Chapter Four

They landed just in front of the french doors. He slipped his hands from around the agonizing dip and curve of her waist, felt the feather-touch of her fingers as they unlaced themselves at the base of his neck and withdrew, running outwards over the top of his jacket collar and across his shoulders. He watched her walk away. She stopped, glanced around, her eyes scanned the terrace, lingering on the chipped lip of an empty planter here, the unkempt overflowering of a hanging basket there. The patio table and two chairs, once clean and pristine. Now dirty white and stacked sensibly in the corner.

A breeze rustled through a wooden lattice thickly strewn with honeysuckle and stirred up the familiar scent. He saw her breathe it in, savoring it. She wandered across, out to her balcony, played the tips of her fingers along the rough brick sill of its span. Advancing and receding noises of traffic drifted up from the street as she surveyed the scene before her, the hues of the blues and grays of twilight falling in between the towers and blocks of Metropolis.

"Well," she said, retrieving the locks of hair that the wind had pushed across her face and tucking them delicately behind her ear. "That view hasn't changed." She turned from it to address the apartment. She leaned back, comfortable against the balcony wall. City lights caught at her necklace, reflected in her eyes. "I can't believe this is all still here?"

Clark looked too. He remembered a time when her doors and windows were propped open and burned brightly with promise and welcome. They were blank now, closed up, shuttered away. "I can't believe it's been seven years."

Her gaze seemed to be tracing the lines and shapes of the architecture of the apartment, studying it, memorizing it, like a visitor to a foreign place not sure when they'll get the chance again. "I've never been back." Her eyes darted, her bottom lip curled at him, "Do you ever...?"

She allowed the question to hang. He shook his head slowly, no.

She stared ahead into the darkness and the shadows behind the panes of glass, a new question making her frown. "Why'd you keep it?"

"A promise to Sam," he told her. He nodded forward. "There're pictures, personal things. Awards, letters, notebooks, all packed away in boxes. He cleaned out your files, your closets. Unhooked your computer. He got that far." Clark searched out her eyes, found them, held them, "He couldn't quite give you all the way up."

She looked away and nodded, barely. She became very still. "I've visited lots of worlds where he's been dead. But I hate to think of what he had to go through."

They were joined by a reflective silence.

"Was he alone, at the end?"

Clark shook his head. "I was with him. And Perry." He saw that this affected her, saw the amusement and disbelief that undercut the sorrow and triggered the twitch in her eyebrows. His eyes gleamed in agreement, "They ended up quite close."

Lois swallowed and nodded. "Before. Did you ever come here?" Long lashes blinked slowly. "To see her?"

Clark nodded.

Her eyes were moving again, all over the terrace. An expression close to fondness crept into them and hovered at the edges of her mouth. Her lips touched together. "This is where I fell in love with you." Her gaze was directed at him and it was steady until, as if catching herself, her eyelids flickered and, on a breath, she corrected, "Him."

Too late. It was all too late. He was losing himself in her, he could feel it. "I remember."

"I wish that I had told him."

"He knew."

"Did he?"

His look was steely but his eyes twinkled. "I speak with the unassailable and unilateral authority of Clark Kents everywhere."

It teased out a gentle amused shake of her head. She shifted, crossed her legs at the ankle. Then her eyes narrowed. "How long did you know each other?"

A sigh that was tremulous was delivered into the night. "Seventeen months, one week," the start of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth; "two days."

She reflected back his expression, the wryness, "Eleven hours."

"Thirty-three minutes." Now his smile was unbridled and infectious.

She matched it, "But who's counting?"

His brow leveled and the strength of his grin started to weaken and fade, but it didn't disappear completely. It became colored, not by memory but by something else that was closer to the surface and more urgent. He said, "Long enough to know her favorite color, her favorite movie, her favorite ice cream flavor."

Lois broke into a sympathetic kind of smile- not out of commiseration, Clark understood. Out of recognition.

His eyes shone. "Long enough to find out that she loved all-night liquor stores, reading true crime novels, nursing petty grudges, and loudly singing along to the key change in selected eighties power ballads-"

Listening to him had turned her eyes wet and glassy. But she couldn't help it, she laughed.

"but that she hated waking up late, litter left near trash cans, apathy, incompetence, interviewees hitting on her, and snack food that crumbles easily." He pressed on with a soft, insistent, mesmerizing tone. "Long enough to know that she was indifferent to property law, conventional attitudes to personal safety, and politicians. And that she held a deep-seated and abiding distrust of people who don't consume any form of caffeine."

