Fic Repost: First Against the Wall [Parts XI-XIII]

[penumbra]

Parts: I-V | VI-X | XI-XIII

XI
Supermen
It was not a question of what, but when.

At first I hadn't understood, when Chloe asked with her eyes wide why I thought Lex would want to clone Clark, how she couldn't know. I didn't understand how it wasn't obvious to her - how it wasn't obvious to Kara, who had seen into Lex's obsession, who knew every twisted way he thought of Clark.

I wanted to say it: he wants Clark on his side any way he can have him. And -

"They're his contingency," I had said, unscrewing the lid to the coffee jar, "he knows he'll never take office, not legally."

The jar was empty. I set it back down on the counter. When this is over, I thought, I should cut back. If this is over.

Jimmy had broken open an old camera and the pieces were scattered over my kitchen table. I was starting to understand that Jimmy Olsen was the kind of person who needed his hands to be busy when his mind was in turmoil. But he had put his screwdriver down now, and looked up at me, his mouth open.

"What are you saying?" he said.

I leant back against my counter, arms crossed.

"Nobody commissions a weapon unless they think they'll have to use it," I said, "and we're at war: Lex knows it. His supporters make a lot of noise, and send a lot of death threats, but he knows he'll never hold office."

I had snorted, there, shaking my head and added, "He's delusional, not stupid."

And when I looked at each of them individually, I knew they all understood what I was saying. Lex will take power by force - the question was when.

And maybe it was a question of what: what are we going to do to stop him?

We couldn't be sure whether Lex knew that Jimmy and I had been on his base, but I believed he knew.

I believed he had expected me to break in. Remembering our confrontation at the Planet, part of me felt he had wanted it, wanted me to see, wanted me to choke up all the memories he had tried to distort. And he thought he could afford that, because Lex always underestimated me.

Kara almost stopped talking after that conversation, almost stopped seeing us, almost stopped coming back at night. I knew that she slept on the edge of space, imagining, wondering what part she would play when the reckoning came.

But when she turned her eyes on me, speckled with the dust of a dead world, sometimes I remembered that she was only like human. And then I knew, even if she didn't, that she would stand shoulder to shoulder with Kal-El - my Kal - and fight.

I knew it, and sometimes I thought I saw the sky flecked with their blood.

Lexcorp was in lockdown.

We talked about what to do, in clandestine meetings at the Daily Planet - now some base of operations - and I caught the darkened eyes of Burns and his ilk, but it didn't matter.

The one battle I felt we were winning was that for the Planet's benediction: we had fought so hard to report objectively, and every time I saw the facts go out untouched by corruption I felt strong again, if only for a moment.

We were so powerless. Even if we could have gotten back into Lexcorp, we knew there was nothing we could do, and in the end it came down to one thing: we had to wait. And -

"Blue kryptonite," Chloe said to me one day, sitting by my desk at the Planet. She didn't work there, but Perry would turn a blind - if gruff - eye for all the favours I had done him.

My hands hovered over the keyboard, and I turned my head to look at her. "Blue kryptonite?"

She pursed her lips, and said, "The last time we came across any of that stuff it robbed Clark of his powers, but -" she gave me a look before I could interject, "but it's also one of Bizarro's weaknesses." She paused, and then added, "Also sunlight, but I don't think it's a good idea to timelock our defence. I've seen too many vampire movies where -"

"OK." This time I did cut across her. "So you'll probably be able to pick up some of this stuff in Smallville like any other meteor rock, right?"

Chloe's look was almost apologetic, as if this were somehow her fault: "Not... quite," she said. "I don't think any of it came down with the red and green kryptonite. The blue K we ran across - well, it's a long story, but the thing is, I think we're going to have to go to the Fortress."

I raised an eyebrow, "We?" but she barely acknowledged that I had said anything.

"I spoke to Kara before coming here, and -"

What was this? The Bizarro universe?

"Wait," I said, frowning at her, "you and Kara?"

She shrugged, and looked a little over my shoulder to where Jimmy was working at his desk. "Well, I don't have any connection to Jor-El," she said, "and Kara can't handle the blue K - if there even is any there."

Chloe's mind worked in strange leaps of logic. I could see them laid out before me, bound together by the most tenuous sinew of assumption: one, Bizarro was affected by blue kryptonite, therefore these Bizarro/Clark maybe-facsimiles will be; two, Jor-El seemed omnipotent, therefore we could get blue kryptonite from the Fortress. Oh Chloe, none of this is guaranteed.

And I wasn't happy with the idea of Chloe and Kara - of all people - having to deal with Jor-El: Jor-El who had once saved my life, Jor-El who had once echoed painfully through my skull.

I wasn't happy with it, but I didn't try to stop it, because it was the closest thing we had to a plan.

That was the day I noticed, over Chloe's shoulder, that Kal-El was hugging his own cousin good-bye without hesitation.

And I think Lex was watching us, because that was the night he chose to make the war literal.

I had a few moments on the roof with Kal-El that evening when Kara and Chloe had left. I thought that the air was singing with anticipation, but maybe I just thought that because we felt so cautious now that they had gone - like I said, I'm not much for determinism, and I trust my gut, but not to predict the future.

The way Kal-El stood still, silhouetted against the greying sky, I knew he was conflicted about their mission as well. But rather than say anything, this time I just walked over to stand beside him. And, before I registered what I was doing, I slipped my fingers through his in solace.

It was just a few moments.

Then he turned his head, suddenly, and his muscles tensed.

"What is it?" I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at me.

"People are crying," he said, "and asking me why." He looked back over the horizon, and said, his voice low, "I think it's starting."

He looked back at me again, asking permission to leave. And knowing that his weakness was their strength, he seemed so stripped naked to me in the fading light. I wanted to say no: let me protect you - but there were more lives at stake than just Kal-El's.

So I said, "Go," though I loathed it. "Just go."

He paused for a moment, and looked at me in the way I had just looked at him. Then he looked away, and stepped up onto the ledge. "Stay strong, Lois," he said.

