Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The damn beeping machine is back. 

Clark rarely swears, but the beeping noise cuts through his head like a knife, and what’s worse is that it means Diana Stride is once more closing in on him. It’s like being pray, a mouse sitting in wait while the great big cat prowls around. It’s not something he’s used to—and he’s quickly grown to hate it. 

Dropping behind Lois’ desk, he pretends to tie his shoelaces. A droplet of sweat is running down his back and he shivers. Nothing feels right. 

He glances over at the desk, hoping Diana won’t spot him. He’s exhausted, but manages to level one glare at the offending machine and once more, it crackles and smoke rises from it.

Diana growls in frustration. “He must be here. He must work here.”

It’s definitely better if he’s not here right now.

“Lois, do you have some aspirin?”

She glances at him. “Oh yeah, I think I’ve got some in my desk.”

She turns. 

He flees.

—

He takes a cab home. If he could, he would fly, but there is no energy left. Speeding out of the Daily Planet was all he could manage, with waves of nausea crashing over him, making him wonder if he’s going to throw up for the first time. The cabbie looks uncertainly back at him, probably wondering if it was the best idea he’s had to stop and pick up the sick-looking dude. 

The cab turns onto Clark’s street, and the motion has Clark swallowing hard to keep his lunch down.

Kryptonite.

How easy his life would be, if not for the green reminder of his home planet.

Well, maybe not easy. The image of Lois crosses his mind. But easier, anyway.

The cab pulls up outside his apartment. With shaky hands, Clark pays the man and stumbles out. He usually speeds around the world in minutes, but now climbing the stairs are akin to the effort of breaking an asteroid apart. Dragging himself up, each step is heavier than the last, and his fingers are shaking so badly that he barely gets the key into the keyhole. He has half a mind to ignore the lock and push the door open anyway, never mind the damage, when the key slides into place. Stumbling more than walking down the stairs, he collapses on the couch. 

He wipes his forehead and does the only thing he can come up with—he picks up the phone.

“Hello?” 

His mom’s voice sends a wave of warmth through him, warmth unlike the fever that is rising within. 

“Mom.” He hates the weak sound of his own voice. 

“Clark? What’s wrong? You sound awful.” She’s always been able to pick up any thread of pain in his voice, but this time, that ability is hardly necessary. 

“I need you and dad to come to Metropolis.”  

“What’s the matter?” There is concern in his dad’s voice.

“He sounds sick,” his mom says. “Clark, are you sick?”

“He doesn’t get sick.”

“Unless… Clark, is it—”

“Kryptonite,” Clark confirms. Nothing else in the world can make him suffer like this. 

He doesn’t want to burden them with his problems, but he has to. When he tells them that the poison is inside, he can hear their shock in the silence that spreads.

Fresh waves of nausea are hitting him more and more frequently until he has to put the phone away and promptly vomits in the trashcan. 

That’s an experience he could have lived without.

“Clark, are you all right?” His mother’s voice comes through the phone, tinny and concerned. “Clark!”

“I’m here, mom.”

“Oh, Clark, we need to get off the phone so we can book a flight to Metropolis.” 

“Great. I’ll be here at the apartment.”

“No,” his dad says. “Clark, you get yourself to a hospital.”

“Dad, they can’t operate. I’d break the scalpels.” Though, is that still true? With kryptonite in his body, he’s as breakable as any human. But what are would they operate? 

“There has to be something they can do.” There is hope in his mother’s voice.

“I guess you’re right. But I’d better go as Superman.”

He has to go, if there’s but the slightest chance… he can’t just sit here, or he will die. 

Die.

He doesn’t want to die. 

His dad asks if he has insurance, and Clark hasn’t even thought about it, but he figures they can work something out afterwards.

If there is an afterwards. 

He puts the phone down and hopes he’ll talk to them again.

He takes his glasses off. Shakily, he leans back and starts undoing his shirt. It’s taking everything he has to make his fingers do what he wants them to with the buttons. He fumbles, but finally manages. He stands to undo his pants.

That’s when he sees Lois.

