A/N: Thank you for the reviews! And thank you, too, to my wonderful friend and beta, DaisyJane.

The night was all you had,

You ran into the night from all you had,

Found yourself a path upon the ground,

You ran into the night you can't be found,

But this is your heart,

Can you feel it?

Can you feel it?

Pumps through your veins,

Can you feel it?

Can you feel it?

Laura Palmer—Bastille

Chapter Twenty Five

An hour after Alexa had left, Kal still wasn't sure what had just happened. The fight was very clear, he still had those words ringing in his ears, but had they just … broken up? Had she just gone to cool down? He had a feeling it had been more serious than that; Alexa had issued him with an ultimatum. The only other people who did that were the enemies he faced with the League, or those threatening his city. But this wasn't going to budge for freeze-breath, or super-sonic flight.

I cannot compete with a dead woman for you affections. And I won't.

Competing? Is that what she thought he was doing? Seeing if she measured up to some kind of sick chart, seeing if she ticked all the boxes in his head? Rao, did she know him so little? All he'd been trying to do was spare both their feelings—

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. 'Both' didn't mean him and Alexa. 'Both' meant Alexa and … But that was ludicrous! Lois didn't have feelings, she— and once again, he encountered a barrier he could not get past. He hated the idea that Lois no longer existed anywhere, in some form, he always had. He no longer believed he had committed her soul to Heaven; that had gone with the rest of his faith, but to have her nowhere? To think that she was only ashes, even less than ashes, was … difficult. She had meant so much, been so much—how could she now be nothing at all? So under that assumption, she did exist somewhere, and that she could hear and see, he'd … what, thought a photo of her might get upset? Pathetic. And Lois would have thought so too, he could practically hear her voice now.

Are you actually that stupid, Smallville? You have the most beautiful girl in the world in love with you, making you indescribably happy, and you're worried about me? He could nearly feel her slapping the sense into him. I loved you. And if I do exist, then I want you to be happy. Alexa makes you happy, doesn't she?

Yes. She did. Happier than he'd previously thought he could be.

Then show her that and, so help me, if there's one more consideration coming my way I'll come back from whatever afterlife I'm supposedly having and kick your ass. Go life your life, and be happy doing it! Or so help me …

The strange sense of Lois faded as the practicalities of that took over. He could no longer offer Alexa only words. She wouldn't believe them now—he'd given her verbal assurances in the past and now betrayed them. It had to be a tangible gesture then. Which was a lot easier said than done, finding an object that would mean something, that would help Alexa understand but reassure her too. Hitting on an idea, he went into the bedroom and opened the closet. In a box on one of the shelves were dozens of red leather notebooks. He knew every word written in them by heart, but in the last six weeks, he hadn't thought about them once. And now, thumbing the slightly dog-eared pages, he knew it was time to let them go.

Alexa was unsurprised when Kal tried to contact her. She was unyielding and refused to answer his calls or listen to the messages he left. This was a professional relationship now. She obviously would never mean what she wanted to mean to him, and she had more dignity and self-respect than to attempt it. She'd felt like this about other men before Kal, and so what if their names didn't immediately to mind? So what if she was moody and snappy all the time without him? So what if sometimes there was a physical pain—

It wasn't Kal's fault, any more than it was hers. They'd just both been fooling themselves—Alexa that his grieving would ever be finished and Kal that he could love someone new. Was that unfair? Yes. Was there any point in mooning about it? No. Guilt was obviously just something that Kal couldn't stop feeling. She felt compassion for him, but until she could get rid of the plain passion bit, she couldn't be his friend. It was possible that she could never be his friend again and Alexa didn't like that thought one bit.

Still, at least the criminals of Gotham were feeling the benefits of Batwoman's emotional turmoil. Tonight she'd stopped three muggings, one attempted armed robbery and prevented a murder. Right now she had her eyes on three men who were loitering outside a club. Whatever their intentions were, she was willing to bet they weren't good. Sure enough, she'd only been watching them for fifteen minutes when a group of five women came out of the club. They hailed a cab, so obviously they weren't going to walk home. Good girls, she thought.

The three men moved forward a couple of steps, but then one of them caught the other two, shaking his head. She picked up a low warning a moment later. "We're here to eliminate a witness, knuckleheads, not make more."

But their luck was in; suddenly one of the women pulled away from her friends. "I left my phone on the bar! Wait a second for me, okay?"