And then I was alone.

I wondered if I would ever see him again.

But I was the soldier, and I was not going to let Kal-El fight alone on the front lines.

Chloe and Kara would be back when they were back: I couldn't count on them even having the blue kryptonite when they returned, or on it working if they did. I had to stop this.

The Planet building was empty except for cleaning staff when I returned from the roof.

Perry kept a handgun in the fake bottom of his desk drawer. When my fingers had brushed against the cool metal that first time, I had decided not to mention it. Although, from the meaning in some of the looks Perry shot me, I had a feeling he knew I'd found it.

I prefer unarmed combat on principle, but I could forgive an old man for wanting a sense of security when so many people wanted him dead. And this time, I was willing to go into battle with a little backup, knowng my enemy had weapons which were so much worse: it was a situation for situational morality; or, at least, that's how I rationalised what I was going to do next.

I called Perry from the office and told him to bring everybody back in. This was also a situation for unbiased news coverage, and the Planet staff were the only people I trusted in Metropolis to provide anything close.

Something in my tone prevented Perry from asking too many questions, although I knew he'd put me in the hotseat later. For now, I had my commander's trust, and that was all that mattered.

The night seemed absurdly calm when I stepped out of the Planet building. I turned my face to the sky, now edged with night, but I couldn't see Kal-El or any of Lex's Bizarros.

I thought I heard something, but it was almost indiscernable.

Maybe it was better that way.

Now that it was starting, it didn't seem such a barrier that Lexcorp was in lockdown. In reality, I was ready to go one step further to jump the fence.

There was one security guard on the ground floor reception at Lexcorp HQ. I disabled him without using the gun, stripping him of his keycard.

This was crazy: even for me this was reckless.

I almost stopped then and went back to the Planet to join ranks with the other impartial observers - but then I heard a crack in the sky, and I thought of Kal: saw him in my mind's eye, saw his blood splattered across the clouds.

And he was fighting outnumbered to protect "my people". Were they just people to him now?

Jimmy would be back at the office by now, and somehow I knew he had taken some degree of control: somehow I knew he was influencing events, unseen, from within ranks. And Perry, Perry White was a leader I never could have hoped for. How could I go back? What would I do?

I had to try.

Lex was in Lexcorp HQ, somehow I knew he would choose that building to witness the destruction - he would call it "transformation" - of a city which had given him no reason for love. I knew him so well.

Whether he heard me enter, at first he gave no indication. He was stood behind his desk, looking out over Metropolis through the large window at the back of his office.

From where I was stood, I could see the whole skyline, and several black dots, which, I guessed, were the Bizarros - and Kal-El - locked in a dance whose true beauty was destruction. How many casualties? How many fatalities would the Planet report? I could just see that parts of the city were on fire already: charring the heart of Metropolis.

And it had seemed so quiet on the way here.

I held the gun firm in both hands and pointed it at Lex's head.

This wasn't him catching me in his office. This time I had the power.

"I don't know what you thought you could achieve, Lex," I said, my voice low, biting, "but it ends now."

He half-turned, and I indicated he should face me, back to the wall. He almost smiled: a dark smile for all his sins commited. When he spoke, his voice was too calm for somebody whose life was at stake: "This is a revolution, Lois."

I felt my lips curl up, taking three steps to close the gap. We were parallel to the window now, and I was in control. I raised an eyebrow, and tried to keep my voice even. "So," I said, "who knew you'd be first against the wall when the revolution came?"

He laughed then: a sharp, sick laugh. "You always had a great sense of humour, Lois," he said. Then he indicated the window, now to his right, "Look."

It was eerie, watching a battle take place and hearing and feeling nothing. We were untouched observers.

"Your 'Superman' is outnumbered by my gods," he said. "And when the dust settles, and I am in charge, I will make the world a much better place to be."

My stomach wrenched. "And thanks to your propaganda machine," I said, "the people are almost ready for the idea. Right?" He could believe it all he wanted. I knew there were more Olsens than Burnses in the general population. There had to be.

He cocked his head, still feigning nonchalance. "Are you really going to shoot me Lois?"

How did we get like this?

I never liked Lex.

"I won't have to," I adjusted my grip on the gun, "if you stop this. I know you can."

He had more to lose than I did. Using the Bizarros to seize Metropolis was only a means to an end, an end he was egotistical enough to believe only he could achieve - whether he believed in what he was doing as an ideology, his plan was incomplete. I believed he couldn't stand the thought of dying now.

But it was better for me if he stopped things, and he knew that bought him time.

My finger itched: I wanted to crack my knuckles. Instead I tightened my grip on the gun and waited for his answer.

I saw his chest expand, heard the intake of breath -

Two of the black dots collided in the sky. One fell towards the centre of Metropolis.

A moment of silence.

"Oh no," said Lex, sardonically, "I hope Clark's OK."

Then the Earth seemed to fall out from under my feet. I swayed and then slammed into the desk, my shoulder colliding hard with the corner.

I tried to steady my breathing against the pain as the world came back into view. Somebody was laughing. What was so funny?

Lex was grinning down the barrel of my gun.

I looked dumbly at my empty hands, realising I was sitting on the floor, leant back against the desk. I had dropped the gun in my pain.

I cracked my knuckles. If this was it, then I was getting that out of the way.

"Lois," he said, and his voice was so calm it chilled me, "I'll put flowers on your grave every year." Then he squeezed the trigger, and I closed my eyes.

They say that, when you die, the last moments of your life take an eternity to pass.

I wouldn't know.

It was at the sound of gagging that I opened my eyes again.

Kal-El. How had he?

His hand was around Lex's neck, choking him. The part of myself I'm not proud of wondered why he hadn't already snapped his neck.

I stumbled to my feet, almost falling against the desk, and grabbed Kal-El's hand.

The last time I had done anything like this, Alicia had died.

"Stop," I said, pulling at his shirt.

He didn't look at me.