—

She’s worried. It’s not something she likes to admit, ever, because worrying is not part of the Lois Lane image, but when her partner comes into the newsroom looking like death warmed over, she does. Clark is always healthy, always. Except that time in Smallville, but that was allergies, not sickness. In the time she’s known him, he hasn’t so much as had a cold, which if you ask her is entirely unfair, but still, that’s the way it is. 

Until now.

And he disappeared after asking for aspirin. She called his place, but the line was busy. Most likely, he’s talking to his parents. Whining. Man-colds and all that, he’s probably even worse if he’s so rarely sick.

Still, she finds herself in her car, driving to his place. 

She’s just going to check on him. Make sure he’s okay. Yell a little at him for getting sick in the middle of an investigation. 

It won’t do for anyone, least of all Clark, to realize how much she worries about him.

She raises her hand and is about to knock on his door, when she sees him on the couch. He’s undoing his shirt—and he’s looking much worse than when he left the office an hour ago. His hair is damp from sweat, and she can see his fingers tremble as they work on the buttons of his shirt. His color is pasty white, almost grey. He takes off his glasses.

And then she sees the blue. 

That’s a weird undershirt, she has time to think, until Clark pushes open the shirt a little more, and the very familiar red and yellow becomes visible. 

He stands up, shaking and unsteady, and what was a hint before becomes visible: the red and blue spandex with the yellow S on the front. 

He raises his gaze and he sees her.

The world stops spinning. 

They stare at one another. 

He’s half-Clark, half-Superman. His hair is wet but not slicked back. No glasses to hide his eyes. He has the pants Clark wore before to work, and the shirt is hanging half-undone. The Superman logo is as attention-grabbing as always.

He’s both.

And she’s never realized.

She’s worked with him for a year and a half, and she’s never realized.

All the flimsy excuses.

All the Superman exclusives.

All the situations they shouldn’t have been able to get out of.

Her ordinary partner is the extraordinary superhero. 

And then he falls.

He takes one step towards her and his legs no longer support him. He falls to the floor. If she had any doubt left whether her partner enjoys dressing up as Superman in his spare time or if he’s the real deal, that uncertainty disappears when the floor dents where his knees hit. 

Panic floods through her. She pulls at the door, but he’s locked it. She takes off her coat and protects her hand with it when she smashes through the window so she can open the door. 

Her heart is beating its way through her chest when she runs down the stairs to his side. He’s trying to get up, trying but failing. 

“Clark,” she whispers. “Are you all right?”

He’s not. She knows he’s not.

He looks at her, eyes clouded with pain. His face is white and agony lines his features. “Lois. Got to get… to a hospital.”

“You can’t go like this.” He can’t go as half-Clark, half-Superman. He can’t go to the hospital dressed in half a business suit. 

He pulls at the shirt, trying to get it off. The shirt rips because he shakes so badly. 

“Here, let me.” Lois has no idea how she’s keeping her voice so steady. She unbuttons the rest of the shirt and helps him pull it off. The cape unfolds, and she stares for a few moments, seeing her partner transform into Superman. 

She helps him with his pants. His chest heaves with every breath.

“Where are your boots? Never mind, you’ll have to go without.” She reaches for the phone and dials 9-1-1 with shaking fingers. 

“Nine-one-one emergency, how can I help you?”

“I need an ambulance right now. My—my friend—someone poisoned him, and he’s dying. Please.”

The man on the other end asks questions, asks for the address, asks what symptoms her friend is exhibiting, asks until Lois can’t take it anymore. 

“Just send the damn ambulance!”

“Ma’am, the ambulance is on its way.”

He’s supposed to sound reassuring, but Lois wants to reach through the phone and wring his neck instead.

She hangs up and kneels next to Clark. Superman. She has to call him Superman, even in her own head, because otherwise she’ll slip up and there’s a reason he hasn’t told the world. Most likely a hundred different ones.

He lied to her all this time.

She reaches out and touches his forehead. He’s hot, almost scalding, much warmer than any regular person could be and still be alive, but he turns into her touch. 

