FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME
Rated: PG13
By: Catherine Fogel
Lois sank slowly to the floor by sliding her back down the closed bathroom door after leaving and shutting it behind her. She sighed deeply and drooped her head into her hands. She was so exhausted. So confused.
She closed her eyes tightly, thinking that maybe, just maybe, if she closed them tight enough, she would wake up in her bed next to her husband and this would have all been some weird half nightmare half fantasy of a dream. That if she closed them tight enough, she might be able to crush out all the thoughts that barraged her mind, all the fears breaking out in beads of sweat across her creased forehead. She didn't want to think about that. First, she needed answers. She and Clark both needed answers.
Clark. Lois paused briefly in her attempts at thoughtlessness, and looked up at the darkened shape standing next to her that was her husband. She stared up into those unblinking chocolate depths that were his eyes, and noticed their unusual shallowness. He stood, stroking her hair gently, wispily, like he wasn't really there. He seemed to be somewhere out in space, and all that was left behind was his body, like an empty shell, instinctively trying to comfort his wife. But his mind was elsewhere. His mind was looking, searching, imploring desperately for answers from far-away entities that didn't exist and couldn't help. Looking, searching, imploring desperately for answers that not even he could see. Not for the next fifteen minutes, anyway.
Lois looked down at her watch that had been set on stopwatch for fifteen minutes time. It said that exactly thirty, no, wait, thirty *one* seconds had passed. Lois knew instantly that this was going to be the longest fifteen minutes of her life.
She stopped trying not to think, because it was harder not to then to just let her mind wander, and she was starting to get a headache from the relaxation. Lois was not someone who understood the concept of rest. She constantly had to be thinking, working something out in that brilliant mind of hers. It was what she did, God damn it, and if that was what she had to do to keep herself occupied for the next fourteen minutes twenty-nine seconds, then that was what she was going to do!
So off her mind went, sweeping back in time, thinking about just how she had gotten to this situation. She wished she could start over again. She wished that she could go right back to just before she and Clark had made love without protection two months ago, and do. . .something! Once she thought about it, she didn't know exactly what. Would she have used protection? Would she really have changed anything at all? That wasn't what Lois was debating. What she really wanted to do was have a choice. Have control. That was another one of Lois's traits; she had to have control of the situation, and she always had before. That was the kind of person she was. Not a control freak--well, yes, maybe just a little of a control freak. She was no Adolph Hitler, but she liked to know that she had control of her life. She did believe in fate or coincidence, and during the middle of the movie "The Matrix" she had gotten up and left the theater. She simply couldn't believe that her life wasn't under her control, and yet, here she was, as living proof that it really wasn't.
Maybe, if she did go back, if she *could* go back, she would have changed nothing at all. But for sure she would have stopped to think about it, at least she would have gone into the situation knowing the consequences! That was all she really wanted; she wanted to know that she had chosen this, and that she had no one to blame but herself. But the fact remained that it was too late for that, and that, like it or not, she *had* been throwing up mornings for that last seven days, and she *had* felt pretty lousy and drained, and Clark and she *were* beginning to consider the logical idea that Lois might-just might-be pregnant.
Lois again glanced at her watch. Fifteen seconds had passed.
*'Instant Results' my ass,* Lois thought as she read the side of the little box the test had come in for the sixth time on record. *You'd think that after all the technology the human race has acquired over the time that it's existed, they would have been able to figure out how to make a pregnancy test that was fast *and* accuarate!* Lois mulled indignantly.
She rolled her head back and rested it against the wall, letting her arms slip from her knees and fall down casually, or just tiredly, between her sprawled legs with a defining sigh that seemed much too loud for the quit surroundings. She immediately gulped it back and closed her eyes again, not willing herself enough to lift them to fall into her husband's waiting stare. She couldn't look him in the eye comfortably without knowing what he was thinking, and since that was one of the few powers he didn't have, that was impossible.
