A/N: Pre-Superman Returns. But there be spoilers. So if you haven't seen it yet, and you don't want to be spoiled, don't read. This is also kind of angsty Superman/Lois, so...if that's not your thing, don't read.
Believe it or not, she hadn't actually written the article out of spite. Why the World Doesn't Need Superman, her Pulitzer-winning, journalistic claim to fame, was more or less her mental struggle. Put to paper. Her sensibility and her idealism were each standing on one of her shoulders, like the devil and the angel in the cartoons she used to watch as a kid, each trying to persuade her to side with them. Eventually her sensibility had won out, and that was what she put on the paper. Sensible's arguments. The article was a way for her to convince herself, yell at herself to wake up, that he had truly left and he wasn't coming back.
But the thought persisted. Like a worm, it squirmed and squirmed inside her, buried beneath layers and layers of denial and bitterness. It was the niggling feeling within her that screamed, "He loves you! He'll come back!" And every day, his failure to appear left the bitter taste of resentment in her mouth.
It was when she was hunched over the toilet for the third day in a row, feeling sick and gloomy and abandoned that she, in her ill stupor, decided that something was definitely rotten in Denmark. She hadn't been eating that much to be puking it up again, so she took a guess and ruled food poisoning out all the way. When the thought first settled in her mind, her face had paled. Considerably. And she spent the next five or six minutes engaged in simply retching. After she rinsed her mouth out, she took a shaky breath and decided to test it. Confirm her suspicions.
It was when she had been sitting on the toilet seat, staring at it—a piece of plastic—that she broke. Sitting on the toilet seat, she began to weep. The plastic slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. And the sound of the clattering became a sullen reminder of how her life was falling apart. Letter by letter. Byline by byline.
He wasn't coming back. He had up and left. No good-byes, no notes, no nothing. And here she was, carrying his child, for God's sake, and he wasn't even there to receive the news. For someone who was supposed to stand up for truth, justice, and the American Way, he was certainly eluding all three. She shook her head in disbelief. How could she have been so naïve? He was Superman, a hero in tights who had a thing for saving people. And who was she? Lois Lane, spunky girl reporter extraordinaire who had a habit of pissing people off.
She took a deep breath. She was going to move on. She wasn't going to sit here like some "heroine" in a sappy, weepy romance novel and just mope all day. She was going to take her future in her own hands. And so what if her child would never have a father? They would be just fine, the two of them. Wiping at her tears angrily, she stood, picked up the test from the floor, and threw it in the wastebasket.
Four hours, three cups of decaf, and one sigh later, she found herself standing on the stoop outside her apartment building. She stood there, breathing the city, and found her gaze wandering back up to the stars. But not just any stars. The stars where he would be.
She shook her head angrily. She had made a conscious decision. Bitterness aside, she wasn't going to let him, or rather, the absence of him, take control of her life. With a vicious motion, she tore her eyes from the beautifully lit scene to focus on the busy street.
The world doesn't need a savior. And neither do I.
With her own voice ringing in her head, she turned her back on the stars. And on Superman.