I threw all my weight into trying to pull him back, but he stood, still and solid as a statue, holding Lex up by the neck. I could see he was hurt, but burning on whatever Kryptonians had for adrenaline - and even broken, he had the strength of ten.

I craned my neck up to speak into his ear, desperation lining the pit of my stomach: "Please stop, Kal."

He glanced back over his shoulder at me, and said, "Why, Lois?" His voice hardened, and his eyes burned, as he looked back at Lex. "He tried to kill you."

But Kal-El hadn't killed Lex yet and, just like I knew Perry wanted me to search his office every evening, I knew Kal wanted a reason not to choke the last breath up from Lex's lungs.

And I only had one reason to give.

The pain was spreading from my shoulder. I clutched his shirt, "Clark would hate me if I let you kill him."

Those wide eyes were turned on me again, jaded comprehension seeping in at the edges. Then he nodded, and loosened his grip on Lex, who fell in a heap to the ground.

He had a pulse, and he was breathing.

"I saw you die," I said, looking up at Kal, "I saw you die."

I saw then for the first time the bruises lining his jaw, the blood on his face: it shook me. He fell back against the desk.

"One of them," was all he said, and I realised: he had come out on top of that collision. He looked up at me then, and I saw some familiar emotion in his eyes. "I nearly didn't -" he began, "I was nearly too late." He opened his hand, and I saw the flattened bullet, and knew what he was saying: I nearly died.

"I'm OK," I said, although my shoulder was immobile.

He nodded, and stood again. He was visibly better, but moved stiffly. "I should go."

"You'll die," I said, pained. I already lost Clark. I already thought I lost Kal-El.

"Kara will be back," he said, "I can hear her. But the people -"

I got it. "OK," I said, standing up and looking at him with meaning.

His eyes were wistful. "Lois," he said, and reached out, brushing a loose strand of hair behind my ear. Deep inside, I hoped it wasn't the last good-bye between us.

It was Jimmy I called to help me deal with Lex: so powerful, now crumpled on the floor under the weight of his own body. I couldn't get him to stop this. I couldn't save the world, not yet.

Jimmy's arm was smeared with blood when he ducked in the room. "Not mine," he said with a weak smile, and somehow I knew the person it had belonged to was dead. "They're rioting," he said, "The cops are trying to deal with it."

I felt so weak: Lex, look what you've done. And for what?

Jimmy looked from Lex, propped up against one of the desks, to me and gave me a congratulatory grin: so you captured the enemy base.

"When do you think the police will show up?" I asked, "Or the medics?"

He winced, and then shrugged.

"That soon," I acknowledged, then sighed. "Kara and Chloe?"

He shook his head. I looked from Lex, to Jimmy, to the gun on the floor. Then I thought of all the people who were dying in Lex's misguided attempts to take control of the city and I grabbed the gun, thrusting it into Jimmy's hands.

"You watch him," I said. "Tie him to the desk or something. I'm going to wait back at the Planet."

He looked from the gun in his hands to me, and gave me a pained look. I smiled and patted him on the shoulder, "You can do it, Jimmy. Make me proud."

I slipped along the back alleys on my return to the Planet: on the way to Lexcorp I had stayed with the crowds, now I wanted to avoid them. I could tell from the shouts and bitter smell of burning that Jimmy was right: people were scared, people were rioting.

Metropolis always rose again but, like Clark, it would be different after this. I didn't know what to think about that.

At first glance the newsroom was in chaos, but it was a chaos that I recognised: layer upon layer of movement revealed a kind of organisation in the madness. We were trying to cope with the constant influx of news - and, stiff and silent, Perry White kept a watching eye over everything.

Several pairs of eyes turned on me as I stalked over to my desk, and a kind of hush fell across part of the newsroom. There was blood smeared across my fingers - from Jimmy's arm, from Kal-El - but they weren't staring at my hands.

I wondered what they suspected of me. Did they think I was guilty of this, because I had known? Because I had been a friend to Superman?

I looked over my shoulder at one of the televisions we had streaming live news.

Every an event was an opportunity for Lex to practise his spin.

There was a blurred picture of one of the Bizarros up on the screen - and on his chest, what looked like the Daily Planet insignia. Did Lex really think people would believe we were behind this? We were a news, not a political organisation.

But then we had many enemies in Metropolis, some who the public might believe were stupid enough to smear us like this, and maybe that's what Lex was banking upon: to be the saviour who rose out of the ashes of Metropolis, after the Daily Planet's irresponsible rabble-rousing had prompted this kind of backlash.

So this was why they were staring at me.

Where was Jimmy when I needed him?

There was a shuffling of feet, and I think some toes were trodden on. Then Perry appeared in front of me. He clapped his heavy hands on my shoulders: a sudden pain cracked through my injured shoulder and I grunted but held his gaze.

"You did your best, kid," he said, "I believe it."

There was some dissent in the crowd: I could hear their whispering, like the storm that rolled out from the bay.

I flicked his hands away coolly and narrowed my eyes at the newsroom. "I'm doing my best," I said. "And don't call me 'kid'... Chief."

And when he nodded, that seemed to be enough for everybody else.

I collapsed into the seat at my desk, feeling more powerless than I wanted anybody to know. How many dead now? I wondered. How many injured?

Then, I looked up. "Chief!" I called out over the newsroom. He half-turned from where he was stood and looked at me. "If those 'Supermen'," I said, "claim to be fighting for us, this might be the only safe building in Metropolis. We need to start getting people in here and giving them shelter." It was the least we could do.

His lips seemed to turn half up, only for a moment, then he nodded, once, sharply. "OK," he shouted, and his voice carried through the newsroom, "I want all the interns out looking for casualties." He seemed to think for a moment, and then added, "And if you can get a doctor or two, well that won't hurt either."

This was the Daily Planet, shouldering its burden to the public.

And, with some of the guilt cleared from my head, I felt I had space to breath and to think.

Then Chloe and Kara came back.

A wave of still fell over the newsroom, and I understood why. They had loved "Supergirl" in the space where Kal-El had found fear and aversion: this one had spread her wings in protection around the city - until the moment they needed it most, when she disappeared. I had overheard their bitter mutterings.