When Lois spoke, her voice was scratchy, "I always think they must be hiding something, right?"

He continued to gaze at her. He was not sure that he could've stopped even if she had asked. "Long enough to discover that she subdivided all her perfume into two categories; everyday use, and special occasions, and that she adored browsing in bookstores, her 1962 Underwood touch-master, and novelty cigarette cases, but that she couldn't stand wilful ignorance, and people writing it down as 'Lame', and the person in line, directly in front of you, that somehow takes twice as long as everybody else."

Lois gulped in a breath. It made her shoulders move. He swallowed, unable to take his eyes off her. "Long enough to know that she had a weakness for clever advertising, string quartets in the street, and movie theater popcorn, and that, despite her best efforts at disguising it, she was the least cynical person I ever met." He stopped, hesitated. His eyebrows lifted a little. For the first time, his voice faltered, "But not quite long enough to tell her that I really didn't mind when she stole my last french fry, or when she showed up at my door at three in the morning because she had a new angle that couldn't wait, or when she made a point of teasing me that I was the second best man she ever knew- but only because I couldn't fly."

Lois laughed again, a snatched, gasped laugh and the tears that had been gathering and obscuring the bottom rims of her eyes began to escape down the side of her cheeks.

A half-cocked expression, tender and sad, and brimming with warmth wondered at her, "Not quite long enough to tell her I didn't mind, because I could fly too, and flying with her made my soul light, and from the moment we met it didn't make a difference to me what perfume she wore, everyday use, special occasions, or none at all, because the nearness of her made it difficult for me to concentrate anyway." He was forced to pause. "Not quite long enough to tell her that the beat of her heart was as recognizable and as necessary to me as my own, and I found comfort in it, and I never realized how much I needed it until it was taken away from me."

The wet pathways of tears glistened where light reflected. She had been biting down on her bottom lip. Her teeth scraped over it. Lois caught her breath. "What happened that night?"

Now he glanced away. Took his time. Back then, afterwards, they had wanted him to see somebody. They had arranged it because they thought it might help. He had known instinctively that he was beyond the reach and solace that words, however expertly dispensed, could offer and, in the end, he had not been able to bring himself to go. Not even out of courtesy. He had never talked about it, never spoken of it, but he remembered it all and he remembered it easily.

Along a strip of sky where the horizon met the skyline, the light was dimming. "It was a regular evening at work. A Wednesday. Nothing special. Quiet. The office was empty, just us." His hands dug into his pockets as he gazed out over the city. "Sometimes, we had the scanner on on nights like that, like background music or something," a short laugh was exhaled and they shared a confirming, nerdy, look of communion. "It had rained all day, I remember that. We'd both filed our pieces for the early edition." He looked down at the floor, thoughtfully scuffed the toe of one shoe in a line, told the shoe, "We could've gone home but I guess we stayed behind anyway."

"Working on the Luthor jail break story."

His eyes flicked to hers at the uninflected interjection, framed as statement, not question, "Right. We'd been chipping away at it for months, ever since he'd been gone, just trying to dig up something new." He shrugged, "The trail was cold. The police had nothing. No one cared. I think people thought he was never going to come back." Clark frowned, then his forehead smoothed. "Or maybe that was just easier? I don't know."

"And then the scanner-"

"Has this report. A bald man seen breaking into an abandoned warehouse on the East docks. The report says-"

"There's a small child with him."

"I should've known then." Clark stared out. The frown had returned, was deeper. "Kidnapping kids? It was just-"

"Too perfect," she supplied. "You went after him."

"It was late," Clark said. "I told Lois to ignore the report and that I was calling it a night. I was nearly running through the newsroom." One eyebrow arched, "I think she thought I was trying to scoop her."

Her eyes were still watery but it provoked a small breathy laugh, "I did."

"I found the warehouse easily, one of the old merchant buildings on the river. It looked a real mess; door boarded up, broken glass, chunks of masonry, roof tiles missing. It was in total darkness but the roof had a set of skylights and one was open so I flew right in." His gaze was fixed. "I flew right in." His eyes refocused on hers, "Then light was everywhere. Bright light. The whole place was illuminated. Outside, it looked as though the building was about to collapse; inside, it was..."

"Immaculate."

"The walls were covered in white tiles, every inch. There was metal tubing, pipes, cables, computer screens."

