Balancing Act
by Aurnien
Summary: Every action has consequences. After Superman II, Lois is pregnant; after Superman III, people are afraid of Superman. Struggling to fix his reputation and to reconcile his identities, Clark is caught in a power struggle between Lois and the newcomer, Lana, while Lois's life slowly drifts apart. Finding herself pregnant, plagued by missing memories, and unaware of the fact that she is developing superpowers to a small degree, Lois is close to a breakdown when she is kidnapped by Luthor for his experiments in super-genetics. After two months, Clark is close to frantic; accompanied by Perry, Jimmy, and Richard, he is lured into Luthor's trap...and when Luthor reveals Clark's identity as Superman, it's the last straw.
Author's Notes: This story is based on all the Superman movies: STM, SII, SIII, SIV, and SR. It takes place at the time when SIV is supposed to happen, but is by no means a recapitulation of SIV. You don't need to have seen SIV, SR, or STM to read this, but having seen SII and SIII will be pretty helpful, because Lois is going to be having a lot of random flashbacks to SII and there will be references to events in SIII that I may or may not explain, I haven't decided yet. Anyway, the idea is to incorporate elements of all the movies to make a story that answers the question: what if Clark was present on Earth during Lois's pregnancy?
A small warning: this prologue is in second person present tense. The actual story isn't going to be in second person; it just seemed to fit here. If it bothers you, you can skip it (when I get the other chapters up, that is).
Please look at the cover I made for this story! Lois's body is a stock image from Getty Images. You can find the cover here: http/www.free-webspace.biz/aurnien/misc/sucover02.jpg
Prologue
This is what it's like to be you:
You have three separate identities. Or maybe two and a half. And really they're not as separate as people might think—that is, if they knew your secrets. Two are public, one is private. But they all blend together to make one person: you. You don't have a name for yourself when you are fully unified, because that only happens when you're alone and when you're alone there's no need for a name. Besides, all three of your names were given to you at the creation of each identity, so you lack a name that will identify all of you at once. But it doesn't matter much; you've never been one to regret things like that.
The first identity, the original, is called Kal-El. Heir of the House of El, son of Jor-El and Lara, last son of Krypton. You like the simplicity of your name, Kal-El. Only two people call you this, and they don't really count: your birth mother and father, simulated by the artificial intelligence of your Fortress of Solitude. The real Jor-El and the real Lara are long gone, reborn as drifting stardust with the death of their home planet Krypton. Their shadows are destined to teach you of your heritage, what you lost and will never, ever regain. To be the last son of Krypton—the only person in the galaxy with the full knowledge of a dead culture—is a heavy burden, but you're up to the challenge. You have to be. And you need the lessons of Krypton in order to do what you do. So sometimes you visit the Fortress to ask for advice, to tell your parents about your life.
All the same, it bothers you to visit the echoes of your computerized, recorded birth parents. The record is not perfect. You will never know them as they really were. You will never know the texture of their skin or the smell of their hair, how you feel in their arms or the pressure of their fingertips. The birth parents you know cannot change or grow, though they appear to by assimilating what you tell them. You love what you have of them, but what you have isn't much.
Your adoptive parents are much more substantial,—though Pa passed away when you were still a boy. They found you in your spaceship, took you in and named you Clark Kent. They taught you how to be a human. Ma and Pa raised you as their own, taught you to hide yourself—Kal-El, though you had no name for him yet—away, to learn that you were a good person even without the powers bestowed upon you by this world's yellow star. Every day you thank the powers that be for guiding your spaceship to Smallville. Jonathan and Martha Kent, you firmly believe, were the best parents on Earth for you. Jor-El and Lara taught you your past and your powers. Jonathan and Martha showed you your future and your human nature.
For most of your life you have been effectively split between Clark Kent and Kal-El. You were Clark for fifteen or sixteen years in Kansas, and Kal-El for twelve while traversing the universe. But one always diffuses into the other, no matter how separate they seem to be. As you became aware that you were the only one in the whole world who could bend natural law, you knew that there was something missing, that there was more to you than just Clark Kent. On your voyages with the simulation of your biological father, you never forgot your Earth origins and what Ma and Pa taught you. And now, back on Earth for good, you are that much closer to being whole.