And here she was: and she was just a girl, younger than most of the interns.

And here she was, striding over to me, of all people.

Oh, but they know each other, remember? Lane got the interview.

Lane has her fingers in a lot of pies.

Chloe was unnoticed behind her.

We went up to the roof, where we could talk with some guarantee that we wouldn't be overheard.

There was ash in the air, making it grate, and glow, and sting. A cloud of smoke billowed up from the fires, now consuming whole chunks of the city: glittering in the blackness, and red with the charred blood of ordinary people not living ordinary lives - not living at all.

And where was Lex? Lex was unconcious, tied to his desk, with his life in Jimmy Olsen's hands. What a fucking waste, Lex: you didn't even win.

"I think this is it," said Chloe, handing me a lead box. "Obviously I didn't want to test it on Kara to make sure."

I looked at it. Blue kryptonite: I hope this works.

Kara had stepped over to the edge of the Planet, searching the skies. She looked back over her shoulder to me, and said, "I have to go, Lois." And like Kal-El had, she seemed so small to me. Don't you know? I wanted to ask. Don't you know your kryptonite is like sunshine to them?

I stepped over and pulled her into me with my good arm, hugging her good-bye. "Look after yourself," I said.

She nodded. "You too." Then she stepped off the ledge and into the sky.

I fingered the box Chloe had handed me. Then I strode past her towards the stairwell.

"Where are you going?" said Chloe, starting after me.

I stopped and turned, holding the box up. "Nobody commissions a weapon unless they think they're gonna use it, Chlo. I'm going to end this now."

Chloe closed her eyes and breathed in. Then she stepped forward and said, "OK, I know there's nothing I can say to make you stop, but there is something I can do to help you." She caught my eye, and then grabbed my injured shoulder.

I groaned in pain as she gripped me - but then it wasn't me. It was her. She was the one moaning and clutching her own shoulder.

I touched mine with my other hand: no pain. I had full mobility back. Then I looked at her, now breathing almost normally again. "You didn't tell me," I accused. "You didn't tell me it hurt you - Chloe -"

"It'll wear off," she said, rubbing her shoulder. "And this isn't the time, Lois. I'm going to see what I can do, healing people who've been injured in the riots."

I looked at her: so ready to shoulder the burden of other people's pain. Everybody I loved was tripping over each other to sacrifice themselves - and I didn't want to lose any of them. I couldn't stand it.

"Fine," I said. "But we'll talk about this when it's over." If it's over. If I live.

This wasn't something I could do on the roof of the Daily Planet: I could spare us that one dignity. So I tripped down the stairs into the street, and ran, and I kept running until I reached one of the few wide open spaces there was in Metropolis: Centennial Park - untouched, for now.

Here I stopped. I was burning from my throat right down my lungs with the ash of the city and my own respiration. Then I called, because it was all I could do: "Bizarro! Superman!"

Shouting felt like running daggers down my throat, and I coughed.

No, I thought to myself. Lex wanted Clark on his side any way he could have him. And I grimaced, as I said, "Come here, Clark."

And I wondered if Kal-El could hear me.

Of course, he was always listening.

Just one came: one of Lex's Bizarro-soldiers. His eyes were blank and reflective, his face set and expressionless. He seemed almost more disturbing for being animated, his movements jerky, like some otherworldly puppet or clockwork toy.

I held up my press pass to him. "Do you know what this is?" I asked.

He just looked from the press pass to my face, but didn't walk towards me. I pointed to the logo on the pass, and the sign on his chest, and said, "Do you know who I am?"

I hope this works.

He just stood there. Even Kal-El had been responsive when I had first met him - unlike Clark, but not deathlike and passive.

Without the Phantom which had given Bizarro consciousness, were they just moving corpses? My skin crawled.

And would they obey me, bearing the sign they had been branded with?

"Get the others," I said.

He just stood there.

"Do you understand?" I said forcefully. "Bring them to me. Lex Luthor has been taken out. I am second in command."

He looked again at the pass, his face still blank as if he could not process information. Then he turned, and flew away.

I waited.

When he returned, two others were with him: a trifecta of strange imagery. I guessed the last two were locked in battle with Kal-El and Kara. I hoped they were, and I hoped they were losing.

"Kal-El," I whispered under my breath, "Kara, bring your Bizarros to Centennial park. I can take them out."

The three I had just stood there, watching me with those passive eyes. I wondered how creatures so empty could wreak so much destruction - but far be it from me to question Lex's master plan. I was just one of many who had to deal with the fallout.

But part of me was uneasy, afraid that they might turn at any moment, like a flat sea turned suddenly violent.

When Kal-El appeared, I didn't know what to think. He was beaten, but what was worse, he looked tired: I had never seen Clark tired, I had never seen Clark this weak. His opponent was behind him, and I was satisfied to see that he didn't look much better.

"Listen to me," I said, holding up my press pass. This fourth Bizarro lined up with the other three and Kal-El stepped away - he walked, not flew. That worried me.

It was a little while later, when I had spent more time trying to hide my unease from the voided gaze of the Bizarros, that Kara showed up with hers. Now I had all five. I held up the box Chloe had given me.

My heart was pounding, my blood on fire. I didn't know what would happen if this didn't work. I tried to swallow my misgivings, and they went down like a shard of glass.

I opened the box, closing my eyes in reflex.

When I opened them, all five were on the floor, not writhing, but clearly in pain. I breathed out, one shuddering sigh of relief. I looked over my shoulder at Kal-El and Kara, stood back at a safe distance. Kara had her arm under Kal-El's shoulder for support - the second display of affection between them that night, and it broke my heart.

We had won. We had to have won now.

Whatever happened with Lex, whatever Metropolis thought of me, of Kal-El, of the Daily Planet: it didn't matter, not yet.

It was clean-up. It was communicating with the police. It was finding out how to contain these Bizarro Supermen - they seemed dead to me already, but I couldn't stomach the idea of smashing their Clarklike faces in.