"A secret lab."

"In the center of the room, there was this circular podium, five, six inches off the floor. And there, balled up, in the middle of it, crying for help, was a little girl. I flew to her and even before I got there, I knew it was a mistake. I reached out and she just disappeared. Blinked away. My hand went through where she should've been. A trick."

Lois' eyes were black. "A trap."

"My feet were already off the floor, gone, but I was stopped dead and yanked back down, caught in a shaft of bright green light, encased, like a bug in a jar." His expression leavened, became inward, "I could barely move, I'd never felt anything like it, never seen it used like this before, but I knew what it was." Clark's lips twisted into a grimace. "I heard him laughing. He was above me, standing behind some kind of control deck. He told me I was predictable which was the difference between us." His lips quirked, almost into a smile, "I told him I could probably think of a couple more things. We argued for a while." Clark cast a glance to the side, "Well, he talked at me. All the things we could accomplish if only we worked together. The usual stuff. I was feeling pretty good, considering. I kept still, as still as possible, conserving energy. I was adjusting my body to the weakness and thinking if I really went for it, if I picked my moment, took him by surprise, I could launch myself free of the hold of the beam and destroy the podium. He told me we could rule the world and I told him to go to hell, and then he turned up the strength." Clark's voice softened, and his eyes glazed, "I dropped to my knees and I think I must have yelled out, and that's when I saw you. Crouching, inside the door. Saw you staring at Luthor." His jaw worked, and when he spoke next, his tone was laced with exertion. "Saw why you were staring. Saw you halfway across the room, running at me. Saw the pistol in his hand and him pulling the trigger, oblivious." His eyes closed then opened again. "I knew what was going to happen. I screamed at you to stop, but you never did listen."

She nearly managed to smile but it was a facsimile, hamstrung and weak.

Out loud, but remotely, as if to himself, Clark recounted, "I can remember the sound of your breathing, shallow and fast because you were sprinting. I can remember the sound of your feet pounding against concrete. I can remember the determination on your face." Then he looked lost, as if it was the single detail that still bothered him most; "But I can't remember hearing the shots. I caught her when she fell. Held her as she died in my arms."

It was a few moments before Lois said anything. She said only, "On my world, I saw him shoot you. I was too late."

He stared at her. His voice was thick, "No, you weren't."

"She wouldn't have changed it. Given the choice, she would've preferred that it was her. She wouldn't have changed anything." She was unbowed.

"How can you know that?"

There was a beat. A look flickered across her eyes. "I speak with the unassailable and unilateral authority of Lois Lanes everywhere."

Their gazes remained locked. "I guess we always did disagree on some of the finer points."

"What happened to Luthor?"

"She made me swear I wouldn't kill him. She was fighting for air but she made me swear it." His eyes were bright again as they marveled at her, "So I didn't touch him. Maybe that would've been better for him? He was distraught. In shock. I don't think he could believe what had happened. He didn't try to escape. The police, the feds, the SCU showed up, took him into custody. I haven't seen him since."

"Is he on Stryker's?"

Clark shook his head, "Arkham." His eyes drifted back to the horizon. "I never said anything, but Bruce took care of it all; the trial, the media." She nodded. He explained, "I don't think I could've handled him in the city. Anywhere near you."

"What happened to the device? The Kryptonite forcefield?"

"It was destroyed. The apparatus was incinerated, immediately."

"By who?"

"By me."

She laughed, it was curt and humorless.

"What?"

She moved her hands off the balcony wall, clasped them in front of her, and bobbed them against her lap. "We stole it. A couple of weeks later. A break-in at LexCorp's highest security facility. Our first big tactical victory. Emil converted the Kryptonite, neutralized it, harnessed it. The device generates enormous levels of contained power. The equivalent of one hundred gigatons, at full capacity."

Understanding passed over Clark's face. "That's how you jump?"

"Your world and my world. So much the same." Her tone was pensive. The middle of her forehead knotted, "And then two such different paths."

The look he gave her was stern and equally resolute. "This is our path. We need to talk about what happens now."

She gazed back at him. In the twilight her dark eyes were clear and piercing. He found her so beautiful, it was physically painful to behold her. "This is where our paths separate."

In the seconds that followed he was certain he had misheard. "What?"

She pushed herself off the wall, stood up straight. "I don't think you should come back with me afterall." She remained placid, unwavering, as if, subsequent to all the circling, they had reached the obvious and appropriate conclusion. "I've had time to consider it and I don't think it's a good idea."

