Darkness
Clark Kent had been seriously depressed for the last three months, six days, and ten minutes. It was the kind of depression that makes you feel inadequate to live, with guilt stacking up around him, black, darkening the sun, suffocating him.
Every day he slipped deeper, every day it got darker.
Three months, six days, and ten minutes ago was when he learned how long he was away, back on the farm in his mother's company:
"Five years?" he actually clutched his chest. "It can't have been that long. What's the date? What's the date!"
He dove for the phone and he dialed the Planet's main number so fast his fingers blurred. His voice reached an octave that made his mother turn frown in alarm as he quickly asked as many questions as the main receptionist could answer.
"Oh Clark Kent! No way! Wait, no, yes, she's still, yes him too, I'm sure Mr. White, yes, would be happy to take your, okay, hold on just a moment, slow down!"
He faked as many stutters as he could realistically fit into his conversation with Perry, put in a few laughs for good measure, and flew to Metropolis in time to take the elevator the next morning, terrified at what he would find Upstairs.
The black wall went higher when a picture frame fractured in his grip, and the knowledge of Lois' new commitments rose like a barrier between him and the past. A child and a prolonged engagement! The shock of it made the room tilt.
Less than forty-eight hours back on Earth, and his nose was in a beer. Less than five minutes after that there was a mid-air crisis involving the engaged mother in question, and Clark was suddenly able to focus on the thing he did the best.
After Lois was safe and dismissing Clark Kent's return to the Bullpen, Clark watched her, hair now flowing down her back in waves. He was mesmerized by the subtle differences five years made. She was thinner, her face was more mature, and there was a hint of motherhood in her bust. Her style of dress was more feminine, her posture spoke of even more confidence, and she carried a larger purse. Yet, she had the same walk, the same quick wit, the same smile and the same fierce attitude. He loved her just as easily as he had only a few weeks before.
The agony of it was worse this time.
Later that night, his vision revealed the cross-section of domesticity that was Dinner at the White Household... until the conversation shifted and Lois stiffened in the face of questioning. Clark knew that she said she denied loving him under the direct gaze of her fiancé, a difficult situation at best, but the words still hurt. He slipped deeper into darkness.
She'd had a child. Lois Lane, a mother. It was impossible.
Clark went back to the bar later that night, made a phone call with a scrap of paper in his hand, and switched to whiskey. He owed Jimmy a shot, anyway.
He rested his head on the bar while Jimmy told him about Lois' pregnancy and the insane demands for new light bulbs and soy hotdogs with homemade relish that she had made everyday at the same hour; the change in Perry after his heart attack two years ago; and finally that Kyle and Maurice had convinced the entire Bullpen that they were in love as an April Fools joke last year, and it had been a shock to them when no one really reacted. Clark snorted into his glass at this story, but hung his head again as the topic shifted back to Lois.
Clark was never a seasoned drinker, and he didn't want to be, so he stumbled and slouched for most of the way to Jimmy's apartment. Where he promptly passed out on the couch, fully dressed.
The next day Clark hoped no one noticed that he was wearing his suit from yesterday when he entered the supply closest, and another as he exited. He sighed and looked around the Bullpen. Five years?
As Clark got reacquainted in the Bullpen, Superman got reacquainted with Lois. Her resentment of Superman was apparently too little in the face of her old feelings. It was more than he had hoped for.
Their flight, her lips only inches from his; he was amazed at how near they had come. It was a moment that seemed not far removed from their last, a scene that made it hard for him to remember that she was practically a stranger. If it felt odd at first, there must have been enough of them left to let her continue their dance and only miss a step.
Obligations to a fiancé forgotten, Clark had hope. Though it was a rare, selfish hope, and it felt wrong in the back of Clark's mind. But, it was hope none-the-less.
Even during the Luthor nightmare, Clark had hope. He had been beaten and bleeding and Lois had come back for him, had literally saved his life, got his blood on her hands, desperate even with Richard right there. Later, she had come to him in darkness while he laid in a white room, the only civilian in the world that could force their way in to him.
She spoke to him. Simply. Though not easily. He had a son.
Which meant Clark had done worse than selfishly flee his pain, more than traverse the galaxy in a useless search... He had left the seed of life in the womb of the woman he loved, and stolen the memory of its making from her.
So then, even as her lips did finally whisper against his, trapped in a hospital bed and yearning for the past, the depression made him sink away, churning amidst the surprise.
