my arm.
"It's quiet," he said distantly. "You know there've been times in my life where I've been—well, experienced what it was like to be human, to not be constantly on alert listening in on other people's lives. But each time I seem to forget what it's like."
I looked up at him. His face was pensive and still, saddened almost. "Do you wish you had your powers back?" I asked hesitantly.
He looked down at me, considering his answer. "In the past I probably would've said no. I probably would've reveled in the silence, enjoyed the back pain from farm work, taking an actual car to Metropolis…" I chuckled at that comment, recalling the countless times I could've sworn I'd heard a rooster in the background of his calls only to look up and find Clark rushing down the stairs to the Daily Planet's basement.
"But now," he continued. "After being able to help so many people as the Blur, to really understand my destiny here… I want them back." He shook his head. "I tried to ask Jor-El. But he's still silent, probably waiting for the perfect moment to tell me that I need to focus more."
I considered all that he'd revealed to me these past few weeks. At first it had been overwhelming connecting all the dots, making sense of the last six years that I'd known Clark. Once I'd finally understood the stress it'd brought him to keep all those secrets from those he cared about, I was able to leave behind the jealousy, the loneliness and the hurt that had created a block to the growth in our relationship.
To know Clark, was a window into understanding the Blur. To be close to both was a way to understand the heroism that was inherently a part of who Clark was. As I stared up at him, I realized that Clark felt empty without his powers. Helpless, even.
"Let's go," I declared, patting his leg as I stood.
"Go? Go where?"
"We're going to try and get your powers back." I grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. "Let's go Kent, no time to waste."
...
"Hm," I muttered, curving my mouth to the side. "So no go on the strength, but you did do a ten minute mile in five. That's something, right?" I added encouragingly, tucking the stop watch into my pocket.
Clark wiped his brow with the edge of his t-shirt and leaned against a hay bale that sat rolled in the Kent field. "I guess. But I used to do a half second mile."
"Point taken," I said attempting to mask the disappointment in my voice. "What's next?"
"Listen Lois, I don't think I can do this anymore," he said defeated. "I mean we've already tried strength and my x-ray vision. All I'm getting is sore muscles and a headache."
"You're kidding, right?" I asked mystified. I'd thought Clark wanted to get his powers and suddenly he was acting like I was asking him to reverse the Earth's rotation.
"No, I'm not," He replied gravely. "Lois you can't understand how long it took me to get these powers in the first place! I was practically in my late teens before they started fully appearing. It's not some switch that I can turn on and off."
"Clark!" I admonished, shocked by the frustration that was beginning to emanate from his voice. I'd always figured that he'd never give up so easily. Besides he'd been the one who'd admitted he wanted them back!
He slumped to the ground in front of the hay bale, his legs extended before him. "I don't know if I can do this Lois."
Frowning, I sat next to him. "It's hard. I know, Clark."
"It's not hard…it's just frustrating. For years I've been fighting to gain my ability to fly. I worked so hard and then… and then—"
"Zod took it all away?"
Clark shook his head. "I can't blame Zod for this. I made the choice. I stuck the knife in myself. I just didn't think that healing—getting back my powers—would be this difficult."
"There are always going to be things in this world that are challenging Clark. Sometimes we just need to face them. Throw ourselves right in to the mix! Live dangerously."
Clark chuckled lightly. "Of course you'd say that. You're always throwing yourself into the face of danger."
"And I've never regretted it." Clark looked at me quizzically, challenging my response. "Okay, so most times I haven't regretted it," I altered.
"But what if it takes years for my powers to come back?"
I shrugged. "Then it takes years. You'll get through it. We'll get through it- together."
"And if they don't-?"
"Then they don't come back, Clark." I ran my hand along his leg and looked up at him. "Even before I knew you were the Blur— before I knew you had powers—I always felt you were a hero. You were always the first person checking to see that everyone was okay, always seeing the good in even the worst people at their worst moments. You helped people when they just needed someone to listen and to be there for them—those are acts of heroism too, Clark. You are a hero."
Clark pondered what I had said, considering the weight to my words. They were the truth and he knew it, he just needed to believe it.
"How did I get so lucky?" He said finally.
"Huh?"
"What did I do to deserve someone like you?"
I blushed, embarrassed by the declaration. "I dunno," I said, shrugging my shoulders. A slight smile crept across my face. "Crash landed into a cornfield naked?"
"Oh, hilarious Lois," Clark said mockingly, a grin on his face. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"
I shook my head. "No. Not likely."
He narrowed his eyes, a mischievous look on his face. "I know which power we can try to work on next."
"Yeah?"
"Heat vision."
"Heat vision? Really?" I asked, surprised by his sureness. "Okay then, how did you first discover that power? Maybe if we get you to do something similar, it will trigger it again."
"That's exactly what I was thinking," he declared coyly, jumping to his feet and holding his hand out to help me to mine. "We can't be near a hay bale if we're going to test out my heat vision." He gave me a wink. "Add to that, it's probably not smart to be so near to the road."
"Oh yeah? How does your heat vision work anyway? Do you just focus real hard and it comes out?"
With a smirk so devilish I knew there was more he wasn't telling me. "Something like that."
He pulled me by the hand toward the Kent farmhouse. Interestingly, by the end of the night Clark had his heat vision back. The fire extinguisher Mrs. Kent had in the kitchen came in handy a few times that night.
As I lay in Clark's bed and listened to him snore softly next to me, I recalled the trying events of the past few weeks. Our relationship had faltered and then blossomed, growing stronger as the bond of trust propelled us toward love. His powers may have been weakened lately, but I was sure that they'd return shortly. It was clear to both of us that we would be there for each other, ready to tackle the hurdles we each might face.
Clark may not have realized it yet, but he was someone so incredible that he was truly a saviour for this world, a hero for us all. A year ago I would have run scared from a future like the one that was standing before me. Now, after everything that we'd been through, the path was clearly marked. I knew that we would stand together, side by side, throwing ourselves headlong in to our fate; a fate that was fueled by love.
~Fin~