It was apparent to Clark that either he had spent the day entirely mistaking her intentions, or he was missing something monumentally big. He frowned, "You don't want my help?"

"It's not a question of that."

His smile didn't remove the frown, "I don't understand."

Her hands clenched into fists and her bottom lip moved, the tiniest quiver, but they were the only signs, the sole tip-offs, that she was in difficulty. Finally, she said, "There's something I've not told you. About the technology." Her throat bobbed. "There's a drawback. Quite a big one." Her eyelids fluttered, briefly- as if in those seconds and by will and the act of blinking alone, she had staved off despair and dragged herself back to composure and poise. "We've tried and we can't return. We can't go back to a reality we've already visited and we don't know why." Her forearm lifted from the elbow to gesture futilely with the wristband before she dropped it back to her side; "Emil's working on it- maybe one day." Her lips rolled and stretched. "But it'll be years. Probably decades." Her chin tilted. She was breathing hard out of her nostrils, waiting for his reaction.

He still looked quite stern. But other than that, Clark's expression had not altered. "This mission to defeat Luthor. It's kind of a one-way ticket deal?"

She nodded. The line of her jaw tightened. "You'd be trapped on my world." She paused for emphasis, "Indefinitely." The words seemed to carry the dread and inevitability of the type of disappointment born of experience. She said it like a judge passing sentence, full of portent and weight and the sense of a heavy door being slammed shut.

Clark could only shrug. "I figured."

The shadow lifted from Lois's face. "What?"

He looked at her, if not unconcerned, then second-handedly insulted, "Eight hundred worlds and you're still jumping? None of the other Clarks helped."

In mitigation, pained, Lois explained, "They wanted to. They had a lot to lose."

His look was defiant. "It's different for me."

Her expression clouded as if he might be insane. "No, it's not. This world- what you've done?" She stepped forward, her eyes wide and imploring, "It's- it's amazing. Because of you."

"I've made my decision."

Her eyes blazed. There was a visible setting of her shoulders, a change in the way she was carrying herself. A hardening of her position. "I haven't given you any options, yet."

He wasn't backing down, either. "From where I'm standing, my options seem pretty cut and dried."

"From where you're standing it must all seem very simple."

He echoed her tone, "Yes."

She turned and stalked away, shaking her head.

She appeared cross. Clark was mystified by it. "Are you angry?"

Her head tipped to the sky and he heard her say, "You're so full of yourself." It was not an accusation. It sounded faint-hearted, a lament.

"I'm not sure what the problem is?"

Her hands were on her hips. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"And that's my fault?" he spat.

She spun on her heels, leaned in, and in a controlled, thin, tone informed him, "I uphold, and I handle the responsibilities placed on me to the very best of my ability, and exactly as I see fit, and you have no right to question that."

His eyes shut and his hands raised in a gesture that moved towards apology. "That's not what I'm doing."

"Then listen to me."

He stared at her. "I'm listening."

She let the moment of tension pass. Calmer, quiter, she held up one hand flat, showing him only the edge, "You need to be in possession of the full facts, and you need clarity. I can't accept an answer from you until then. I won't."

With narrowed eyes, but gently, without force, he confirmed, "I've made my choice, Lois, and it's not a choice I've made lightly." His arms lifted off his sides, "What do you think this is? A whim?"

"I think that when it comes to me," she shot back, and then stopped.

"When it comes to you, what?"

She blinked. Her voice returned, stronger, slower, restrained- "When it comes to me, you're prepared to take reckless and inadvisable risks."

His hands went to his hips and he had to smile at the richness of the irony. He said, "That's a pretty uncompromising opinion of me. And a pretty high opinion of yourself."

"Am I wrong?"

"What are you so afraid of? We'll jump back, I'll rally a team together; Bruce, the JLA, your father. Everyone. You said preparations are in place. You said there was a plan?"

Her exasperation, bubbling away, finally spilled over, "Plan!" She stabbed a finger outwards, to the sky. "That forcefield that Luthor trapped you inside? The one you were helpless against? He rebuilt it, without the Kryptonite because he had to, because we stole the original." She threw the hand up, "So he refined the design, improved it, evolved it. Now, it's not some dinky stage effect; it's around the Earth, it's colorless, it's radioactive, and it affects everyone. A solid layer of light, fifty miles up, twenty miles thick, enclosing the Earth; what goes in, struggles to get out. It gets stuck; for shooting practice." Bitterly, she went on, "'The World Shield', that's what Luthor calls it. He says it's for protection. The upper wall has proved impenetrable. Beneath the lower wall, there's a no-fly zone- a weapons array is primed and ready to pick off incursions. Only authorized aircraft is permitted. No metahumans, no friendly aliens, no superheroes." Underneath a dark, animated look, her voice had built to a strained climax, "Especially no superheroes."