What *could* he be thinking? Was he happy? Was he sad? Was he scared? Was he something ripped between the three, like Lois was? She hoped silently that was the case. He pranced around in that red cape, being better and stronger and faster than anyone else, and seeming so much a more perfect person. That was when he was supposed to be the most stable one, when she knew that he might really be in more control than she was, but she didn't want him playing god when they were in the same boat, even if he thought it made her feel better. No, when her life was in danger she wanted him to be the one who always knew what to do, but when she was just scared, she wanted him to be scared with her. Why? She didn't know. It gave her a weird, morbid kind of comfort to know that he was just as scared as she was even though he had all that power. She didn't *want* him to be afraid, but if he was, she didn't want him to pretend not to be. She couldn't help him then, and he couldn't really help her. She wanted him to act the way he felt. That made her feel safer than the thought of him acting like he was fine when he was really falling apart inside.
Lois drifted back to a time long, oh so long ago it seemed, when Clark had said that he wanted children. It hadn't surprised her, Clark was wonderful with kids. She had known then, or at least thought, that he would someday make a great father to children she had no relation to, with a wife she didn't know. Little had she known then that they would find a future together, and a wonderful one. But they had, and Lois had then realized that the one man that deserved children the most, the one man who could make a close to perfect father, wouldn't have the chance. Clark had acted reasonably calm and accepting when Dr. Klein had said that Superman wouldn't be able to have children with an earth woman, but only someone that knew him like Lois did could tell that the news had crushed him completely.
But that had been a long time ago, and things seemed to mature, and attitudes seemed to change, and Clark seemed to accept the idea of a childless life. And now this. Now this had come and screwed everyone around until no one knew which way was up. Especially not Lois.
Would having a baby change the way Clark felt toward her? Would he stop caring for her as much as he would care for their child? Would Clark's and her personal life fade into the background of having to take care of a baby around the clock? Would they lose the passion that they had for each other? Would they lose their identities as Lois and Clark, even to each other, and become Mommy and Daddy? And if they did, did she *not* want that?
Yes, Lois had always known that Clark might want kids, but Lois had never been all that thrilled at the idea. Kids never seemed to take to Lois as well as they did to Clark; they just weren't her area of expertice.
Then there would be the fact that she couldn't stay on the job right up to the moment she went into labor (well, *she* could, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Clark and Perry would gang up on her backing the opposing point), and she would have to get fat and clumsy and, said a little, tiny voice in the back of her mind, she would have to get unattractive. What would Clark think about *that*?
*Oh, don't be stupid Lane, you're letting your imagination run away with you! Your husband it *not* that shallow!* screamed the logical half of her brain. But then that tiny, creeping, suspicious half that Lois had worked so hard for so long to drill into her and had eventually become as instinctive as breathing, said quietly, *But he *is* one of them. . .* Lois physically shook her head to loosen the horrifying thought that little abstract statement had made bubble up beneath her mind. Clark wasn't like that, and that was final. Take that, Claude!
With that thought grounded, she began to explore more unpleasant aspects. People would have to do things *for* her. Egh. That wouldn't be fun. Lois was about the most independent person you could ever meet, and having other people pamper her wasn't going to be easy. HA! Listen to her! "*wouldn't* be fun, wasn't *going* to be easy", she was thinking like she was so sure the test would be positive! She hadn't even looked at it yet!
But at the same time, she had this feeling in her gut. . . she looked down at her "gut". She put a gentle had to her now flat stomach, as though wishing it farewell. Her eyes practically watered to think about what the sources she talked to would think when she stood there looking like a beached whale. They wouldn't respect her, and that was that. Lois didn't believe it that sort of prejudice, but she wasn't so nieve as to pretend that it didn't exist. People thought that pregnant women were moody, emotional, and irrational, and not completely without just cause. Hormones could be a powerful thing. That was another concern.