And I was tired.

Kara flew Kal-El above the clouds to where it was noon in the world, while dawn broke over Metropolis. I left Lex's soldiers with a task force from Belle Reve and Lex in the custody of the Met Police, and I went home.

The air in my apartment felt so sparse. I fell back against the door, deflating, sliding down until I was a heap on the floor, and then I put my head on my knees, eyes scrunched up.

I hadn't spoken to Chloe, but I thought she was OK: she had to be. She was my cousin, how could she not be fine?

Oh Clark, if you were here.

Would you put your arms around me? Would we cling to each other as the world spun around us? Would we finally say what we were both thinking?

I ached in every cell of my body, and the dark phlegm in my throat. I was so tired.

I was somehow in my bed when I woke, in an unlit room, at night. How long had I slept? When I saw Kal-El by the window, I realised he must have found me on the floor in my hall and carried me in here.

"Kal-El," I said, my voice hoarse. He turned to look at me as I cleared my throat, his face uninjured again and unscarred.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I smiled at him, and he came to sit next to me.

"You're OK," I said, reaching over and brushing his lip where it had been split earlier.

When I drew my hand away, he lifted his own fingers and touched them to his own lips, his eyes on mine. Dropping his hand, he nodded. "Everyone is OK," he said, and when he looked at me, I knew he meant Chloe too.

I had to close my eyes against the tears welling up from my gut, pressing my lips together and nodding. Then I breathed in, and opened my eyes again.

He smiled at me then, and then leaned over and brushed his fingers against my lips as I had brushed mine against his: experimenting with a touch. And, reflexively, I kissed them.

He looked up at my eyes then, putting his head on one side in the studious pose I would always associate with him. I caught my breath, and I knew it.

I touched my fingertips to his wrist, following the line of the muscle up to his elbow. He was watching me, studying me with those thick-lashed, dark eyes.

"Can you even feel this?" I said, thinking of his invulnerability.

The shadow of a smile passed across his face. "I can feel you," he said.

I put my fingers around his wrist and turned his hand over: it was so human.

He had strength in the tendons which ran down his fingers, strength which could level Metropolis, and yet here he was - brushing his fingertips against mine, making me think a butterfly was walking over my skin.

There was humanity in the Kryptonian. Or maybe Kryptonian in the human. Or maybe there was neither human nor Kryptonian. I had asked that question of his eyes that first time on the roof of my building: are you unknowable, or just unknown? And I wondered now if he had also asked it of mine.

And I knew now: he was not Clark as I had known him, but we were not so different.

My hand guided his, and the butterfly danced down the skin of my stomach. He met my gaze, and I felt my smile as he looked back to where his fingers rested against my abdomen. He leant over and, gently, pressed his mouth to my collarbone, to the hollow beside my neck.

And I knew. Blood rushed through my veins, setting every molecule on fire: bonds were breaking, and I didn't know what shape anything would be when they came back together.

And maybe, for now, it didn't matter.

He gave way when I pushed gently at his shoulder, falling back and looking up at me: did I do wrong? And I just put my head to one side, as he had so often his, and studied him.

My lips were dry, so dry that it tickled when I brushed them against his.

His were softer than I had imagined: invulnerable even to the weather.

And somehow, his fingers found their way to the scars on my back where Oliver had thrown me into the glass table.

My love life was always so complicated.

I made my choice then. We made our choice. And whether that choice was to be human, or Kryptonian, or both, or neither, I didn't care.

Not tonight.

XII
Clark Kent

Kal-El was gone when I woke up: rolling out of bed, I hit the floor like a stone.

The window to my room was opened, and I wondered if the bird had flown. But I know from birds, and I knew he'd come back if I called him. I went up to my rooftop, thinking how strange to meet him in the daytime - but I didn't have to call. He was already there, back to me.

The sky was clouded over with grey, and it looked like rain: it didn't matter now, the air had already stopped burning, the fallout was fell out. I realised, somewhere, that it had been two days now, and I knew today I had to pick up the pieces.

But not yet.

He turned to me before I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled. The light was to his back now, casting his face in shadows, and I realised, even with Kal-El, that smile wasn't in his eyes.

"What's wrong?" I said, folding my arms against the cool and standing beside him, leaning back against the ledge.

"I was thinking," he said.

I nudged him with my elbow and raised an eyebrow. "Care to share?"

He pressed his lips together and let his eyes slide away from mine, first to the sky and then to the floor. "I was thinking -" he said. He looked back at me, and then looked away again. "I was thinking about - you."

I smiled, a little bit. "Me?"

He nodded, slowly. "And, Clark."

Was that the first time he'd ever said his name like that? I stared at him.

"You miss him," he said, and it was a fact.

"I miss him," I repeated, because I couldn't lie to Kal any more than he could lie to me.

He nodded, and I watched him. I watched the curve of his neck as the breeze brushed the hair lightly off it, and the shadow behind his jaw as he looked ahead, still thinking.

I unfolded my arms, and put my hand on his.

"Lois," he said, his voice low, "what am I?"

That was the question. I had been asking that question since the night he had turned up on my doorstep and put the fear of Krypton into me. He had also asked that question of me, struggling to define me from his point of view, until he had made me the default and tried to define himself from mine.

Why was I the default? Was he trying to carve out his definition through my eyes, or through Earth's eyes? Why is it that I'm not subject to Krypton's scrutinity?

But it wasn't just about points of view, I knew that, because Kal-El was like nothing on Earth or Krypton: Kara's like-humanity attested to that.

Or was he? If I could imagine that Kal-El existed separate from Clark, that Kal-El was a person unto his own right - could I believe his taciturnity had nothing to do with his being Kryptonian, that a human could be like him?

Was it me? Did I make him an alien? Or was it -?

If I could strip away the façade of what I thought was 'inhuman' about him, what would I find underneath? Maybe I would find that his thought processes followed the same track of logic, or illogic, rationale or irrationality as my own.