Clark's mind returned to their conversation in the firelight at Bruce's. Quietly, he repeated, "Luthor controls the skies."

With a hold on herself again, she explained, "Our efforts to prevent implementation of the forcefield were unsuccessful. As were our attempts to sabotage it after implementation. Bruce diverted funds into a hypersonic missile program, sent the entire payload up there locked on one target. We thought we might be able to punch a hole through the outer surface."

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

"The missiles failed to detonate?"

She grimaced, "They detonated, alright. Right on target, right on cue. Emil and I heard the explosion through three floors and ten inches of reinforced concrete." She regarded him. "The forcefield remained intact. Untouched."

"What about-"

She had read him, "Diana? Wally? J'onn? They've all tried. We've tried everything."

Clark insisted, "There must be something."

She sighed, crooked her elbows, interlocked her splayed fingers and pushed them together. "Six years ago, in his work at the DoD, my father was able to get his hands on excerpts from the file outlining the specs for the original forcefield, the one made of Kryptonite. In the excerpts, there were references to cellular code extraction. It seems that in the minutes Luthor held you captive the forcefield was able to retrieve genetic information;" they shared a dark, loaded look, "it was able to-"

"Steal my DNA."

She winced, and, instead, offered, "To ...parse it. Some of it. Incomplete fragments, but enough." To check his display of concern, she outlined, "When the second forcefield, the 'Shield', turned out to be so resistant, we wondered if, somehow, Luthor had reversed the design. The Kryptonite forcefield was effective against someone from Krypton but useless against anyone else. With the second forcefield, we hoped that the opposite might be true." She paused, "That maybe a Kryptonian, at full speed, could break through, short circuit it."

He had followed her. "Kara?"

Matter-of-factly, Lois nodded. "She tried. She made it to the outer surface. She said it was like hitting a brick wall." Her eyelids half-closed as she cast a gaze down to the floor, "Just like everyone else." Then she sucked in a breath, released it, and her eyes darted back onto his, wary, but interested and bright again, as if some internal threshold had been crossed. "We wondered if the effects of the forcefield had not only been reversed, but were specific. We wondered if the genetic information taken from you had allowed Luthor to tailor the shield, to encode it. That it blocked out everything, with the exception of one weakness, one key."

Clark looked aside, turning over the implications. "I'm the key," he said, moving his focus back to her, "and I'm dead."

"Tossed away, thrown down the well, before he even built the lock."

"You think I can get through."

Her eyes were dancing. But there was no sense of encouragement. She gave him a desperate, sardonic, weary smile, "We think. We estimate. We hypothesize, we assume." Softly, her head turned head side to side, "But we don't know. If we're wrong, the jump was for nothing. Everything was for nothing. If we're wrong, it's a suicide run, and you're dead. Again." Her eyes widened a little, "That's the plan. Sounds good, right?" She made no attempt at disguising the hysterical lilt. She said, "Now, maybe you understand why the other Clarks made the choice that they did."

He had listened. Listened to it all. And he understood exactly. After a short, studied pause, more for her benefit than his, he told her, "It's a chance I'm willing to take."

"Well, I'm not." She made a face like as far as she was concerned, the conversation was over.

Ignoring the dismissiveness, Clark remained very still. Two low eyebrows drew together. "I don't see that you get a say in this."

Her head quirked in surprise and Lois blinked. "I don't see that you get a say in this."

Undaunted, Clark simply observed, "I'm going back with you. To your world. If that upsets you, you're going to have to deal with that."

Her eyes flashed, "When was the last time anyone told you, 'No'?"

He fired back, "When was the last time anyone told you, 'Yes'?"

She pressed her hands to her face and then they were fluttered in the air. "This is crazy. This is not up for debate."

Clark was astounded. "Then what is this, Lois? Why do you do it?" He raised his arms, an expansive, beseeching, impotent gesture, "What's the point? If this is all for nothing, then what the hell is the point?"

