XII
Clark Kent
Kal-El was gone when I woke up: rolling out of bed, I hit the floor like a stone.
The window to my room was opened, and I wondered if the bird had flown. But I know from birds, and I knew he'd come back if I called him. I went up to my rooftop, thinking how strange to meet him in the daytime — but I didn't have to call. He was already there, back to me.
The sky was clouded over with grey, and it looked like rain: it didn't matter now, the air had already stopped burning, the fallout was fell out. I realised, somewhere, that it had been two days now, and I knew today I had to pick up the pieces.
But not yet.
He turned to me before I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled. The light was to his back now, casting his face in shadows, and I realised, even with Kal-El, that smile wasn't in his eyes.
"What's wrong?" I said, folding my arms against the cool and standing beside him, leaning back against the ledge.
"I was thinking," he said.
I nudged him with my elbow and raised an eyebrow. "Care to share?"
He pressed his lips together and let his eyes slide away from mine, first to the sky and then to the floor. "I was thinking —" he said. He looked back at me, and then looked away again. "I was thinking about — you."
I smiled, a little bit. "Me?"
He nodded, slowly. "And, Clark."
Was that the first time he'd ever said his name like that? I stared at him.
"You miss him," he said, and it was a fact.
"I miss him," I repeated, because I couldn't lie to Kal any more than he could lie to me.
He nodded, and I watched him. I watched the curve of his neck as the breeze brushed the hair lightly off it, and the shadow behind his jaw as he looked ahead, still thinking.
I unfolded my arms, and put my hand on his.
"Lois," he said, his voice low, "what am I?"
That was the question. I had been asking that question since the night he had turned up on my doorstep and put the fear of Krypton into me. He had also asked that question of me, struggling to define me from his point of view, until he had made me the default and tried to define himself from mine.
Why was I the default? Was he trying to carve out his definition through my eyes, or through Earth's eyes? Why is it that I'm not subject to Krypton's scrutinity?
But it wasn't just about points of view, I knew that, because Kal-El was like nothing on Earth or Krypton: Kara's like-humanity attested to that.
Or was he? If I could imagine that Kal-El existed separate from Clark, that Kal-El was a person unto his own right — could I believe his taciturnity had nothing to do with his being Kryptonian, that a human could be like him?
Was it me? Did I make him an alien? Or was it —?
If I could strip away the façade of what I thought was 'inhuman' about him, what would I find underneath? Maybe I would find that his thought processes followed the same track of logic, or illogic, rationale or irrationality as my own.
Or maybe not. Maybe I would find a tree of responses all programmed by Jor-El. And maybe it didn't matter either way: after all, I didn't question why I was the way I was.
I put my hand on his cheek, and gave the only answer I had: "You're Kal-El." And I felt like, in this moment, when we had witnessed the end of the world and come through into the dawn, that was all that mattered: we were who we were. It was all any of us had right now.
He turned his head away, and looked back at the city. There were large patches of blackness, of rubble, but the place thrummed with the same kind of optimistic energy that had always belonged to Metropolis.
"Clark Kent is Kal-El," he said, his voice low.
What riff was this now? His back was to me again, but I couldn't have read his expression anyway.
"If you had a choice," he said. He turned back to me and fixed me with those dark, dark eyes. "If you could choose between me and Clark —?"
A kind of fear pooled in my stomach, and I wondered how he could ask me that. I set my jaw, and looked away. "It's not my choice," I said with finality, echoing the words he had spoken to me on my rooftop in the night.
He nodded, slowly, as if he were turning it over in his head. "But you already chose," he said, eventually, his voice so low and yet ringing in my ears. "You chose the same way every time it came up."
And yes, I wanted to deny it: I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and tell him I wanted him more than Clark, kiss his neck and ask him what did it matter now anyway? — but I couldn't lie to him. It was a physical impossibility.
But why? Why was he asking me this? Why was he doing this? Why now?
I couldn't make the words come out today. My thoughts were scattered all in the air around me, non-linear, branching off into their own little thought trees which I couldn't follow down to the ends.
I cared for Kal-El in a way that was so like the way I had cared for Clark, and so different — as if the feelings were related to each other, as if they were entwined. There was overlap and differentiation, and somewhere in me it felt like it all came together as one singular mass of feeling. I couldn't understand it, I never had.
"Maybe," I said, putting my arms around myself.
Even I didn't know which way I would choose this time.
And he didn't seem hurt — just matter-of-fact — as he brushed his fingers down the side of my face and over my lips. And I understood that he was leaving.
Then just go, I wanted to say: I don't need you. I don't need you, and don't let the skylight hit you in the ass on the way out.
And also — you belong here.
"I want to be whole," he said.