Her friends didn't seem to have heard her, and she seemed a bit too drunk to notice the lack of a reply. She disappeared back into the club just as a cab pulled up, and all her friends piled into it.

"Yes! Come on, let's do it!"

"Not yet, moron!"

"Come on, man! D'you want her on a silver platter? Opportunities don't come better than that!"

It looked like the silver platter was coming up, however. The woman emerged from the club again, and swore loudly to find her friends had gone. Call a cab and wait inside for it, Batwoman thought to her. Cab and go back in. Cab and go back in. The silent warning went unheeded; the woman wobbled down the street in her heels, towards the bus stop on the corner. She was followed of course. Alexa tracked them, flitting silently across the rooftops. As the woman reached the bus stop, the men fanned out and pulled out weapons, two pistols and a machete. The woman had time to notice them—she didn't have time to scream, and they didn't have time to fire. Batwoman descended, raining pain on the assailants.

The first target had to be the pistols. The men were stunned at her appearance but that wouldn't last long. Before the nearest one could recover, she grabbed his wrist, pushing his arm skyward and punching him in the stomach with her other first. Ribs broke as he doubled over in pain, and she squeezed his hand, crushing those bones to make sure he dropped the pistol, which she kicked away. By this time his friend with the other gun had recovered, and started firing. She used the other one as a shield, spinning him so that the bullet impacted his upper arm. He howled in pain, but he'd live, so she threw him at his colleague. Rather than shoot again, they both went down, the second gun clattering across the road. Alexa smacked their skulls together, gently enough so that they were knocked out. Alexa straightened and turned to face the final criminal—only to find a machete coming to decapitate her. She dodged just in time, cursing her sloppiness, and felt the rush of air whistling passed her ear as the blade barely missed. He immediately slashed back again and she deflected the blow with her bracer and kicked his legs from under him. When he went down, winded, she snatched the blade away and bent it neatly in half, then prodded him unconscious.

"You hurt?" she asked the woman.

"N-no. Are you?" She pointed to Batwoman's neck.

She reached up to feel a tear in the fabric of her suit, a thin line across her throat. No breaking of the skin, but still it was far too close. Rather than answer, she said, "These men were sent to kill you. You're a witness in a case?"

"Yes."

"When the police get here, tell them you need protective custody."

She restrained the men and then melted into the dark sky and headed back to the cave. Her brother had been monitoring, and when she landed, he looked worried. "How'd that happen?"

"He was fast."

"You're faster. You're always faster. And tonight you were slow, the whole night."

"I did my job, Thomas."

"With nowhere near your normal level of efficiency. Something's up," he said bluntly. "Tell me what it is."

"Nothing."

"Lexie, you know you can't lie to me."

"Nothing is up, Tom!"

He frowned in obvious disbelief. "Alright, fine. But if you're okay, then I'm guessing you wouldn't have forgotten the surveillance patch you were going to install in the Metrotower's software before you came home."

She barely restrained the curse. Going to the Metrotower meant going to Metropolis and that meant the chance of running into Kal before she was ready. Like now, for instance, when just the idea sent a wave of longing through her, so intense it was dizzying. Gods and goddesses, she missed him! She missed his warmth and his tenderness, those little smiles that were just for her…but they weren't just for her. They were being replicated for her. The genuine ones belonged to another woman in another time.

"Lexie?"

"I'll do it now."

Once at the Metrotower, she tried to find the room with the most people in it to access a terminal, feeling there would be less chance of being cornered and alone if Kal happened to be here. Of course, being Superman, all he had to do was politely smile and nod and mention the words 'council business' and they all fell over backwards to oblige him. Within moments the two of them were by themselves. Alexa bit back her accusation of cheating and focused on the screen in front of her. Or at least she stared at it, pressing random buttons because she couldn't remember how to install software suddenly. Nobody had ever been able to get under her skin like him.

"Can we talk?"

"We're talking now."

He reached out as if to take her hand, then stopped as she accidentally bent the metal of the console. "Then will you at least look at me?"

She did, but kept her mask on and made sure no emotion escaped her. Kal sighed. "Forgotten how much I hate that look…" he muttered. "Look, Alexa, I brought these for you." He put them down.

She glanced coldly down. "What are they?"

"They're journals, and some letters. I'd like you to read them."

"I'm busy."

"Please, Alexa."

Her fingers didn't stop moving, but after a second she sighed. "Fine. Whose-"

He was already gone.