Or maybe not. Maybe I would find a tree of responses all programmed by Jor-El. And maybe it didn't matter either way: after all, I didn't question why I was the way I was.

I put my hand on his cheek, and gave the only answer I had: "You're Kal-El." And I felt like, in this moment, when we had witnessed the end of the world and come through into the dawn, that was all that mattered: we were who we were. It was all any of us had right now.

He turned his head away, and looked back at the city. There were large patches of blackness, of rubble, but the place thrummed with the same kind of optimistic energy that had always belonged to Metropolis.

"Clark Kent is Kal-El," he said, his voice low.

What riff was this now? His back was to me again, but I couldn't have read his expression anyway.

"If you had a choice," he said. He turned back to me and fixed me with those dark, dark eyes. "If you could choose between me and Clark -?"

A kind of fear pooled in my stomach, and I wondered how he could ask me that. I set my jaw, and looked away. "It's not my choice," I said with finality, echoing the words he had spoken to me on my rooftop in the night.

He nodded, slowly, as if he were turning it over in his head. "But you already chose," he said, eventually, his voice so low and yet ringing in my ears. "You chose the same way every time it came up."

And yes, I wanted to deny it: I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and tell him I wanted him more than Clark, kiss his neck and ask him what did it matter now anyway? - but I couldn't lie to him. It was a physical impossibility.

But why? Why was he asking me this? Why was he doing this? Why now?

I couldn't make the words come out today. My thoughts were scattered all in the air around me, non-linear, branching off into their own little thought trees which I couldn't follow down to the ends.

I cared for Kal-El in a way that was so like the way I had cared for Clark, and so different - as if the feelings were related to each other, as if they were entwined. There was overlap and differentiation, and somewhere in me it felt like it all came together as one singular mass of feeling. I couldn't understand it, I never had.

"Maybe," I said, putting my arms around myself.

Even I didn't know which way I would choose this time.

And he didn't seem hurt - just matter-of-fact - as he brushed his fingers down the side of my face and over my lips. And I understood that he was leaving.

Then just go, I wanted to say: I don't need you. I don't need you, and don't let the skylight hit you in the ass on the way out.

And also - you belong here.

"I want to be whole," he said.

I just pressed my lips together, and nodded. We all wanted to be whole, whole people and containing all of our own experiences. Kal-El didn't have that, because of what Jor-El had done to him, so how could I stop him going? We were all any of us had - Kal-El needed himself.

"OK," I said, and my voice was terser than I had expected.

And when I looked back he was gone.

The Daily Planet was still standing when I reached there. Still standing, and thrumming with people. I felt dazed, as I walked through the building up to my floor, and realised that the people who had been "against" me all worked alongside the people who had been "with" me: all working, and bickering, and rubbing along to put the place back together.

I don't know why I had expected to see Chloe there, but I wasn't wrong. She was smiling, in my seat, talking to Jimmy.

"Hey!" she said, when she saw me, and grabbed me, pulling me into a tight hug. "God Lois," she said into my ear, sounding choked, "I was so afraid I wouldn't see you again."

I caught Jimmy's eye over her shoulder, and he smiled. "You did a good job," he said.

I just closed my eyes, and buried my face in Chloe's hair - because there were tears in my eyes, and I didn't want anybody to know that Lois Lane knew how to cry.

"Don't worry," Chloe said, as I perched on the edge of my desk, "I didn't take your place - just pitched in a little while you were AWOL."

I nodded, surveying the newsroom.

"Are you OK?" said Jimmy, and when I caught his eye I saw how concerned he was, "You just seem - I mean, compared to usual."

"Just a little shellshocked," I said, feeling numb to my bones, "I'll be fine." He nodded, tentatively, and exchanged a glance with Chloe.

"I thought you'd want to know," she said, looking over at me, "Perry wanted to see you when you were - when you came in."

Oh, Perry. I owed Perry so much: an explanation was the least I could give him. "OK," I said, pushing myself off the desk, "OK." And I didn't have to look back over my shoulder again to know their faces were wrought with worry.

Perry put a large scotch down on the desk as I closed the door behind me, and pushed it over towards me. I looked from the glass to him as I sat in the seat across, and he gave me a look with so much force I was almost afraid to refuse. That was all the excuse I needed. I had been strong for so long.

"I don't know what you did," and I wondered if I was going crazy, because his rough voice seemed almost tender. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk, and repeated, "I don't know what you did. I don't know what you've been doing. But whatever it is, whatever your connection to 'Superman' or Lex Luthor," he sighed, "I don't want to know."

I looked at him, surprised, and he licked his lips. "If you can't print it," he said, "I don't need to hear it. But Lois -" and here he gave the kind of look a father would give his daughter, a look I hadn't seen now in a long, long time, "if you ever want to talk."

"I just need a little time," I said, thinking my voice sounded tired, "I just need to get back into a routine and I'll be fine."

But inside I was starting to wonder.

After all this, after all we'd done: we were back where we started. Jimmy, Kara, Chloe, Kal-El: we had struggled for so long and so hard, and now, what? Lex was going to get off again and we'd have to start all over again.

I felt like I was losing my grip on whatever purpose I thought my life had had.

And from the look on Perry's face, I don't think I was hiding it too well.

"At ease," he said, gently. And then, without a hint of irony, "They should give you a medal, kid."

I felt my lips twitch, "I'll settle for a Pulitzer, Chief."

It was a while before things started to get better. Kal-El never came back, and I never expected him to, but I spend my nights out of habit on one rooftop or another, staring up into the everlasting blackness of space, following those branches of thought down to their inevitable conclusions.

Chloe moved into my apartment. She said it was to save money, but I knew she was worried about me. They all were, and I felt bad about that - but I needed to work it out myself.

Besides, she and Kara became unlikely friends. I would hear them in the kitchen, commiserating about Jimmy, or about me - leaning my head up against the door, not wanting to eavesdrop but not wanting to go in, and, sometimes, just smiling to know they were there.

And it was easier at work. Many of Burns's ilk quit, or retired, or shut up, and that was OK by me. I kept my stories small for now, and that was OK by everybody else.