Lois had heard that hormones could have women laughing one moment, screaming the next, and crying the next. Lois had great confidence in her ability to control herself and keep her feelings in around anyone. . .except Clark. He always seemed to know when she was bothered by something, and she always found herself pouring out her soul to him, no matter how guarded she was trying to be. That went back to her need for control. She needed to be able to control her emotions, and the idea that she couldn't scared her breathless.
Then there were things like cravings and morning sickness, which she was getting a small taste of now. She didn't like it. Her stomach flip-flopped constantly and the fact that just this morning she had actually thrown up all over the bed-with Clark still in it- made her feel more than a little uncomfortable. He had, of course, been his regular sweet self about it, reassuring her through her constant apologies and curses at herself that it was okay and that she should go lay down on the couch while he changed the sheets on the bed, but she had seen the true worry in his eyes that made her heart wrench, along with her still twisting stomach.
And then, at the end of it all, as thought it hadn't already been hard enough, she would have to go through an excruciating labor, and finally give birth. And don't think it was smooth sailing from there, either, no, that's when the *hard* part begins! The nights spent awake trying to quiet the baby's crying, the day's spent in the exhaustion of trying to keep up with a growing child when you can barely keep your eyes open from the lose of sleep! The skipped work days, the lost stories! All and all, Lois had to wonder why women did it to themselves.
And for how much of it would Clark be there? After all, he *was* still Superman, weather he be Superdad at the same time or not. Would he be able to spend due time with his child? With Lois? Would their entire family, the whole little world they had worked so hard to create, fall apart with one crying little bundle of joy?
Lois brought back down her head and absently her had drifted to her stomach again, this time, more tenderly. Lois didn't know if that was a mistake, or if it was on purpose. Lois had to feel a certain amount of respect for the little guy. After all, in this stage the baby was probably about the size of a penny, and yet had caused all this trouble and stress. Lois surprised herself as a small smile drew itself across her lips.
There was a little life inside her. No matter how much it sounded like something from the movie "Alien", it was comforting in a weird, backward, maternal way. Lois actually giggled this time at the irony. "Alien" the movie had been about a race of aliens that implanted themselves inside a human's stomach and then popped out one day without warning. Although Lois knew the difference was great, if she *was* pregnant, she had a little alien growing inside her, too. She didn't think that she would phrase it quite that way to Clark if it ever came up, though.
Alien or not, it was her child. Not just that, it was her and *Clark's* child. It would be a little bit of both of them, and at the same time as it scared Lois to think that she would become light and day for a real person, she also favored the idea of raising a little person with the man she loved more than anything.
It did truly scare her to think that she would be in control of a life, and that she could quite possibly make the difference between there being one more gangster in the world or one more Good Samaritan. God knows the human race needed more of those. Another little irony crossed her mind. Clark was about the most Good-Samaritan-like person Lois had ever known, and the world needed more of that. The world needed more Clarks, and he wasn't human at all. Not that this child was going to be in every way like Clark, a great deal of the way Clark was came from his up-bringing, and the fact that he had model parents. Lois had anything but. But, at the same time, that made her more determined to be that model parent. They might make a good combination.
But still, she wasn't ready for a child.
Would she ever be if she didn't try, though?
No, maybe next year. If that test said that she wasn't pregnant-and she still wished it would hopelessly-maybe she would try next year, she just wasn't ready yet. Wasn't ready to give up her life with Clark. Yes, if that test came up negative, it would be a Godsend. But if it wasn't, Lois could definantly live with that. Infact-
Beep, beep. Beep, beep.
Lois glanced down at her watch. "15:00" was blinking on and off to grab the wearer's attention. Lois saw out of the corner of her eye, Clark push his glasses sternly up the bridge of his nose so that he couldn't see past them. Lois knew he was trying to restrain himself from taking a peek at what was behind that door. He knew that Lois wanted them to find out together and deal with it together. Lois got to her feet and said simply, "It's time."
"Are you okay?" Clark asked, worry flashing over his face.
"Yeah."