I just pressed my lips together, and nodded. We all wanted to be whole, whole people and containing all of our own experiences. Kal-El didn't have that, because of what Jor-El had done to him, so how could I stop him going? We were all any of us had — Kal-El needed himself.
"OK," I said, and my voice was terser than I had expected.
And when I looked back he was gone.
The Daily Planet was still standing when I reached there. Still standing, and thrumming with people. I felt dazed, as I walked through the building up to my floor, and realised that the people who had been "against" me all worked alongside the people who had been "with" me: all working, and bickering, and rubbing along to put the place back together.
I don't know why I had expected to see Chloe there, but I wasn't wrong. She was smiling, in my seat, talking to Jimmy.
"Hey!" she said, when she saw me, and grabbed me, pulling me into a tight hug. "God Lois," she said into my ear, sounding choked, "I was so afraid I wouldn't see you again."
I caught Jimmy's eye over her shoulder, and he smiled. "You did a good job," he said.
I just closed my eyes, and buried my face in Chloe's hair — because there were tears in my eyes, and I didn't want anybody to know that Lois Lane knew how to cry.
"Don't worry," Chloe said, as I perched on the edge of my desk, "I didn't take your place — just pitched in a little while you were AWOL."
I nodded, surveying the newsroom.
"Are you OK?" said Jimmy, and when I caught his eye I saw how concerned he was, "You just seem — I mean, compared to usual."
"Just a little shellshocked," I said, feeling numb to my bones, "I'll be fine." He nodded, tentatively, and exchanged a glance with Chloe.
"I thought you'd want to know," she said, looking over at me, "Perry wanted to see you when you were — when you came in."
Oh, Perry. I owed Perry so much: an explanation was the least I could give him. "OK," I said, pushing myself off the desk, "OK." And I didn't have to look back over my shoulder again to know their faces were wrought with worry.
Perry put a large scotch down on the desk as I closed the door behind me, and pushed it over towards me. I looked from the glass to him as I sat in the seat across, and he gave me a look with so much force I was almost afraid to refuse. That was all the excuse I needed. I had been strong for so long.
"I don't know what you did," and I wondered if I was going crazy, because his rough voice seemed almost tender. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk, and repeated, "I don't know what you did. I don't know what you've been doing. But whatever it is, whatever your connection to 'Superman' or Lex Luthor," he sighed, "I don't want to know."
I looked at him, surprised, and he licked his lips. "If you can't print it," he said, "I don't need to hear it. But Lois —" and here he gave the kind of look a father would give his daughter, a look I hadn't seen now in a long, long time, "if you ever want to talk."
"I just need a little time," I said, thinking my voice sounded tired, "I just need to get back into a routine and I'll be fine."
But inside I was starting to wonder.
After all this, after all we'd done: we were back where we started. Jimmy, Kara, Chloe, Kal-El: we had struggled for so long and so hard, and now, what? Lex was going to get off again and we'd have to start all over again.
I felt like I was losing my grip on whatever purpose I thought my life had had.
And from the look on Perry's face, I don't think I was hiding it too well.
"At ease," he said, gently. And then, without a hint of irony, "They should give you a medal, kid."
I felt my lips twitch, "I'll settle for a Pulitzer, Chief."
It was a while before things started to get better. Kal-El never came back, and I never expected him to, but I spend my nights out of habit on one rooftop or another, staring up into the everlasting blackness of space, following those branches of thought down to their inevitable conclusions.
Chloe moved into my apartment. She said it was to save money, but I knew she was worried about me. They all were, and I felt bad about that — but I needed to work it out myself.
Besides, she and Kara became unlikely friends. I would hear them in the kitchen, commiserating about Jimmy, or about me — leaning my head up against the door, not wanting to eavesdrop but not wanting to go in, and, sometimes, just smiling to know they were there.
And it was easier at work. Many of Burns's ilk quit, or retired, or shut up, and that was OK by me. I kept my stories small for now, and that was OK by everybody else.
I was trying to find my fire again. I knew it was deep inside me somewhere: one day I would get up ready to save the world all over again — I was starting to understand why. It was a kind of "why" I think Clark would have approved of: don't think about it too abstractly, Lois. It's not about duality. It's not about us vs Lex. It's about each individual person we saved together, and everything we did to try to make it better or stop it getting worse.
I just needed time to let it sink in.
And the nightmares stopped, after a while: the nightmares where I killed Kal-El instead of Bizarro, where I killed Clark; the nightmares where I was surrounded by them and couldn't tell the difference. All the nightmares stopped, but still I kept taking my sleeping pills.
"I wanted to thank you for your help," I remember saying to the dream Kal-El once, and he smiled — or was it Clark?
Maybe it was both, all at once.
