This chapter was inspired by the sweet, sad little song, "Men of Snow," by Ingrid Michaelson. And don't worry.

I still remember that this story is supposed to be a tragedy. :) Sorry it took so long to upload - I was trying so hard to make this chapter perfect. xD Some of you didn't like the previous chapter, so I hope you like this one! There's language, and little bit of hurt-Clark, in this chapter, so just a warning. O-O Also; I uploaded this chapter twice, because I didn't like how the first version of this chapter turned out. xD So I edited it and made it nicer. :3 Read, enjoy, and review!

"Winters come, my love, the winters go,
and time stacks up in piles like winter snow.
And everything you love and hold so dear
it won't really matter when we disappear."

Richard White loved a very special woman. This woman had these warm, mismatched eyes and these greats locks of soft, hazel hair. She had this musical laugh, a beautiful smile, and her happiness could be infectious. She was pretty and strong and sweet and good and so, so, so fragile. Richard had worried about this woman and cried over her and danced with her and had almost died for her. He loved to make her happy.

He and this woman had one child. This child was a unique little boy with these big, gentle, blue eyes and a lonely, innocent soul. Together, they were their own family.

And Richard knew that this woman loved him back...but not nearly as much as she could have. Not nearly as much as he loved her.

It was because she had already fallen in love with another man.

This woman's name was Lois Lane.

"I don't need a sedative, lady! I told you - I just need to talk to -"

"Ma'am, please, we're trying to help! Just calm down -"

"Let me go! I don't want to sleep! Let me -"

Click.

Lois, and the nurse she had been arguing with, looked up as the door to the hospital room opened. Richard White stepped in.

"Richard," Lois breathed. She's been expecting Super... Clark, she meant, to come first...but Richard was just as welcome. Their gazes met - and it was without hesitation that they had reached a silent agreement. Lois glanced at the nurse still holding her wrist.

"Let go," said Lois. The nurse obliged.

"Can we have a moment?" Richard asked the nurse. As he received a blank stare on the nurse's behalf, he added, "...Alone?"

"Oh - of course," said the nurse, flushing with embarrassment. "I'll leave you two at it, then. Hopefully, you can talk some sense into this woman!"

"I'd like to talk some damned sense into her," Lois muttered, once the young nurse had gone. "More like smack it into her, the annoying b -"

"Lois." The quiet man gave his fiance a sad, strange, little look. Lois blinked. There was something in this look - perhaps it was the tiredness, the conflict, the aching disbelief - that stopped her words.

"Richard," she began to say, softly. "Richard, you really should rest..." But he shook his head.

She'd never seen Richard so...exhausted. Not even when Lois had seen his broken gaze in the sea plane, when she had been begging Superman not to leave in his injured condition; not to go back and hold up the weight of the world once more. Richard had been watching - not saying anything, just merely watching. When Superman had left in the end, when her hero, her friend, her lover, had closed his eyes and fallen back into the world of wind and rain and all those cries for the help, Richard had just looked at her, and his eyes had said everything that he couldn't have ever put into words.

"I'm so, so sorry," Lois finally whispered. Tears began to roll down in thick streams, and she covered her face, unable to meet his eyes. Her self-control, her strength, her defiance...they all had suddenly crumbled and she had become a little girl once more, weeping over all that had happened; all the pain and the blood and the secrets and everything else her love had been forced to endure.

Her thoughts twisted and cascaded together in a confusing jumble: Clark was Superman, and Superman was her best friend, and Richard loved her, and Richard sacrificed for her, and Jason was Superman's son, was Clark Kent's son, and Richard loved Jason like his own son, and there were people bent on destroying their peace...but Lois was still here - caught in the middle of everything, caught in the war with herself and the watching, waiting world, caught between the warm hearts and helping hands of a hero and a friend and a lover.

Clark Kent. Richard White. Superman. Her fiance. Her best pal. A father. The father.

"Lois - please don't cry," Richard came forward and he swept her into his arms and held her close. "It's okay...it's okay..."

But it wasn't okay. She had realized a long, long time ago, the exact moment when she first saw the fleeting blur of red and blue outside her failing plane's window. It would never be okay. Richard could never be as strong as Superman, he could never be as sweet as Clark, he could and would never be someone she truly loved.

It was all becoming too much.