In the seconds that followed, he was rewarded with a uncomprehending, penetrating glare. "To see you again." Voice breaking, she rasped, "However hollow it is and however empty it is, and however much I tell myself that it isn't, somewhere along the line, it became enough, and that's the point, Clark." She stood before him, hurting, raw, completely revealed. "To know that you're alive and safe and existing. Even if it's somewhere else." She gritted her teeth. Softly, she said, "It's enough."

"So, now what? Eight-two-one gets crossed off the list? Skip on over to the next world?"

"We'll jump until we find a world that's... more suitable."

Her words came like a slap in the face. He rocked on his feet, repeated, under his breath, "More suitable?"

"When we can- when it's possible, maybe I can jump back here?"

He was still smarting. "How long will that be? Thirty years, forty years?"

"As long as it takes."

Nodding to himself, he squinted, "That's a lot of other worlds. A lot of other Loises. A lot of other Clarks."

"Maybe next time will be the right one."

He found the idea of her leaving him to just continue on on her way offensive but, in the moment, failed to recognize or articulate the hot grip of jealousy that had taken hold. He tried to make her understand, "Lois." He whispered, "I don't have that luxury."

Thickly, she responded, "You have a privileged life here." Her throat worked. "You could have any woman you wanted."

He glared at her. "It's not enough for me."

She set her bottom jaw, and she squared her shoulders and Clark witnessed a physical effort to pull herself together. She said, "I think you better take me back. I can jump from here but the lab is more convenient." It was below the belt and she must have seen it in his flinch; "Safer."

A tension-filled silence was endured by them both. "I trust your judgment. Over anyone in the world, any world, I trust your judgment. I would do anything you asked of me." His look was inscrutable and unsparing, "But there's something I need to know."

Physically, he hadn't moved, but a distance was being closed and even though he could tell it made her uncomfortable, he was compelled to continue. "Tell me what you want, Lois. Right here, right now, tell me what you want?"

Her eyes closed. "I think it's best if you stay."

"I want to know what you want?"

"I think it's best if you stay."

"That's not what I'm asking."

Her eyes opened. Unshed tears had made them wet along her lashes. "Please don't make me say it again, Clark."

An internal battle was fought and, against his instincts, and through sheer obstinacy, was won. Finally, resigned, he said, "I'll take you back."

A hand was brought to her nose and quickly removed again, and the tears were blinked away. There was a polite, hitched, "Thank you."

"But I want to take you somewhere else, first."

Their eyes met again. They were both so conditioned, so expert, it was impossible to tell what kind of cost had been taken. It was only because he knew her, that he was aware any cost had been taken at all.

He said, "Will you come with me?"

...

On her world his fortress was dark. Here, inside the fortress, it was light. It was a clean, diffuse, ambient light that had no obvious source. They flew slowly, moving downwards between diagonal slopes and layers of clear, strafed rock that illuminated as they were neared, as if welcoming him home, responding to him, to his presence. On her world, his fortress was a desolate, lonely place. He had never taken her there and she had traveled to it only once, with Emil. It had felt like a mausoleum, a tomb where night and day you could wander, and cry, and cut your hands. Without him, it was a husk.

He set them down and they were inside a great chamber, the walls on either side rising up at vertiginous angles to meet at a pinnacle far above their heads. With him, Lois was moved by the magnificence and the majesty that surrounded her. The chamber felt airy, open, alive. With him, the design made sense.

They were standing on the highest platform of a set of gently descending levels that cut into the surface like steps. She was wearing his jacket and she pushed back the sleeve to take his hand as he led them down, guided her towards the entry way of another part of the fortress.

Heavy-hearted but obedient, she followed him through the entry way and into a space that opened up, a second chamber as wide and impressive as the first. When she saw what the chamber housed, Lois gasped. A central structure, an obelisk, about sixty feet high and the breadth and depth of a church steeple, towered up to the ceiling.

The structure was half-lit, a dramatic shaft of white falling on an angle, cutting it in two, transforming it into something hallowed and stark. The light selected points of detail and threw them into relief. Like the fortress, the object was a massed bank of serrated crystal and translucent rock. But it was not entirely organic. There were areas that had been excavated and replaced- an intricate system of mechanical inserts and sheaves of metal and repaneling. If you looked closely, you could see that the object was not one whole piece at all. It had been built and put together in several separate adjuncts and component parts. A technological colossus, not quite man-made, but not totally unearthly either.