When she got to the manor, she went to bed, intending to get a decent night's—or day's—sleep. When she lay down though, there were those damn books Kal had given her, sitting there on the vanity and containing his hope that he hadn't screwed up. At least she could see whose diaries they were. She reached over and opened the top most one, 2010-2011. And while she expected it, she was somehow completely unprepared for Lois' handwriting. There were pages and pages of neat script detailing her life. Alexa nearly threw the book away from her, tears instantly springing to her eyes. This was how he thought to make amends? More Lois Lane in her life and her head and her heart? No. She wouldn't. She couldn't. It would be too cruel. Too painful.

It took her another ten minutes of trying to tear her hair out, the vain effort to stop her crying, to realise that the one thing Kal wasn't, the one thing he would never, ever be, was cruel. Whatever his reason for giving her these, it wasn't to cause her pain. With a trembling hand, she picked up the book and opened it again, beginning to read. She had to hand it to Lois, the woman had had a gift with words—more so than most reporters she'd read. Obviously she had been an award-winning journalist for a very good were certain points while reading through those letters and entries where she just wanted to scream at the Lois of the past for being either too cowardly, or too stubborn, or too proud to accept that she needed help or needed to apologise or…that she just needed him. It just seemed to have taken a million years for her to admit how she truly felt about Kal.

But as Alexa had read further, delved deeper into Lois and the story of the man called Clark, she began to see it. By the time she had finished reading the last diary entry (three sleepless days and nights after Kal had given them to her), Alexa had laughed and cried so much with all that she had read. She felt echoes of emotion too; she would never go so far as to say she felt as Lois must have done, when writing these words, but she felt enough to understand. The journals hopped about a bit in time, ranging from the opening of their relationship to the end of it. The final evening of 2063 was halfway through the book, leaving the rest of the pages harshly blank. What Lois had written wasn't that sad, even. She didn't say anything about her forthcoming death—just a few basic notes that day. Even a 'Fuck doctors and fuck watching my cholesterol now. Those pancakes were good'. Somehow the normalness made the rest of it worse. It felt like she'd been cut off when she was meant to carry on, told 'Time's up' when there was still living to do. Alexa even thumbed through the rest of the journal anyway. Nothing—or at least nothing until she came to the back and saw the book lining. Because there was one corner where the crimson leather had peeled back, exposing a wafer-thin sheet of dark grey metal. Lead, Alexa knew instantly. She peeled back the cover and pulled out a sheet of paper. There was more of Lois' handwriting—a message to her that Kal had never been intended to find. It was just one line.

I know it must be pissing you off. But make him be selfish—he is so worth it.

Alexa knew right then that she would never show this to Kal. He would appreciate the sentiment, but knowing Lois had accurately guessed what would happen would only further increase his guilt. The opposite of what both of them wanted. The opposite of what Lois had wanted. Alexa got out of bed and went down to the shrine. This time, she prayed to Persephone.

"Please, great Queen, thank her. I will heed her this once but no more. As she wishes, from this day on she will be dead to me as she will be to him. I will honour her request to rest in peace."

Alexa slept soundly through the rest of the night and the next day, her sleep dreamless and peaceful. Then it was her turn to empty the communications centre of all its employees. Unlike Kal though, she did not offer than an explanation. She simply ordered them out, and they—well, she did love the term—scurried from the room.

"Lock all doors and disable security feed. User override 0134."

"Command acknowledged."

Alexa pushed back her mask and turned to face Kal. He had a very guarded expression on his face, which even she, skilled at reading expressions and intimately familiar with Kal's, couldn't penetrate.

"Why d'you give them to me?"

"Because I don't need them," he said simply. "I don't want to keep her alive anymore. It's not fair to anyone – she's dead. I need to love her memory, not look for her in someone else."

Silence, then Alexa said abruptly, "She and I are a lot alike."

"And completely different."

She couldn't argue that. They really were two very different women – there were similarities, yes, but the biggest one Alexa had found was that they both loved Kal. He couldn't see her as a replacement for Lois, and the truth was there in his eyes. She wasn't second best. She had as much a stake in his heart as Lois had. She could share it with a memory now she was no longer sharing it with a ghost.

"We are," she allowed.

The hopeful look on his face made her heart swell. But the air still wasn't quite clear between them. "I just got scared, Kal. Insecure, I guess. If you were still feeling guilty then I didn't see how I could ever…"

He moved forward, tilted her face up to his. "How you could ever mean to me what she did?"