"I can go in and tell you-"
"No, Clark, we got into this together," Lois said with a slight smile, "We'll find out together." She said determinedly.
They grasped hands and Lois slowly turned the knob and pushed open the bathroom door. Then she just froze. Clark went over and peered at the test. His head snapped but up with a tired, but slightly relieved smile on it.
"Lois, there's just one line here, you're not pregnant! That's what you wanted. Boy, that's a relief."
He said the words, and Lois could tell that he was happy she'd gotten what she wanted, but there was some hint of regret beneath them.
"Oh." Lois said solemnly, unmoving from her stiff and frozen position. "Are you sure?"
"Clear as a bell." Clark said, with the plastered, weary smile still on his face.
"Oh." Lois said again in the same manner. A pause. "Good. That's good. Because- -because you know I don't think we're ready."
"Right." Clark agreed.
"Not yet, anywise. Maybe someday." Lois added, with a slight tinge of hopefulness barely evident in her voice.
"Yeah." Clark said, in the same tone. He reached forward and they embraced for a second, indulging in each other's "relief". Then, Lois felt tears slide down her face with all the warning of a sudden heart attack, and dampen Clark's shoulder. Lois's throat became dry as a desert as she spoke.
"Clark?" she whispered quietly, shakily, not breaking the embrace.
"Yes?" came the reply, surprising in the same croaky tone as hers.
"I really wanted that baby." Lois whispered genuinely as she began to lose herself in tears. There was a long pause and silence coursed through Lois's veins like ice and made her heart feel cold. Then came Clark's whisper, this time a very evident trace of cracking in his voice, and Lois felt the wetness of his tears dampening her shoulder.
"So did I, Lois, so did I."
THE END
Authur's note: If you haven't seen "The Matrix", it talks a whole lot about how no one has complete control of their life. I'm sorry this was so sad, but we all know that they do eventually get pregnant and everybody is happy, happy, happy. Still, it's kind of a sad note to leave you on. But we have to realize, that sometimes that's what writing is all about.
Rated: PG13
By: Catherine Fogel
Lois sank slowly to the floor by sliding her back down the closed bathroom door after leaving and shutting it behind her. She sighed deeply and drooped her head into her hands. She was so exhausted. So confused.
She closed her eyes tightly, thinking that maybe, just maybe, if she closed them tight enough, she would wake up in her bed next to her husband and this would have all been some weird half nightmare half fantasy of a dream. That if she closed them tight enough, she might be able to crush out all the thoughts that barraged her mind, all the fears breaking out in beads of sweat across her creased forehead. She didn't want to think about that. First, she needed answers. She and Clark both needed answers.
Clark. Lois paused briefly in her attempts at thoughtlessness, and looked up at the darkened shape standing next to her that was her husband. She stared up into those unblinking chocolate depths that were his eyes, and noticed their unusual shallowness. He stood, stroking her hair gently, wispily, like he wasn't really there. He seemed to be somewhere out in space, and all that was left behind was his body, like an empty shell, instinctively trying to comfort his wife. But his mind was elsewhere. His mind was looking, searching, imploring desperately for answers from far-away entities that didn't exist and couldn't help. Looking, searching, imploring desperately for answers that not even he could see. Not for the next fifteen minutes, anyway.
Lois looked down at her watch that had been set on stopwatch for fifteen minutes time. It said that exactly thirty, no, wait, thirty *one* seconds had passed. Lois knew instantly that this was going to be the longest fifteen minutes of her life.
She stopped trying not to think, because it was harder not to then to just let her mind wander, and she was starting to get a headache from the relaxation. Lois was not someone who understood the concept of rest. She constantly had to be thinking, working something out in that brilliant mind of hers. It was what she did, God damn it, and if that was what she had to do to keep herself occupied for the next fourteen minutes twenty-nine seconds, then that was what she was going to do!