“What happened?”

He has to fight to get enough air into his lungs to answer. “Kryptonite… Diana Stride.”

“I knew it! But where?” She looks around. She should have looked already, why didn’t she do that immediately? “I don’t see anything.”

He reaches a shaking hand up to his chest. “It’s inside.”

“Inside?” Her eyes widen. If it were around somewhere, she could get him away, but—inside? How are they supposed to get it out if it’s inside of him? “How did this happen?”

She wonders if she imagines it, but Clark looks away, looks almost ashamed—but when he answers, and she knows it wasn’t her imagination. “She kissed me.”

“Kissed you?” Lois refuses to call her tone ‘screeching’, this is her normal voice, thank you very much.

“It wasn’t—I didn’t,” he mumbles. “I didn’t—kiss back.”

Lois cocks her head, because no, she didn’t think he would. On the other hand, she couldn’t have imagined him being stupid enough to let Diana Stride kiss him, either.

“I—I got sick immediately after that.”

“So the Kryptonite was on her lips somehow? Like, in her lipstick? And when she kissed you, you got it on your lips, and you absorbed it into your body.”

“I—I think so.”

“And now it’s causing chaos inside of you, making you sick.” She pauses. “Oh, god.”

“It’ll—it’ll be all right.” He has to squeeze his eyes shut, and a whimper escapes him. She has never heard him whimper and it cuts through her like a knife to the heart. She remembers her own thoughts on the way over, that he’d be whining about a cold. 

“How?” It’s almost an accusation. Tears are burning in her eyes. “How will this be all right? Clark!” 

He gets his breath back under control. “Lois… please.”

She blinks and the tears fall. She wipes them away with the back of her hand. “Can I get you anything?”

He gives a minute shake of his head. “Just… stay.”

“Of course I’ll stay.” 

Sirens in the distance. She hopes they’re coming for him.

Silence spreads between them, making his labored breaths all the louder. 

She tries to reconcile this man on the floor, this man in so much pain, with her strong and healthy partner, and with the greater than life superhero she has been worshipping since she first laid eyes on him. Her cheeks heat at the memories of how she’s thrown herself at Superman, all the while ignoring Clark—she even said she’d love him even if he was an ordinary man.

“Are you… angry?” His eyes are barely open. 

Angry. Is she angry? She should be, because he’s lied to her a thousand times, lied to her ever since they met—but right now, the fear is all-consuming. Cold, gut-wrenching fear. 

He’s dying, she’s sure of it. 

Kryptonite inside of him—and this time, she can’t pluck it out with a knife.

“No.” She chokes on the word. “No, I’m not… I’m not angry.” 

There might come a time, later, when there’s time to be angry.

Or there might come no such time.

The sirens arrive outside the building and a few moments later they come inside, two young men with a stretcher. 

They stop in their tracks when they see who’s on the floor.

“Superman?”

“Please help him.” For the first time, Lois wishes she had followed in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor—perhaps then she could have helped. Perhaps then she wouldn’t have felt so useless. 

Surprisingly quickly, they find their professionalism and the two men hurry down the stairs. They’re carrying bags of medical supplies and they kneel next to Clark and start checking his vitals. Lois stares, tries to stay out of the way until Clark reaches out a hand to her. 

She takes his hand. Heat radiates from it and he’s shaking.

Superman’s hand.

Clark’s hand.

“According to the nine-one-one-call, he was poisoned?” one of the young men asks, dragging her attention to him.

“Yes.”

“What kind of poison are we talking about?” 

She looks at Clark. Does she tell him? Does she divulge the secret of Kryptonite to yet another person? Can she trust them? 

“Ma’am, we can’t help him if we don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Just get him to the hospital.” She’ll tell whatever doctor will be in charge of Clark, but no one else. “You can’t do anything here, anyway.”

The young man, though obviously irritated, resumes working. They have to get Clark on his feet and walk him up the stairs to the stretcher waiting outside, because he’s so heavy they can’t carry him. It seems to zap what little is left of Clark’s energy, because he’s almost unconscious as they wheel him into the waiting ambulance. 