The difference between a two-dimensional blueprint on a page and its realized form was not insignificant but Lois had recognized the structure immediately, and awe made her voice breathless. "The time machine."

They stared at it together. "It looks complicated. And it is," the side-glance he gave her was impish and dry. "But it's very easy to use."

They walked up to it, to its base, and stood before a console constructed of long, hollow, transparent tubes. The tubes were of varying lengths and, sheathed by them, were smaller crystalline rods, exquisitely cut and catching the light.

Clark was at her side, just behind her, her shoulder tucked inside his so that when he spoke she could feel his breath on her hair. "Do you see this crystal?"

Her eyes tracked to where he had gestured and she nodded. Of the set of fluted columns and rods ranged on the console, one, the middle one, sat higher than the others.

"The activation mechanism is started when you press it and it locks into place. As the period of time that is reset elapses, the crystal depresses, like a piston, and regenerates power to be used again."

She smiled, released a breath through her nose. The device was so elegant. Somehow a contraption with dials and pressure gauges and levers sticking out would have been more appropriate; "You push a big shiny button to get unlimited do-overs?"

"No one's ever put it that way," she could hear the grin unraveling, "but, yes."

"It's beautiful." She reached out to touch the console.

"Careful."

Her hand retracted, as if from something hot. "I thought you said it didn't work?"

"It didn't. It doesn't. Not really." She noted the hesitation, the solicitude, in his words, "Not the way it was supposed to."

He extended his arm to the console, chose the activation crystal, smoothly pulled it out to show her. He held it lengthways between them, rolling it between each thumb and forefinger. It looked very delicate in his hands. It was not a perfect cylinder, as Lois imagined. It too had sides and grooved edges.

"As soon as it was ready, I tried it out." Clark looked upwards, took in the entire edifice, "I brought it here, assembled it, calibrated it for a test run. I configured time-elapse for twelve hours. It was a little before nine at night in Metropolis, I set it for a little before nine in the morning," a pause, "pressed the button."

She found his eyes. He said, "I don't know what I was expecting. Lightning, a thunderclap? A great biblical rending, the sky splitting in two?" He sighed, "The universe taking note?" She watched an eyebrow flicker, "Nothing happened. Not a thing. I went outside." He pointed with the crystal, "It was late in the year, out here it could be midnight, midday, there's not much difference. I flew south to the city. As I flew, it got brighter. There was rush hour traffic. I grabbed a paper off a stand and there it was, in the Daily Planet, in black and white; the morning edition of the same day."

Her eyes, wide and soft, gleamed, "You did it."

His eyes glimmered anew with the fever and flush of old excitement. "I was ecstatic. I flew straight back, I could hardly wait for the crystal to re-power. When it was ready, I set it again, another trial run- this time for twenty-four hours." The crystal was twirled between his fingers. He stared at it, became subdued. Something behind his eyes had waned away. "But it got light again, just like it had before. It didn't make sense; it was supposed to be nine at night, but there was still rush hour traffic, it was morning. I went to the same stand, checked the paper. The date hadn't changed- it was the same day. I asked the vendor what the time was. He told me; a little before nine."

The middle of her forehead had creased. "Twelve hours again."

"I went back to the fortress, waited, tried it a third time, same thing. A fourth time, same thing. Never making it further than twelve hours back."

Lois was puzzled. "The crystal, the mechanism, was stuck?"

Clark gave a light shake of the head, a shrug. "No. It's a question of power. We experimented endlessly." An open hand moved over the top of the other shards of crystal and the tubes on the console that encased them, "The device runs on a cocktail of compacted chemical compounds, extracted from across the galaxies. The potential supply's limitless, I can synthesize as much as I want, when I want. The quantity's not the problem. Just the quality." He managed a faint, inward-looking smile. He bobbed the activation crystal in his hand before reaching to replace it; "You know I never thought to convert Kryptonite."

Lois swallowed. "Twelve hours?"

"At maximum capacity," he said. "Instead of finding you again, saving you, changing our future, I had just found a way to relive a loop of my past." His gaze fell on hers. It bore an intimacy that made her squirm. "If I want, I have all the time in the world. And nothing to do with it except miss you."

Involuntarily, her eyes closed, and she almost swayed. When she looked again, she was under the same scrutiny and it was as unbearable and terrible as it was thrilling. The instinct to batten down and to suppress was being drawn out of her and she feared for heart.