So off her mind went, sweeping back in time, thinking about just how she had gotten to this situation. She wished she could start over again. She wished that she could go right back to just before she and Clark had made love without protection two months ago, and do. . .something! Once she thought about it, she didn't know exactly what. Would she have used protection? Would she really have changed anything at all? That wasn't what Lois was debating. What she really wanted to do was have a choice. Have control. That was another one of Lois's traits; she had to have control of the situation, and she always had before. That was the kind of person she was. Not a control freak--well, yes, maybe just a little of a control freak. She was no Adolph Hitler, but she liked to know that she had control of her life. She did believe in fate or coincidence, and during the middle of the movie "The Matrix" she had gotten up and left the theater. She simply couldn't believe that her life wasn't under her control, and yet, here she was, as living proof that it really wasn't.
Maybe, if she did go back, if she *could* go back, she would have changed nothing at all. But for sure she would have stopped to think about it, at least she would have gone into the situation knowing the consequences! That was all she really wanted; she wanted to know that she had chosen this, and that she had no one to blame but herself. But the fact remained that it was too late for that, and that, like it or not, she *had* been throwing up mornings for that last seven days, and she *had* felt pretty lousy and drained, and Clark and she *were* beginning to consider the logical idea that Lois might-just might-be pregnant.
Lois again glanced at her watch. Fifteen seconds had passed.
*'Instant Results' my ass,* Lois thought as she read the side of the little box the test had come in for the sixth time on record. *You'd think that after all the technology the human race has acquired over the time that it's existed, they would have been able to figure out how to make a pregnancy test that was fast *and* accuarate!* Lois mulled indignantly.
She rolled her head back and rested it against the wall, letting her arms slip from her knees and fall down casually, or just tiredly, between her sprawled legs with a defining sigh that seemed much too loud for the quit surroundings. She immediately gulped it back and closed her eyes again, not willing herself enough to lift them to fall into her husband's waiting stare. She couldn't look him in the eye comfortably without knowing what he was thinking, and since that was one of the few powers he didn't have, that was impossible.
What *could* he be thinking? Was he happy? Was he sad? Was he scared? Was he something ripped between the three, like Lois was? She hoped silently that was the case. He pranced around in that red cape, being better and stronger and faster than anyone else, and seeming so much a more perfect person. That was when he was supposed to be the most stable one, when she knew that he might really be in more control than she was, but she didn't want him playing god when they were in the same boat, even if he thought it made her feel better. No, when her life was in danger she wanted him to be the one who always knew what to do, but when she was just scared, she wanted him to be scared with her. Why? She didn't know. It gave her a weird, morbid kind of comfort to know that he was just as scared as she was even though he had all that power. She didn't *want* him to be afraid, but if he was, she didn't want him to pretend not to be. She couldn't help him then, and he couldn't really help her. She wanted him to act the way he felt. That made her feel safer than the thought of him acting like he was fine when he was really falling apart inside.
Lois drifted back to a time long, oh so long ago it seemed, when Clark had said that he wanted children. It hadn't surprised her, Clark was wonderful with kids. She had known then, or at least thought, that he would someday make a great father to children she had no relation to, with a wife she didn't know. Little had she known then that they would find a future together, and a wonderful one. But they had, and Lois had then realized that the one man that deserved children the most, the one man who could make a close to perfect father, wouldn't have the chance. Clark had acted reasonably calm and accepting when Dr. Klein had said that Superman wouldn't be able to have children with an earth woman, but only someone that knew him like Lois did could tell that the news had crushed him completely.
But that had been a long time ago, and things seemed to mature, and attitudes seemed to change, and Clark seemed to accept the idea of a childless life. And now this. Now this had come and screwed everyone around until no one knew which way was up. Especially not Lois.
Would having a baby change the way Clark felt toward her? Would he stop caring for her as much as he would care for their child? Would Clark's and her personal life fade into the background of having to take care of a baby around the clock? Would they lose the passion that they had for each other? Would they lose their identities as Lois and Clark, even to each other, and become Mommy and Daddy? And if they did, did she *not* want that?