Becoming Clark Kent again, after so much time as Kal-El, was a little difficult for you, but you enjoyed the challenge. You moved to the big city and got a job at an important newspaper, you played the bumbling boy scout with ease. Most of the time. It was fun at first—then you met Lois Lane. You wanted to impress her. You wanted her to love you. But she has little patience for Clark Kent.
So she named you Superman, and now you're competing against yourself.
You love being Superman just as much as you love being Clark Kent. Superman is sort of an extension of Kal-El and Clark, a public figure to match the privacy of your Kryptonian and human selves. As Superman you help people, and it feels good. You love to help people because you love people. Being Clark Kent is as close as you can get to really being one of them, and being Superman lets you give them someone to emulate, lets you give them hope for the future. Your fathers said, "You are here for a reason: the humans only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you."
And they are right. Every time you help someone, every time you act in a way that will remind you of your fathers' reason, you feel its rightness in your bones, permeating your dense molecular structure until everything you are is in perfect harmony: you are here to help. It doesn't matter who you are or what you call yourself.
Although—sometimes—assuming one identity helps you help.
This is how you switch from one identity to the next:
You relax into those aspects of yourself that you need to bring forth. All of it is natural—you're never really acting, only exaggerating certain characteristics of yours. Clark Kent has always wanted to fly, but he couldn't—to protect himself. So you push down your ability to fly, let it sink below the surface, until you become a person who wants to fly but cannot. Superman is the public face of Kal-El, so to bring him forth you call up the joy you take in compassion. It makes you strong and self-assured.
Your identities sometimes seem mutually exclusive, but they're not. You can be confident and you can get flustered. You can be rendered weak by kryptonite and you have a moral strength that does not come from your physical powers. You are Clark, Kal-El, Superman. Ultimately you are you, and there is no name for that. Nor does there need to be. You like being you. It's enough to keep you going.
You first felt the need to reconcile your identities in Metropolis. It's because of Lois Lane: no one has ever had quite the impact on you that she does. You were utterly, desperately in love with her at first sight and the more you know about her the more you love her. The more you love her the more you feel impelled to integrate all your identities into one person that she will love.
You don't realize this at first. For several weeks you tarry with her as Superman and try to get her attention as Clark. Then Lex Luthor blows up California and because you had promised to stop the New Jersey bomb first, you can't stop the other one from exploding. Hovering in the atmosphere after diverting one bomb you see out of the corner of your eye the white mushroom cloud blossoming over the West Coast and you hear them. The sudden cessation of millions of heartbeats along the San Andreas fault. The cries of pain, the cries for help. There are so many of them and you've failed to save them.
But that doesn't stop you from diving into California in a split second and repairing what damage you can. And while you're occupied, Lois Lane dies.
When you find her smothered in dirt you feel pain such as you've only felt once before: kryptonite, earlier the very same day. This day is the first time you've ever felt pain. Kryptonite is agonizing, it weakens you and incapacitates you physically. You feel the same way, in your heart, kneeling over Lois in the dust with tears streaking your dirty face. It seems impossible that the sky should still be so blue; you howl up into it but it does nothing to release your pain.
Stricken with grief beyond imagining, you shoot into the sky and become lost among the clouds, your fathers' warnings echoing in your throbbing head. Lois is dead and you never told her. You have to do something or you'll explode. You have to.
So you do something. You aren't aware until later what it was that you did. At the time it didn't seem to matter much.
You stop both bombs the second time. You save Lois, too.
At this point nothing else matters.
You don't have a chance to think about the consequences of your actions until much later. Soon afterwards, you have to save Lois from another bomb, this time in Paris. Then you're on assignment with her in Niagara Falls, investigating a honeymoon racket. She sees Clark's hand fall into the fire and come out Superman's, entirely unaffected. You could have avoided the revelation easily, but you didn't, because you want her to love you, all of you. You want to tell her everything. You want her to know you inside and out and you want to do the same with her, to melt into each other becoming one person with two halves and two identities: you and her. Her and you.
"It must be tough, having to be Clark Kent," she inquires.
Well, Clark Kent is you. He's an incarnation of you. But you're still not sure if she can love Clark Kent, so you tell her quite honestly that you really like being him. If you weren't Clark Kent, after all, you would never have met Lois Lane. But you both get confused by the pronouns and it's irrelevant anyway. You're you, and Lois is with you.