I was trying to find my fire again. I knew it was deep inside me somewhere: one day I would get up ready to save the world all over again - I was starting to understand why. It was a kind of "why" I think Clark would have approved of: don't think about it too abstractly, Lois. It's not about duality. It's not about us vs Lex. It's about each individual person we saved together, and everything we did to try to make it better or stop it getting worse.

I just needed time to let it sink in.

And the nightmares stopped, after a while: the nightmares where I killed Kal-El instead of Bizarro, where I killed Clark; the nightmares where I was surrounded by them and couldn't tell the difference. All the nightmares stopped, but still I kept taking my sleeping pills.

"I wanted to thank you for your help," I remember saying to the dream Kal-El once, and he smiled - or was it Clark?

Maybe it was both, all at once.

I had time. Lex was commited to Belle Reve at least until strings were pulled and false diagnoses of recovery given, and I can't say I didn't feel a little sorry for him. Just a little.

Kara kept saving the world, one cat up a tree, one pram lost in traffic, one person at a time. People were wary of her, and in love with her all at the same time. And Superman? "Good riddance."

I tried to fight that attitude, but part of me wondered if it mattered - if Clark was gone, and Kal-El was gone, and everyone else who looked like either of them was Bizarro, maybe the public should fear and distrust them. Still, it felt wrong.

We rebuilt the city better than before. They said we all came together but we, we journalists had the confidence this time over and the standing to question and criticise - to point out that some people were being rescued later than others, and to ask why. And I might have been keeping my stories small, but I made each and every one of them count.

And then -

And then he came back.

I didn't quite recognise him at first: he seemed smaller, unassuming, as he stood over my desk. I thought he was an intern, in those large, thick glasses - until I looked again, looked at him right in the clear, blue eyes.

"Lois," he said.

I dropped my pen, and just heard it clatter to the floor over the din of the newsroom.

"I'm not sure how to explain," he said, up on the roof with the wind whipping up around us. I wanted to stop time, just for a while, while I gathered my thoughts.

I never believed this would happen. Never - never hoped.

"What Jor-El did to me -" he started, and then pressed his lips together and looked away again. "What he tried to do, tried to make me -"

He breathed out, frustration running all through him.

"I never thought I'd see you again," I said, trying to keep my voice free of accusation. His lip twitched, and his eyes were wide. He looked like he wanted to close the space between us, and I sort of wanted it too, but he didn't.

"What's up with the glasses?" I said, keeping this conversation safe, giving us time to order our thoughts.

He smiled a little. "Everybody I meet is afraid of me," he said, "the glasses - people don't look at me twice when they see me coming down the street."

I wanted to apologise for that, but it didn't come out.

We stood there in silence for a long time, both trying to figure out what to say, how to say it, how to work this out.

Eventually, he started talking about something that felt kind of irrelevant, and yet not, not looking at me.

"I used to hate thinking of myself as an alien," he said, almost conversationally, as if it didn't matter. "The only Kryptonians I ever met were -" he paused, and then said quietly, "well, you've met Jor-El."

I nodded, wanting to talk but having no words, and thinking there was more he wanted to say anyway.

"I thought it was my destiny," and he put an ironic stress on the word, "to be like that - I thought all Kryptonians were the same, that our ideals, our morals could somehow be genetic. And I wanted, I wanted to be like you, all of you humans - because humans weren't all the same, the morals of humans weren't tied to their genetics, humans were somehow better than me just because they were human."

He sighed, "I was brought up as a human, but I wasn't one. And it felt like, like there were two sides to me, warring it out."

"Clark Kent and Kal-El," I said, almost to myself, and he looked up at me sharply. "And you didn't trust the alien in you." Why should he? I mean, of course we idolised being human in human society.

"I wanted to bury him deep, deep inside," he said, "I wanted to be human, walk among you, belong to your society and -" he paused, carefully, turning things over in his head as if he were understanding them for the first time as I was understanding them for the first time.

"It's hard to explain," he said eventually. "But I guess - every time somebody found out that I was a Kryptonian, they looked at me differently. Before she knew about me, Lana hated all aliens - and I was the exception, I wasn't like the others, she knew me. And Chloe," he bowed his head, "well Chloe was a good friend, but it felt like I became something else - a 'hero', a good person just because I was Kryptonian and not because of who I was. And I didn't feel that -"

I closed my eyes. Clark had been carrying these neuroses with him all of his life, and now he could talk.

"I never thought," he said, carefully, "that somebody could accept an alien as a person - like -" he caught my eye, and I looked away.

"Why did you go?" I said. I wanted to hit him for leaving me in the first place. I wanted to grab him and scream in his ear: do you know how much I missed you, Clark? Do you know?

"To fulfill my destiny," he said, without irony this time.

And somehow it made sense to me: knowing that Jor-El had split Clark in two as much as we had, but discarded the human rather than the alien. What was Kal-El? Kal-El was part of a whole. Clark Kent was part of a whole. And now?

"You're a whole person," I said, echoing his words from earlier. "How did you -?"

"I went back to the Fortress," he said. "And I ... fought ... with Jor-El. But I was stronger then than I was when I left Smallville, and when you found me there before. I was stronger because..." he trailed off, and looked away, and my heart burnt.

Clark was never really gone. I hadn't lost him. He hadn't been dead.

And neither was Kal-El. Kal-El was here, Clark was here: not one side I had known in Smallville, or the other I had known in Metropolis, or even both. There was no choice. He was a whole person, now, one I knew and understood, and -

I'm not much of a dualist.

XIII
Lois Lane

I don't want to be alone anymore.

Not alone alone: I am surrounded by people. I mean alone, inside myself. I don't want to be the only person there.

Nobody ever really found out quite what I did on "Ash Tuesday" - yeah, it was a Tuesday. That almost surprised me. Somewhere I stopped keeping track of days of the week and I didn't even notice, but for most people that day was normal.

A lot of them used up their last normal day then, thanks to Lex.