Yes, Lois had always known that Clark might want kids, but Lois had never been all that thrilled at the idea. Kids never seemed to take to Lois as well as they did to Clark; they just weren't her area of expertice.
Then there would be the fact that she couldn't stay on the job right up to the moment she went into labor (well, *she* could, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Clark and Perry would gang up on her backing the opposing point), and she would have to get fat and clumsy and, said a little, tiny voice in the back of her mind, she would have to get unattractive. What would Clark think about *that*?
*Oh, don't be stupid Lane, you're letting your imagination run away with you! Your husband it *not* that shallow!* screamed the logical half of her brain. But then that tiny, creeping, suspicious half that Lois had worked so hard for so long to drill into her and had eventually become as instinctive as breathing, said quietly, *But he *is* one of them. . .* Lois physically shook her head to loosen the horrifying thought that little abstract statement had made bubble up beneath her mind. Clark wasn't like that, and that was final. Take that, Claude!
With that thought grounded, she began to explore more unpleasant aspects. People would have to do things *for* her. Egh. That wouldn't be fun. Lois was about the most independent person you could ever meet, and having other people pamper her wasn't going to be easy. HA! Listen to her! "*wouldn't* be fun, wasn't *going* to be easy", she was thinking like she was so sure the test would be positive! She hadn't even looked at it yet!
But at the same time, she had this feeling in her gut. . . she looked down at her "gut". She put a gentle had to her now flat stomach, as though wishing it farewell. Her eyes practically watered to think about what the sources she talked to would think when she stood there looking like a beached whale. They wouldn't respect her, and that was that. Lois didn't believe it that sort of prejudice, but she wasn't so nieve as to pretend that it didn't exist. People thought that pregnant women were moody, emotional, and irrational, and not completely without just cause. Hormones could be a powerful thing. That was another concern.
Lois had heard that hormones could have women laughing one moment, screaming the next, and crying the next. Lois had great confidence in her ability to control herself and keep her feelings in around anyone. . .except Clark. He always seemed to know when she was bothered by something, and she always found herself pouring out her soul to him, no matter how guarded she was trying to be. That went back to her need for control. She needed to be able to control her emotions, and the idea that she couldn't scared her breathless.
Then there were things like cravings and morning sickness, which she was getting a small taste of now. She didn't like it. Her stomach flip-flopped constantly and the fact that just this morning she had actually thrown up all over the bed-with Clark still in it- made her feel more than a little uncomfortable. He had, of course, been his regular sweet self about it, reassuring her through her constant apologies and curses at herself that it was okay and that she should go lay down on the couch while he changed the sheets on the bed, but she had seen the true worry in his eyes that made her heart wrench, along with her still twisting stomach.
And then, at the end of it all, as thought it hadn't already been hard enough, she would have to go through an excruciating labor, and finally give birth. And don't think it was smooth sailing from there, either, no, that's when the *hard* part begins! The nights spent awake trying to quiet the baby's crying, the day's spent in the exhaustion of trying to keep up with a growing child when you can barely keep your eyes open from the lose of sleep! The skipped work days, the lost stories! All and all, Lois had to wonder why women did it to themselves.
And for how much of it would Clark be there? After all, he *was* still Superman, weather he be Superdad at the same time or not. Would he be able to spend due time with his child? With Lois? Would their entire family, the whole little world they had worked so hard to create, fall apart with one crying little bundle of joy?
Lois brought back down her head and absently her had drifted to her stomach again, this time, more tenderly. Lois didn't know if that was a mistake, or if it was on purpose. Lois had to feel a certain amount of respect for the little guy. After all, in this stage the baby was probably about the size of a penny, and yet had caused all this trouble and stress. Lois surprised herself as a small smile drew itself across her lips.