You tell your father and mother about her while she is changing clothes, thinking they will be happy for you. They don't look happy. Your mother reproaches you for selfishness; stung, you retort that the humans you serve all have a chance at happiness, so why can't you? Are you for some reason unworthy of Lois's love? Krypton, Mother tells you, lived by the values of sacrifice and responsibility. But you are in the right and you know it: Mother and Father loved each other. Do they really mean to deny you the same happiness?
Deep anguish lines the construct of your mother's face, but you are in the right and she knows it as well. "If this is what you wish," she tells you, "to live your life with a mortal, then you can only live as a mortal. You must become one of them." She shows you a chamber that has harnessed the power of Krypton's red sun, which will make you mortal. "Once it is done, there is no return. You will feel like an ordinary man. You can be hurt like an ordinary man. —Oh my son, are you sure?"
If the only way you can be with Lois is as Clark Kent—as one-third of yourself—then it is the only way. You do not question her wisdom, but step into the chamber.
This is the first time you have defied your birth parents' wishes. It's worth it.
But it doesn't last.
You're not the same. After the magical night with Lois is over, you feel aches and pains. You feel cold. You feel human and you don't like it. You feel empty. Something is missing inside you that you've never felt the lack of before. Loose ends jangle and blood rushes in your ears. Trekking back to Metropolis with Lois you get into a brawl at a bar. You bleed. You're not supposed to bleed. You should be able to beat him, but you can't, you can't. It shames you. You make a smart remark to Lois.
"I don't want a bodyguard," she says smiling anxiously. "I want the man I fell in love with." There is only sympathy in her expression, she is not condemning you, but you are still shamed.
You wish he were here, too.
Then things get infinitely worse.
The Kryptonian criminal General Zod and his compatriots have somehow escaped from Father's Phantom Zone and come to Earth. On TV you watch the President of the United States abdicate to Zod, call desperately for Superman. You're Superman. But that's not really true any more. Superman is dead. Kal-El is dead. You're Clark Kent, a man with a hole inside him. You have to go back to your Fortress. You have to try something—anything.
"It's not your fault," Lois says gently. But it is your fault. You heard the cries for help, you hear everything. You just haven't been listening. You've failed everyone: Lois, your parents, your nation, the world. Even yourself.
You stagger back to your Fortress. You don't know how long it takes to get there, but it's a long time. When you arrive the place is dead and empty. The iron band you feel inside your chest tightens and squeezes until the anguish inside you explodes in all its impotent fury. You scream for your parents. For Superman. For anyone. But you are only human; no one comes.
Then—just as you have given up—you glimpse the green crystal that began it all.
Superman and Kal-El restored to Clark Kent, you fight off Zod. He, Ursa, and Non are defeated in your Fortress when you trick Luthor into tricking them. Things go back to normal, except you still have Lois. And she is miserable.
"Do you have any idea what a vile sound it is to hear the first bird singing when you've been up all night crying? I'm selfish when it comes to you. They can't need you more than I do—everybody else." She is trying not to cry. "I'm not blaming you. I'm jealous—jealous of the whole world."
You're selfish when it comes to her, and you know—oh God, do you know—how well that turned out. Lois is having the same problem. You were willing—eager—to ignore the problem if it means you can be together, no matter what your parents think, but now you're having second thoughts. This hurts Lois more than it hurts you, and you cannot stand for her to be hurt, much less for you to be the cause of it.
"If you think it'll be easy," she continues, "—sitting near you, talking to you, pretending not to feel, pretending not to know. . .I don't even know what name to call you any more." She smiles up at you tearfully.
You don't know what to call yourself either.
And you're not willing to sacrifice Lois's mental well-being and her happiness for the two of you to be together. That's not worth it. Your parents were right: you have to sacrifice some things in order to be you, even though you've been waiting, it seems, your whole life for her to come along. But you can wait some more until you find a solution. So you make her forget, to take away the pain.
Sacrifice and responsibility. It's a long, empty life waiting for you.
Things are a little quieter after that. You have some room to think. And you certainly have a lot to think about.
You realize now you cannot afford to be selfish. You still believe that you deserve happiness such as your parents had, but you cannot sacrifice yourself for it. To value one part of yourself more highly than another—to paraphrase Mother on humanity—is dangerous not only to your soul but to the entire world you serve. It is a lesson you believe you have learned well.