After Metropolis pulled itself together, we had a memorial in Centennial Park. I was asked to speak: nobody knew what I had done, but my name was on a thousand lips anyway. I declined. How could I speak for the people who died that night? I didn't even know if they knew they were dead.

I went, though, to see Kara say her piece - and to see the General.

He gave me the strangest look, filled with the cold aloofness with which he had handled his fatherhood. My father was like a stone. When I was younger, I beat my fists till they were bloody on the rock around his heart, but it never cracked. Now, when he looked at me, I thought I saw a chink - and through that chink, maybe pride. Maybe not.

It's just the way he is.

He put his hand on my shoulder, and I understood that he loved me.

Clark went as well, bespectacled and dressed in funeral attire. Nobody asked him - Superman - to speak. I don't think it hurt him. At least, it didn't hurt him as much as the looks his rescuees gave him now.

Fear. Blame.

Why were people casting about for a scapegoat? We all knew who had engineered this. We all know whose hands the blood was on.

Lex had supporters, even now. Yes, fewer, and yes, ostracised - but they were out there.

"Humanity," said Clark to me, "is capable of such great and such disgusting things."

"Where is the great?" I said, absent-mindedly. He just looked at me.

And I looked at him.

"Maybe 'humanity' isn't the right word," I said. He smiled.

And so did I.

It's not true, what they tell you about how many muscles it takes to smile and to frown. It's not true, but damn it felt good to smile then.

Maybe it was time for me to throw caution to the wind, with the ashes of all the people we couldn't save. Maybe it was time for me to start chipping away at the rock around my own heart. The way Clark glanced at me, the softness of his eyes behind their lenses, reminded me how much I used to want to fight.

But hell if I was going to wear anything like that when I took up my shield again.

"It's a ... change," he said in awkward explanation, and shifted his weight. I raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"It's very colourful," I said, eventually.

We were stood on the rooftop of the Daily Planet, with the freshness of early evening pressed against our skin. I was wearing heels for the first time in months, and Clark was wearing the suit which would soon be synonymous with the word 'justice'.

"It's," he paused, looking over the skyline, "bright, so people can see me coming."

I folded my arms. Clark wanted so badly to earn back the people's trust.

Besides, it was kind of ... sexy. Not that I'd say.

Even now, I wouldn't say. I had kept these feelings inside for so long that it frightened me how much power there was in them. I had kept them, hidden, until they were so large I had to wonder - like a ship in a wine bottle - how to get them out without breaking something.

But the way Clark looked at me - the way Kal-El had been - I thought I was going to burn up from wondering, what if?

He was braver than me.

He faced down Perry White, who attributed that nagging familiarity to the fact that he met Clark in his teens, and asked about calling in an old favour.

Perry asked me to babysit him - although I didn't put it like that when I told Clark.

And I wasn't sure how to respond, when he asked me out: how could he? After everything we'd done, we'd had to do, how could he comprehend doing something so mundane as dating?

But he took me out, took me to a quiet restaurant, and talked to me all night.

We talked about ordinary things: we complained that the coffee machine in the staff room was always on the fritz; we discussed his mother's latest political manoeuvrings; we tried to work out what the situation between Kara, Chloe and poor Jimmy was. He talked to me, and made me laugh, and bicker, and burn where my heart was. I wondered how I ever lived without any part of this.

And somehow we ended up on my sofa, my feet in his lap, watching some old film but not really paying attention.

"You know," he said, eventually, "when you're thinking really hard, you get this sort of frown on your face, and press your lips together."

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow, "Before you say it, Perry gives me fifteen cents a word for editorials. My thoughts are worth a lot more than a penny."

He grinned, "Oh," he said, "is that why they're always so overwri-"

I raised my finger threateningly, "You don't want to finish that sentence," I said.

He smiled at me, and then gently took my hand and kissed my outstretched finger. And it felt like time had shifted gears.

"What were you thinking about?" he said.

I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, and then cleared my throat. "How easy this is," I said, after a moment, and then narrowed my eyes, "too easy."

"Lois," he said, and looked intensely at me, "I'm still here. You haven't lost anybody," and I knew what he was getting at.

"We're at war," I said, and he knew what I was getting at.

"We are," he said, "and we always will be," always screaming on behalf of those without voices, fighting not just people but ideas, shadow boxing in the dark, I knew. "We'll always be at war," he said, "but that doesn't mean things always have to be difficult."

He brushed his fingers lightly over my hair, tucking the strays behind my ear and studying my face. "Lois," he said, "one thing I learned ... just because you're a hero doesn't mean you can't be happy. It doesn't mean you can't have friends, or date, or -" he paused, and his lips twitched here, "well, you know."

He nodded, almost as if to himself, and then looked me in the eye again, "You taught me that."

"I'm not a hero," I said seriously.

He just grinned. "You look like one," he said.

Chloe resolved herself to get into med school. I just shook my head. We never did have that talk about her powers - I think somewhere between the fifth and the sixth time I risked my own life, I realised I was in no position to tell anybody else what to do with theirs.

And, you know, there's a funny thing about the end of the world: afterwards, the Earth keeps spinning. The ashes settled. The people mourned. And we all found a new kind of normalcy, a routine.

But everything was different.

The desolation which followed our almost Pyrrhic victory passed, and dawn broke across my soul. When I looked at the sky now, it shone, burning with the sunlight which gave Clark and Kara their strength.

And I realised Clark was right. We would always fight - but each new day was an opportunity to take new ground, to make things just a little better. Every opportunity for action was an opportunity to take the action which would make somebody a little less beaten down, a little happier, a little stronger, a little more able to fight for themselves.

I got my hope back.

And -

"I love you," I found myself whispering into the wind one night, as the Daily Planet globe creaked and turned behind me.

I wasn't sure where Clark was, patrolling, saving somebody else's life - but where ever it was, whatever he was doing, I think he heard me and felt stronger. I think he heard me, and I think he whispered it back.

And I think -

I think I'm not alone.

Fin.