Unwillingly, Alexa nodded.

Kal kissed her, gently and lovingly. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and reciprocated, feeling the doubts close and shrivel up and blow away. Dust on the wind.

"Thank you," she said, smiling, "for them. I don't think I understood before—I knew how much you loved her, but…now I understand how much she loved you. And why her loss left the hole it did. I want to fill that hole, Kal. I want it so you smile at her name instead of cry. Can you do that?" she asked, tracing the symbol on his chest. "Can you celebrate her life instead of mourning her death?"

"Yes. You're right, Alexa, and I promise you—this is our story now."

Complete and total happiness was all that could follow. After that, they never spent a night apart unless absolutely necessary. Barda was happy to provide the occasional alibi when questioned, and today they were even going on a real date. Somewhere extremely low-key of course, with Alexa wearing a blonde wig. Rural Italy in fact, on one of the great lakes. She'd arranged a picnic and a boat, and no interruptions. Naturally, the picnic involved not nearly enough champagne and their communicators were left on, but the gods did bless them with a perfect twenty four hours. They'd meant to return to the Metrotower afterwards, but when Kal suggested his apartment that seemed like a much better idea, even though she had none of her overnight things. It wouldn't be a problem, she was sure.

In keeping with the Italian theme, they ordered pizza, unfortunately for the delivery boy.

He couldn't help it. Gary Mason was seventeen, didn't have a girlfriend, and his stash of dirty magazines was a good six months old. Plus, it was a Friday night, and he'd really rather be hanging out with his friends or trying out his fake ID rather than delivering pizza to people. Still, at least this place looked upmarket. He might get a decent tip.

He pressed the buzzer, and when a voice answered it, said, "Pizza delivery," with as much enthusiasm as he could muster—which wasn't much.

"Come up."

He went inside the building, got in the elevator and went up to the fiftieth floor. When he found the apartment, he knocked on the door, but what caught his attention first was not his customer.

It was extremely difficult, once he'd seen them, not to stare at the pair of incredibly long, incredibly shapely legs that were stretched out, resting on the coffee table. They were amazing—tanned and slim and toned and-

There was a significant clearing of a throat, and the pizza boy looked sharply up into the very unimpressed blue gaze of the man in front of him. His arms were folded across a chest which, the teenager noted, was very wide and looked not in the least bit flabby.

He lifted an eyebrow. "So how much is that?"

"Um, fourteen seventy."

There wasn't a tip, but then Gary hadn't expected there to be now.

With his face still set in a grimace, Kal shut the door behind him and put the pizza down on the coffee table. "What was that about?" Alexa asked.

He ran two fingers up her leg softly. "Them. Apparently your legs are a distraction to teenage boys. Who knew?"

She smiled and picked up a slice of pizza. "They're not distracting for you though, are they?"

"Oh not at all."

"Kal? My face is up here."

He winked, and took his own slice of pizza. Alexa settled against him with a sigh, failing to see, really, how things could get better than this.

Unfortunately for her though, things went downhill the next day. When Thomas proved, with some fairly impressive deductive reasoning and a good intuition, that he was definitely Batman's son.

"Why do you smell like men's deodorant?"

"What?"

"Seriously. You smell like a guy. Which means you used men's deodorant, which no woman ever does unless she can't get to her own deodorant, which means you didn't sleep here or at the penthouse, or at the Metrotower, did you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said flatly.

"You didn't! Come on—do I know him? I know him, don't I?"

"There isn't anyone."

"Okay, so someone we both know…hmm, someone at the company?"

"Seriously, Tommy," she growled. "Back off. And if you repeat one word of this crap, I swear I'll make you eat that Ferrari you're so fond of, understand?"

"Okay, okay. Jeez, Lexie, who is he? So you have a boyfriend, so what? It's no big deal—you've had boyfriends before."

"It's- That's not- He's not a boyfriend, okay, Tommy?"

Her brother eyed her with sudden suspicion. "It had better not be who I think it is."

"And why the hell not?" she demanded, temper flaring. "Why the hell shouldn't it be him? He makes me happy, Tommy. And I make him happy—why isn't that enough for everyone else in the world?"

Staring at her, Thomas swallowed. "He makes you happy now, Lexie, that doesn't mean-"

"I'm in love with him, Thomas."

That shut him up.

A/N: Review please!