He was fearless, of course; the blue in his eyes and the look on his face intense, and burning with sincerity, faith, and the unhidden, coruscating, truth. "If it had worked. If I had been able to go back- the Institute, everything; it never would have happened. I would've been back at the Planet, at my desk, living my life, trying to ignore the scent of your perfume and figure out how to tell you that the real reason I was late was not because I couldn't find my keys, without you kicking my ass."

She was teetering on the brink, but she could not allow herself to give in. She pleaded with him, "But it didn't work. And you carried on. And you created a wonderful thing."

"And I'm glad I did. And I am proud. But it was my second choice, Lois. Now I have a second chance." She felt so weak, and he looked so sure. "Ask me what I want."

"What do you want?"

"That life. I want it back. The costume, that S shield underneath my shirt." A slow, crooked smile, "The glasses."

Her head was swimming, it was so hard to think. "You're doing something bigger here."

"The universe seeks balance. Yin and yang; that's what you said. That's what we're doing."

The words electrified her. Inside her heart, there was a quickening of possibility, and she knew he felt it too. She resisted. In a last, heroic, effort, she exhaled a ragged breath and told the ceiling, "I'm not her."

Simply, he said, "I'm not him." His smile melted away. "But please don't expect me to lie and to pretend, and to stand this close to you, and tell you that you don't make me feel the way that I do."

Her eyes closed again. She wanted to hear more. She never wanted him to stop. But she could no longer bear it. She insisted, "This world needs you."

"Maybe I need your world." He sought out her gaze, wouldn't relinquish it. "Maybe I need you."

She shook her head, powerless to stop the sobs breaking up her voice. "I can't lose you again."

He moved closer, touched his left hand to the side of her face and held it there. Warmth flooded through her. He whispered, "You won't. I swear to you, you won't."

She leaned into his palm. Fortified by him, she caught her breath. She said, "Bruce has written a computer program. It runs models- projections, predictions, outcomes. It allows for the input of all kinds of variables and tests the success rate of bringing you back and sending you to disable the forcefield. Bruce says it's extremely accurate." She watched him watch her.

"What do the models predict?"

"Bruce says the percentage risk of failure is very high."

Clark's head cocked slightly to the side, "Diana? What does she say?"

Lois looked grave. "That she would have more confidence if you had been created by the Goddesses. And were a woman."

Clark laughed and Lois laughed too. He was stroking her cheek with his thumb. He brushed away a tear. "Wally?"

"He's adamant he could breach the shield himself if he could get a run up at it."

His eyes danced at her, "The Johns?"

"They're pretty confident that Luthor will be vanquished once Earth can re-establish contact with the other space sectors."

Clark's gaze became serious again. Solemnly, he told her, "We'll go back together. And we'll win."

"How do you know that?"

His eyes darted between hers, fierce and shadowed with concentration. "Because there's something I have to tell you, Lois. Something I've never told you before."

She drew in and let out a deep sigh, and allowed the words to break gently over her.

"Something important. Something I've wanted to say to you since the second you burst into that office and there were stars and hearts, and trumpets sounded, and rockets fired, and the sky lit up and the earth moved," Clark was nodding, "and I knew. And Perry introduced us and you shook my hand, and you told me it was nice to meet me, and you didn't look at me. Once."

She hiccuped a chuckle. Now he brought his right hand up so that he could cup her face. He watched his fingers brushing her hair back. The back of her neck and scalp prickled with pleasure.

With gravity, he said, "We'll win because I'm faster than a speeding bullet. I'm more powerful than a locomotive. I can leap tall buildings in a single bound." Cockily, seriously, he dropped his voice and leaned in to her, "I'm the greatest hero the world has ever known."

She was reduced to cooing.

He moved in closer, "Lois?"

His breath was on the sensitive skin of her lips. "Yes?"

"I'm Superman."

He dipped and she opened her mouth for him, searching for him, and their lips touched. Her hands pushed up over the muscles of his chest, over his shoulders and around his neck so she could fold her arms there and rake her fingers through the back of his hair, and press herself fully against him to deepen the kiss. Desire coarsed through her, she ached for him, and the movement of their lips, hot and yielding, seemed only to increase the need for his touch.

His hands moved down the sides of her body from underneath her jaw to her waist to pull her closer there, and then dragged back up, beneath the jacket and over her back. An incoherent murmur of satisfaction was produced when, without breaking the kiss, he leaned gently to one side, bent his knee, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her to bed.