From that moment on, the first breaths taken each morning felt heavy, and the reality of going into work to sit mere feet from Lois was absolute torture. He was sentenced to watch her from behind the barrier of his own guilt, tempted daily to ask her forgiveness for something she didn't even remember…
Clark saw no way out; nothing he could do would both atone for his own guilt and keep Lois from despising him.
He sat now, suffering through those first conscious breaths of a new morning, in his new apartment on his new mattress, the tendrils of depression rising up to block out the light. As they had done every morning since he'd found out.
Clark knew he could not forgive himself. Would he rather Lois hate and mistrust him forever than live with this?
He didn't know. He ran his fingers through his hair as he sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the dust on the floor. He just didn't know. Living two lives was difficult, but it was always justifiable, something he could grit his teeth against. Now, knowing how close he had been to everything he wanted, the idea of maintaining the secret seemed cruel... which is how Clark feared Lois would see it this time.
Afterall, Lois had not hated him when she found out. She'd said she loved him instead, him, Clark Kent. And he knew her so well, well enough to know when she threw down all her walls, when she kissed him with the truth. He listened to her sigh in pleasure as she took everything that Clark surrendered.
Which was why the genetic miracle with wide blue eyes that scampered through the Bullpen on Friday afternoons hurt so much to see. He was evidence of a experience that Clark tried not to relive, a night he had purposefully saved Lois the pain of remembering. And it meant that even if Superman could avoid explaining their liaison, he could not be a father to Jason. Only Clark Kent could. Only Clark Kent could pick him up from daycare, make pancakes for slumber parties, sign permission slips for school.
But Lois would not forgive it again. He knew she wouldn't, and he didn't deserve it anyway. Not now that he'd told her once already, slept with her in the meantime, stole the memory of it without her consent, and left her to raise their child and never know.
She'd hated him for leaving. And she would hate him even more if she ever found out why.
So here he was again. Facing the day. Clark sat lost in thought on the edge of his bed for a good ten minutes before awareness came back. He needed to get up now in order to do his rounds in time to stay on schedule. No matter what, he wouldn't be late for work. So he stood up, yawned, and then padded to the bathroom, where he avoided his own eyes in the mirror as he shaved.
He still had work. Work saved him.
After he'd come home from the hospital, he'd to adjust to not only a different relationship with Lois, but to Jason, an older Bullpen, and a changed world. There was paperwork at the bank, the search for an apartment, new clothing to buy, a state ID to wait in line for, books on world travel to read up on, all his possessions to retrieve. The list went on.
Thankfully, struggling with the necessities of life kept his mind focused. But as the fires raged and the criminals plotted, Clark was finding life harder to live than ever before.
Lois was simply too fascinating in motherhood, too strong in work, too beautiful in moonlight for him to grit his teeth against it this time. At one point Clark was sure he could not do it, that he could not stumble over his words on purpose or ignore what his super-hearing made him aware of when Lois kissed and spoke to Richard in his office. He couldn't stop himself from wincing when Jason would show him pictures of Superman, or when he only imagined Lois whispering his name at night.
He was so tempted to spill everything, to rip his shirt off at her feet, beg her forgiveness in the middle of the Bullpen.
Life was too hard to live.
Until Perry assigned them together one morning at a staff meeting, almost two months ago.
More than a brief, this meeting was when serious decisions and issues were passed down from the Editor-and-Chief, and Clark's head snapped up when he heard his name in tandem with Lois. He glanced at her and saw her roll her eyes, but he couldn't keep a small smile off his face that they would be working together again.
While undeniably only more painful, working with Lois was a joy only a journalist could understand. For whatever he was, Clark was a reporter, and sharpening your nose on the same grindstone as Lois Lane was passion, it was energy, it was what he wanted to do.
Clark looked at himself in the mirror, meeting his own eyes, confident in the fact that this was absolutely true.
If he could not be her lover, or her companion in parenthood, then he would be her partner as he always has been. He would chase her around the city, take her abuse, edit her articles, spend late nights at the Bullpen, share her byline, suffer the monotony, argue with her, and challenge her. It burned in him like it burned in her: the thrill of the chase, the conquering of evil one ink-stained day at a time. It was important; it was life in the face of his dreary existence, it was his finger on the pulse of the city and he wanted it, wanted her, and was thankful to have it all back.
Yes, the guilt, the anger at himself, it threatened to suffocate him in the mornings, but by the time he made it to his desk and saw Lois opening her pores over her morning coffee, he was ready to breathe again.