“Hurry, please, he’s dying.” She blinks hard to stop the tears from falling down her cheeks again. 

They load him into the ambulance and Lois gets in, and if either of the men think anything about it, they’re wise enough not to voice it. There is no way she’s leaving him right now.

“Is there any way into the hospital that isn’t so… populated?” she asks.

The men glance at each other and speak to the driver. They understand the need for secrecy. 

Clark’s life seems to slip away a little more with every passing second. He can barely keep his eyes open.

“You’ll be all right.” Lois sits by his head, despite having fought with him just a little while ago when he said the same thing. She runs a hand over his feverish forehead. He doesn’t answer.

They seem to treat him the way they’d treat any other patient. They cut his suit so they’re able to get it off, to access his body better. There are small probes on his chest to register something, a nasal cannula with oxygen beneath his nose, and a little thing on his finger that seems to register his pulse. She’s sure no one’s pulse should be over two hundred when they’re lying down, but she has no idea what Superman’s pulse usually is. Does anyone know?

He doesn’t seem to register much anymore, until suddenly he makes odd sounds, and Lois realizes he’s going to throw up.

“Turn him!” says one of the young men, also realizing what’s about to happen, and he grabs Clark’s head and shoulder. The other grabs Clark’s side, one hand on the lower part of his ribcage and the other on his hip, and they struggle to turn him on his side. The one by his head holds a plastic bag in front of him, and Clark vomits into it until there seems to be nothing left to expel. 

When the two men lever him back down again, Clark is limp in their arms.

Lois can’t breathe. It’s like there is an unyielding band around her chest, making it impossible to drag air into her lungs. Warm tears are spilling down her cheeks no matter how much she tries to fight them.

Clark is dying. 

She knows it. She’s known it from the moment he fell in his living room.

It might be seconds, or minutes, or hours later when the ambulance pulls to a stop and they open the back doors. There are people dressed in white coats waiting, but Lois doesn’t see any of them. In her mind’s eye, she sees Clark fall over and over again. 

She follows them numbly when they enter the hospital. They’re talking, but Lois doesn’t hear a word. They ask questions, and she answers everything she can. When they ask about what’s causing his symptoms, she turns to the doctor in charge and tells him quietly about Kryptonite. 

She turns back to Clark. They pull the rest of his suit off, expose his naked skin so they can get to it with their equipment.

She watches as they pierce his skin with a needle. 

They can pierce his skin.

They hang fluid and it drips into his body.  It looks so wrong. 

After a while, they leave him alone. They’ve drawn blood, they’ve given him what little help they can come up with at the moment, scrubbed him down in case there are traces of Kryptonite on him, and put a tube down his nose to empty the contents of his stomach. He’s hooked up to their machines, keeping track of his vitals. They’ve given him some pain medication, though no one knows if it will help.

He moves restlessly, pain wrecking his body.

“Lois.”

She’s at his side in an instant, strokes back his hair. “I’m here. Are you feeling any better?”

He shakes his head, a tiny movement. “Hurts…”

She swallows hard, wants to help him though she can’t. 

“Glad… you’re here… Glad… you know.”

She smiles, a watery smile that threatens to turn into tears. “You should have told me.”

“Yes…” He squeezes his eyes shut again against a new onslaught of pain. 

He takes several deep, steadying breaths and looks up at her. “The witness…”

“Disanto?”

“In danger,” Clark mumbles, and another of those choked whimpers escape him.

“The police are watching him.” Lois takes his hand and squeezes it. “Don’t worry about it. They can handle it.” And really, right now, Lois doesn’t care one iota about Disanto. It won’t matter if he testifies against Diana Stride, because regardless of what happens, Lois is going to kill her for hurting Clark.

The door opens, and a doctor comes inside. Lois reminds herself that she’s standing next to Superman’s bed, not Clark’s, and she has to act as she would with the superhero. 

The doctor shakes her hand, introducing himself. 

“I won’t lie to you.” He looks at Superman. “I don’t know what to do. This Kryptonite Miss Lane told me about has invaded your system, and it’s spreading, almost like a cancer.”