The strange, alien warmth that Clark had tried to pour into her, to protect her and keep her safe, was still thrumming faintly inside of her. It had preserved her; had kept her from dying. However, Clark hadn't been able to give her all of this warmth - and they both managed to miraculously survive the great leap from the Planet's broken window. But of course, there were still scratches and bumps and injuries. Lois had broken three of her left ribs, cracked two of the eight carpal bones in her left wrist, and she ached and stung everywhere from countless bruises and abrasions. Only the Lord knew how badly Clark was fairing. The poor man had been shot - reportedly several times, although the nurses had told her that he'd been lying and saying that he'd been hit only once. He had obviously taken the worst of their fall.

Rumors were now running rampant throughout all of the Metropolis City hospital; she'd eavesdropped on so many ludicrous conversations, that only one had stuck with her.

"...no man could've survived that fall," One of the doctors had been saying quietly. "That man is Superman, no doubt. He was even wearing the blue and red costume!"

The other doctor had nodded. Lois had forced herself to keep still and pretend to be sleeping, trying hard to listen to their conversation.

"But you know what else?" Whispered the first doctor. Lois strained to hear his next words: "There were...normal clothes that he was wearing! A tattered workman's tie. Bits and pieces of a brown suit. There was even the torn top part of a leather shoe around one of his red boots!"

"It makes sense," replied the second doctor. "Superman couldn't be Superman all the time, could he? Even a god needs some sort of break from the cape."

Even a god. The second doctor's words had been reverberating in her mind ever since Lois had first heard them.

Richard had been nice enough to offer to buy Clark a new suit. Although Clark had fiercely refused - saying that he could not leech off of Richard's services - in the end, Clark was forced to wear the black sweater, dark jeans, and dress shoes bought for him by Mr. White. They fit quite nicely, quite comfortably, really; but right then, clothes were not the most pressing topic. His mind was currently on overload. How was he going to face Lois?

Clark was sitting in one of the chairs right outside Lois Lane's room, trembling slightly, from the effort he was giving not to collapse on the floor in pure exhaustion. Everything hurt. It wasn't even reasonable to say that he was enduring pain - he was enduring agony. Even though the doctors had managed to surgically remove the bullets of solid kryptonite from his flesh, they didn't realize that his bloodstream had become exposed to the kryptonite for far too long a duration of time. There was no possible way for the tainted blood to be pumped out of his system, and so Clark, not wanting to distress or guilt the medical professionals, had lied and said he was feeling much better.

The truth was...

He was infected. And he was dying.

But he wasn't afraid. Oh no - he had long passed that stage of fear. He'd skipped dread, ignored terror, and was right now petrified to the extent of silence.

What would happen now? Once he had...had gone, Lex Luthor would step forth and destroy everything Superman had tried to preserve. Lois and Jason would be in constant danger. His mother would be alone. People would die. There would be calamity and chaos and death.

If he ended, everyone else would end, too. It was all his fault.

Clark buried his face in his scratched, aching hands, feeling the burn of tears strike his eyes. How would he face Lois? And Richard? And Jason? And Martha? They would scream at him. Wail. Cry. Curse. He was a terrible father. A terrible friend. And a terrible hero. He had damned each and everyone of his loved ones to Hell.

"I'm so, so sorry," Kal-El whispered. He looked down at the shiny hospital floor, and then stared back up at the ceiling; finally he leaned back in his chair, and closed his blue eyes, breathing hard. Each breath had a bit of his death hiding behind it; a tiny prick of pain that occurred with every sigh, and that tiny prick of pain that had slowly begun to expand into something greater, something worse.

After three hundred breaths - he'd counted each and everyone of them -, and after that pricking pain had grown into a tangible force that rammed into his lungs and ribs every other second, Richard White's footsteps came out from behind the wooden door. Clark quickly hid the expression of pain on his face and fixated a rather weak smile upon his pale lips when Richard looked his way.

Clark started to ask, "Is...Is Lois...?" But Richard nodded and he didn't have to finish his question. Clark then stood up carefully - trying to act nonchalant and easy about it - but his left leg gave out at the last moment, unable to properly hold his weight, and he adopted a painful limp. Richard stared at him in alarm.

"...Kent," Richard said, looking concerned. It seemed as if he was struggling with what to do - should he offer a hand? get a wheelchair? - before asking, "Are you...alright?"