There was a little life inside her. No matter how much it sounded like something from the movie "Alien", it was comforting in a weird, backward, maternal way. Lois actually giggled this time at the irony. "Alien" the movie had been about a race of aliens that implanted themselves inside a human's stomach and then popped out one day without warning. Although Lois knew the difference was great, if she *was* pregnant, she had a little alien growing inside her, too. She didn't think that she would phrase it quite that way to Clark if it ever came up, though.
Alien or not, it was her child. Not just that, it was her and *Clark's* child. It would be a little bit of both of them, and at the same time as it scared Lois to think that she would become light and day for a real person, she also favored the idea of raising a little person with the man she loved more than anything.
It did truly scare her to think that she would be in control of a life, and that she could quite possibly make the difference between there being one more gangster in the world or one more Good Samaritan. God knows the human race needed more of those. Another little irony crossed her mind. Clark was about the most Good-Samaritan-like person Lois had ever known, and the world needed more of that. The world needed more Clarks, and he wasn't human at all. Not that this child was going to be in every way like Clark, a great deal of the way Clark was came from his up-bringing, and the fact that he had model parents. Lois had anything but. But, at the same time, that made her more determined to be that model parent. They might make a good combination.
But still, she wasn't ready for a child.
Would she ever be if she didn't try, though?
No, maybe next year. If that test said that she wasn't pregnant-and she still wished it would hopelessly-maybe she would try next year, she just wasn't ready yet. Wasn't ready to give up her life with Clark. Yes, if that test came up negative, it would be a Godsend. But if it wasn't, Lois could definantly live with that. Infact-
Beep, beep. Beep, beep.
Lois glanced down at her watch. "15:00" was blinking on and off to grab the wearer's attention. Lois saw out of the corner of her eye, Clark push his glasses sternly up the bridge of his nose so that he couldn't see past them. Lois knew he was trying to restrain himself from taking a peek at what was behind that door. He knew that Lois wanted them to find out together and deal with it together. Lois got to her feet and said simply, "It's time."
"Are you okay?" Clark asked, worry flashing over his face.
"Yeah."
"I can go in and tell you-"
"No, Clark, we got into this together," Lois said with a slight smile, "We'll find out together." She said determinedly.
They grasped hands and Lois slowly turned the knob and pushed open the bathroom door. Then she just froze. Clark went over and peered at the test. His head snapped but up with a tired, but slightly relieved smile on it.
"Lois, there's just one line here, you're not pregnant! That's what you wanted. Boy, that's a relief."
He said the words, and Lois could tell that he was happy she'd gotten what she wanted, but there was some hint of regret beneath them.
"Oh." Lois said solemnly, unmoving from her stiff and frozen position. "Are you sure?"
"Clear as a bell." Clark said, with the plastered, weary smile still on his face.
"Oh." Lois said again in the same manner. A pause. "Good. That's good. Because- -because you know I don't think we're ready."
"Right." Clark agreed.
"Not yet, anywise. Maybe someday." Lois added, with a slight tinge of hopefulness barely evident in her voice.
"Yeah." Clark said, in the same tone. He reached forward and they embraced for a second, indulging in each other's "relief". Then, Lois felt tears slide down her face with all the warning of a sudden heart attack, and dampen Clark's shoulder. Lois's throat became dry as a desert as she spoke.
"Clark?" she whispered quietly, shakily, not breaking the embrace.
"Yes?" came the reply, surprising in the same croaky tone as hers.
"I really wanted that baby." Lois whispered genuinely as she began to lose herself in tears. There was a long pause and silence coursed through Lois's veins like ice and made her heart feel cold. Then came Clark's whisper, this time a very evident trace of cracking in his voice, and Lois felt the wetness of his tears dampening her shoulder.
"So did I, Lois, so did I."
THE END
Authur's note: If you haven't seen "The Matrix", it talks a whole lot about how no one has complete control of their life. I'm sorry this was so sad, but we all know that they do eventually get pregnant and everybody is happy, happy, happy. Still, it's kind of a sad note to leave you on. But we have to realize, that sometimes that's what writing is all about.