“If it were cancer,” Lois says, grabbing onto what she knows as though it’s a lifeboat in a stormy sea. It might as well be.

“We’d try to kill it. With chemo or…”

“Superman,” she says, turning to Clark and being proud of herself that she remembered to use the right name. “Did you hear that?”

“I heard.”

“So we could try to burn it out, or heat it out, or radiation.”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says. “It’s spreading like cancer. It’s not actually cancer. As far as we can understand from the people at StarLabs who’ve been researching this, what hurts Superman is radiation from this thing—it’s radiation poisoning. And I’m sorry, but we can’t fight radiation with more radiation. To be honest, there is no of treating radiation poisoning at all. We just try to lessen the symptoms.”

“But we can try.” Lois hates the doctor for what he’s not saying—that they don’t know how to save her best friend.

“I’m sorry.”

“Then get me the people at StarLabs!” Lois explodes. “Get them here now.”

The doctor takes a step back. “They’re on their way.” And he hurries out, like a rat scurrying away. Lois has no nice thoughts left for him. 

“It’ll be all right,” Clark mumbles, though his words are barely legible. 

“Of course it will be.” She doesn’t add ‘it has to be’.

—

She knows.

In the middle of all the agony, the nausea that keeps washing over him, that thought is crystal clear.

Lois knows his secret.

And she’s still here.

She’s still here, watching him, her hand atop his, squeezing gently. She hasn’t left, hasn’t yelled at him. Though she might later, it still makes him so very, very grateful that she’s staying right now.

He can’t concentrate on anything. The doctor speaking, saying something about cancer and Lois’ ideas about how to get rid of the Kryptonite wreaking havoc on his body, and he can’t follow the doctor’s words about why that won’t work. He hears the doctor’s tone, that it’s useless. Lois yells about StarLabs, and when he turns his head—and that little movement takes everything out of him—he can see her chest heaving and her hand going up to push angrily at a wayward strand of hair.

He has to reassure her, and he mumbles to her that it will be all right, although he honestly doesn’t know how.

Another wave of intense nausea hits him, but with the tube down his nose he doesn’t throw up. Still, he sees all the red in the tube. There’s blood coming from his insides and that can’t be good.

He falls back, wants to wipe at his mouth, wants the metallic taste gone, but there is no energy to do anything but lie there and shake.

He’s glad Lois is there, but he hates that she has to see him like this.

Her hand on his forehead is cool and comforting. Through heavy lids, he can see the tears rolling down her cheeks. He wishes he had the strength to wipe them away, wishes he could comfort her.

There is blackness tugging at him, a dark void reaching from the corners of his vision.

“Lois,” he whispers, wondering if it will be the last word he says.

“No. No, don’t you dare! You can’t leave me here. You can’t—”

And Clark wishes he could do something, anything, to stop the darkness from taking over.

But he can’t.

Chapter Text

His hand, already slack in hers, becomes even heavier.

His eyelids drop, and they don’t open again.

It doesn’t matter how much she protests or how the tears pour down her cheeks. He can no longer hear her.

She reaches over, panic flaring white through her mind, and pushes the alarm button again and again, until the room floods with people. She backs away from Clark, hating it when she has to let go of his hand.

Amid all the chaos, the door opens and a half-bald man in a lab coat enters. He doesn’t look like he belongs with the rest of the frantically working personnel, and Lois is immediately suspicious. He’s not wearing a name tag.

“Who are you?”

“Uh, oh, sorry.” He looks at Superman, or what little of the hero is visible beyond the staff. He walks to her and takes her hand. “Doctor Bernard Klein. Lois Lane, right? I’ve seen your pictures.”

She regards him in silence, waiting for an explanation. Doctor is a good start, but if he’s as worthless as the last one, she’s not above yelling again.

“How’s he doing?”

“He lost consciousness.” Lois forces herself to keep her voice unwavering. “He—there was a lot of blood coming from the tube in his nose and he…”

“Radiation poisoning. He’s reacting remarkably like a human would.”