I had time. Lex was commited to Belle Reve at least until strings were pulled and false diagnoses of recovery given, and I can't say I didn't feel a little sorry for him. Just a little.
Kara kept saving the world, one cat up a tree, one pram lost in traffic, one person at a time. People were wary of her, and in love with her all at the same time. And Superman? "Good riddance."
I tried to fight that attitude, but part of me wondered if it mattered — if Clark was gone, and Kal-El was gone, and everyone else who looked like either of them was Bizarro, maybe the public should fear and distrust them. Still, it felt wrong.
We rebuilt the city better than before. They said we all came together but we, we journalists had the confidence this time over and the standing to question and criticise — to point out that some people were being rescued later than others, and to ask why. And I might have been keeping my stories small, but I made each and every one of them count.
And then —
And then he came back.
I didn't quite recognise him at first: he seemed smaller, unassuming, as he stood over my desk. I thought he was an intern, in those large, thick glasses — until I looked again, looked at him right in the clear, blue eyes.
"Lois," he said.
I dropped my pen, and just heard it clatter to the floor over the din of the newsroom.
"I'm not sure how to explain," he said, up on the roof with the wind whipping up around us. I wanted to stop time, just for a while, while I gathered my thoughts.
I never believed this would happen. Never — never hoped.
"What Jor-El did to me —" he started, and then pressed his lips together and looked away again. "What he tried to do, tried to make me —"
He breathed out, frustration running all through him.
"I never thought I'd see you again," I said, trying to keep my voice free of accusation. His lip twitched, and his eyes were wide. He looked like he wanted to close the space between us, and I sort of wanted it too, but he didn't.
"What's up with the glasses?" I said, keeping this conversation safe, giving us time to order our thoughts.
He smiled a little. "Everybody I meet is afraid of me," he said, "the glasses — people don't look at me twice when they see me coming down the street."
I wanted to apologise for that, but it didn't come out.
We stood there in silence for a long time, both trying to figure out what to say, how to say it, how to work this out.
Eventually, he started talking about something that felt kind of irrelevant, and yet not, not looking at me.
"I used to hate thinking of myself as an alien," he said, almost conversationally, as if it didn't matter. "The only Kryptonians I ever met were —" he paused, and then said quietly, "well, you've met Jor-El."
I nodded, wanting to talk but having no words, and thinking there was more he wanted to say anyway.
"I thought it was my destiny," and he put an ironic stress on the word, "to be like that — I thought all Kryptonians were the same, that our ideals, our morals could somehow be genetic. And I wanted, I wanted to be like you, all of you humans — because humans weren't all the same, the morals of humans weren't tied to their genetics, humans were somehow better than me just because they were human."
He sighed, "I was brought up as a human, but I wasn't one. And it felt like, like there were two sides to me, warring it out."
"Clark Kent and Kal-El," I said, almost to myself, and he looked up at me sharply. "And you didn't trust the alien in you." Why should he? I mean, of course we idolised being human in human society.
"I wanted to bury him deep, deep inside," he said, "I wanted to be human, walk among you, belong to your society and —" he paused, carefully, turning things over in his head as if he were understanding them for the first time as I was understanding them for the first time.
"It's hard to explain," he said eventually. "But I guess — every time somebody found out that I was a Kryptonian, they looked at me differently. Before she knew about me, Lana hated all aliens — and I was the exception, I wasn't like the others, she knew me. And Chloe," he bowed his head, "well Chloe was a good friend, but it felt like I became something else — a 'hero', a good person just because I was Kryptonian and not because of who I was. And I didn't feel that —"
I closed my eyes. Clark had been carrying these neuroses with him all of his life, and now he could talk.
"I never thought," he said, carefully, "that somebody could accept an alien as a person — like —" he caught my eye, and I looked away.
"Why did you go?" I said. I wanted to hit him for leaving me in the first place. I wanted to grab him and scream in his ear: do you know how much I missed you, Clark? Do you know?
"To fulfill my destiny," he said, without irony this time.
And somehow it made sense to me: knowing that Jor-El had split Clark in two as much as we had, but discarded the human rather than the alien. What was Kal-El? Kal-El was part of a whole. Clark Kent was part of a whole. And now?
"You're a whole person," I said, echoing his words from earlier. "How did you —?"
"I went back to the Fortress," he said. "And I ... fought ... with Jor-El. But I was stronger then than I was when I left Smallville, and when you found me there before. I was stronger because..." he trailed off, and looked away, and my heart burnt.
Clark was never really gone. I hadn't lost him. He hadn't been dead.
And neither was Kal-El. Kal-El was here, Clark was here: not one side I had known in Smallville, or the other I had known in Metropolis, or even both. There was no choice. He was a whole person, now, one I knew and understood, and —
I'm not much of a dualist.