Clark gave the other man a smile that was much too forced, too bright. "Of course!" He assured, nodding pleasantly. But Richard winced. How...Superman was acting...was genuinely starting to frighten him. It was with great effort that Richard managed to shove away his suspicions and beckon for Clark to step over the open doorway.

"Lois?"

The brunette heard the door close shut quietly. She turned slowly, forced to tear her gaze away from the world outside of her little window.

"Superman," said Lois, not daring to blink. There, standing in front of her, was Superman. And Clark Kent. She could see them now, in the pale hospital light, the striking similarities between the "two" people, the same burning, beautiful blue eyes.

She took this delicate moment to study this man closer.

His clothes were ones that she hadn't ever seen Superman nor Clark wear. Much more casual and yet, somehow, much more fine than what Clark Kent usually wore. The dark pallets that covered him easily brought out the ravishing handsomeness that she had failed to see all of her life at the Daily Planet. But this handsomeness was...marred. For right then, Lois had suddenly noticed how pale Clark had become. Pale to an unhealthy extent.

With growing alarm, Lois began to see each and every wound, each and every injury, each and every cut on the man. Each and every one of the faint, barely perceptible, gray circles that hung below his tired blue eyes. Clark's appearance was ragged - broken; his black hair was sultry and ungroomed; his posture was bent, as though the very thought of standing hurt him; and, a sight even more terrible to her horrified eyes, there were these ugly, red, blistered welts that could be seen crookedly running down from his white throat, to beneath the sleeves of his sweater, and ending at his greatly scarred hands. And that was just what she could see right now. His torso was probably burned and marred and beaten from those flames, the spray of bullets - his legs, his arms, his heart: all bruised and broken.

"What should I say?" said Clark. The sound of his voice - soft yet bold, light although heavy, sad albeit relieved - broke the brittle ice over her thoughts, chased away the bitter numbness, and swept her up briefly into the daydreams and memories of those happier times. But his next words broke the brief reprieve she had gotten into sanity. "How should I apologize?"

Lois sighed, and she shook her head. "You don't have to -"

"But I do, Miss Lane," he replied. This wasn't Clark speaking - this was Superman. "I do have to say sorry. For everything I've ever done, have done, and for everything that may happen." And he took two, shaken steps towards her, but then stopped. He asked, "I should keep my distance, shouldn't I?"

"No," said Lois. A momentary gleam of genuine terror could be seen reflected deep within her darkened eyes. "No - please - you're one of the few people keeping me sane in my life. I need you, Superman. The world needs you." Her voice lowered. "...Jason needs you."

Suddenly, a laugh escaped Clark's lips. It was such a grim, unhappy, terrible sound, that Lois couldn't quite comprehend its presence at the first hearing of it. But when she did - the woman finally snapped. She crossed the distance between her and Clark in three short strides, and, practically beating at his barrel chest with her weak hands, screamed, "Why are you laughing? !" His laughter instantly stopped.

"There's nothing to laugh about!" She continued to cry, taking fistfuls of the loose black sweater he wore and shaking them. "Why the hell are you laughing?"

She was trembling with anger as Superman looked down at her. But her rage vanished when she saw his expression - and the he gave her was one of such compassion, such tender love; an expression so powerful that she suddenly felt ashamed of herself.

"I'm laughing," he said softly, whilst giving her a smile of utter misery. "Because I am a horrible father. I don't deserve such a beautiful son - I don't deserve Richard's friendship - and I don't deserve you, Lois."

Miss Lane was too startled to cry out.

"Lois," said Clark, and he finally met her multi-hued eyes, the blue touching the green and the brown. "Lois, I'm dying."

And Lois Lane stared at him, her gaze point-blank shocked. Her brain would not - could not - register his words. She felt herself go hot - then cold - then hot again; she was melting, and then she was freezing; she was shaking and breaking and crumbling and was ready to lash out and scream and crumple to her knees, ready to start begging and sobbing, but she couldn't bring herself to do anything, anything at all, really - she wouldn't let Clark see her grief, her mourning, her insanity.

So she closed her eyes and felt that dark world spin in a whirlwind of emotions and words and memories; she closed her eyes and allowed the painless sleep to embrace her; she closed her eyes and collapsed, at the feet of a being she could never live without.