You need to learn from your mistakes if you are to keep serving this world. You've made a couple of them.
The first mistake was to bring back Lois from the dead, though even now you don't regret it. You're still not quite entirely sure what it was you did to manage that—but you think you turned back time, forced it backwards and manipulated the strands of destiny until you had stopped both bombs and saved Lois.
You had no idea you could do that. It's a little frightening.
The second mistake was to sacrifice essential parts of yourself to the rest of yourself on a gleaming icy altar over which Lois reluctantly presided. No one deserves that, not even you. That you regret.
You thought you had learned your lesson. Later you find out that you were wrong.
It is the strangest experience you have ever had in your life.
You are exposed to an odd sort of kryptonite. It doesn't cause you any pain; in fact, you feel no effect whatsoever. But it kicks in a little later. You're in Smallville, visiting Ma and Lana and everybody else while you write a story about long-term social change in small towns over the last fifteen years: in other words, catching up on what you've missed while you were out on a whirlwind tour of the universe with Father. So you have some kryptonite: it doesn't do anything, so you keep it to examine later.
You're with Lana, dressed up as Superman. You hear some people crying for help. You don't care anymore. By the time you come to your senses, they have died.
After disposing of the kryptonite you are uneasy, but you don't anticipate it happening again. After all, you've got rid of the source of the problem, right? Wrong. By the time you're back in Metropolis as Clark Kent it starts again. Clark Kent is a weakling. He's got this ugly little thing called compassion. It's useless to you, so you do away with it. You're not Superman anymore, either, and you avoid thinking about Kal-El—that's dangerous. So you fly around the world wreaking havoc. You don't shave. You don't wash. You start drinking. You fuck a woman planted there by someone out to get you, and you don't even care. You destroy property with malicious pleasure.
Once there was a little boy with a curl right in the middle of his forehead. When he was good he was very good, and when he was bad he was horrid.
In this state you don't think about much of anything; you just sink deeper into depravity and depression. You just don't care. What is there to care about? Other people? God, no. Yourself? You're too angry and miserable to pull yourself out of your slump. You're in denial—until Lana's kid tells you he believes in you.
You've been drinking and you've developed a blinding headache. So you fly off, but you're in pain and you can't fly far. You land in a junkyard; you can still hear the kid, Ricky, talking to you. Something you've pushed deep down into yourself sparks and blooms.
Then it emerges physically. You're kneeling there clutching your head looking at yourself. You're standing a few feet away looking at yourself kneeling. You ought to be tremendously confused but somehow it all makes sense. You struggle to your feet watching yourself struggle to your feet and you realize that you have split into Clark -Kal and—and whatever it is you are now, apathetic and malicious.
Enraged, you attack and land in a pile of axles. It hurts your jaw and your knuckles—clearly both sides of you are equal. And that makes you angrier, because you believe Clark is weaker. It makes you more confident, because you know you are doing wrong and you can stand up to that part of yourself. So you decide to show yourself that you're not as weak as you think.
"I can give as good as I get," you snarl. But the hateful part of you still isn't convinced.
Finally, after thirty years, you get to tell your opponent exactly what you think of him, to his face. "Man, I never did like you. You always got on my nerves," behaving like a fool, too afraid to take what you want.
"Come to think of it," you respond to yourself in kind, "you always got under my skin," being able to show your abilities in public, not having to hide under a perceived weakness. But that's all it is—perceived. That's what you have to show yourself.
This is the hardest battle you have ever fought. It is also the one with the highest stakes, and the one you are the most determined to win.
And you do win.
You realize that your compassion is stronger than your selfishness. You snap back into yourself and it hurts but the hurt fades and you have never felt so completely whole. You still don't know what to call yourself, but you are you as you have never been before and it is good.
And you're a bit closer to a solution to the problem of how to belong to Lois and to the world simultaneously.
So you right what wrongs you've committed that are possible to right. You fix your mistake as best you can. You resolve to see to it that it never happens again—which means you have to figure out that kryptonite and the folks who gave it to you. You make excuses as Clark Kent for your absence. You do what you have to do. Now what?
Now you're going to make a balancing act: happiness versus sacrifice and responsibility.
This is what you're here for. This is how you're you.