“I’m sorry.” She’s not the least bit sorry. “But who are you?”

“Right, yes, I’m Doctor Klein of StarLabs.” He lowers his voice. “I’m the one who’s been working on the Kryptonite problem together with Superman here.”

“You’ve been working on Kryptonite? With Superman?” Why would Clark allow such a thing? He should want to stay as far away from it as possible.

“Yes.” He makes it sound though it’s natural. “He wanted to see if we could do anything to lessen its effects.”

“And can you?” She looks at him expectantly. “You realize we don’t have much time, right? He was walking and talking a few hours ago and now—now…”

“Let’s go outside for a moment.”

Lois glances at Clark, but there isn’t anything she can do for him right now. It’s unlikely he knows whether she’s even there.

She follows the doctor outside and they go into a nearby storage room, filled to the brim with supplies but empty of people.

“We’ve been working on something to help in this kind of situation,” Dr. Klein says once the door closes. “Ever since he was shot, because he worried that it might happen again, and what if a piece of it broke off and was left inside—not good—well, you’ve seen the effects…”

“Doctor Klein.”

He starts, as though he’s forgotten she’s there. “Yes, sorry. Well, we can’t make him immune to the radiation, but I started thinking, what if we can create an antibody that will stick to Kryptonite particles, and another antibody to connect with the first one, not unlike what they do for the PET scans—”

“Doctor Klein,” she says again, warningly, because he seems to have a penchant for going off on a tangent.

“Right, yes, in short: a second antibody with a lead particle on it.” Dr. Klein looks hopefully at her, as though she’s the judge of whether it’s a good idea.

She tries to understand what he’s saying, but she fails.

“Enough of them, and the lead will shield his body from Kryptonite!” His excitement is obvious.

“And you have the whatchamacallits?”

He pats his bag. “I have the antibodies here.”

“Then go! What are you waiting for?”

His excitement dims. “Well, you realize that for obvious reasons, we haven’t tested it. He doesn’t even know I got this far. We don’t know if it’ll work, especially when we’re this late, and even if it works, it might have side effects—or the lead-covered Kryptonite particles might merge and create an embolus, and if that gets to his heart or his brain—”

Lois listens, tries to take it all in. She thinks he’s saying that Clark might have a heart attack or a stroke, or some other side effect that they know nothing about. But the other option is watching him slip away, doing nothing. There is only one outcome if they do nothing. With Dr. Klein’s thing, he has some kind of chance. They’ll have to handle whatever else happens, when it happens.

She hopes she doesn’t cause Clark even more suffering.

“Do it.”

Dr. Klein looks at her, searching her face. She’s not Superman’s proxy, not really, and she’s not Clark’s either, but someone has to decide and she’s a well-known close friend of Superman’s.

He nods and leaves the storage room. She takes a deep breath before she follows.

The steady beep registering Clark’s heartbeat has gone from annoying to reassuring. With every sound, Lois can be sure he’s still there. Still with her.

It’s difficult to take in that yesterday morning, they were discussing whether they should go out on a date. Well, she was talking about it. He was running out on her. Again.

She understands now, all too well, why he ran out. Why he’s run out on her again and again. It’s not that she’s not important to him; it’s that he has others to take care of. He takes care of the world.

Still, shouldn’t she be more important to him than the world?

Then again, soon it might not matter.

They’re talking about intubation, to help him breathe. He struggles to draw breath, and she knows that’s where they’re headed. The doctors have said little to her since she bit off the first one’s head, but she’s heard their whispers.

Fluid and blood in his lungs.

Blood in his stomach.

Probably bleeding continuously internally.

Electrolytes nowhere near what StarLabs has in their files.

Fever so high, she can barely hold his hand anymore.

There are two bags of fluid dripping into him continuously, in part to keep his water balance, and in part to try to keep his temperature down. There are cold packs pressed to his sides, but they melt so quickly they have to exchange them every fifteen minutes. They’ve changed the nasal cannula Clark had running beneath his nose before to a full on mask, but even with that, his saturation is still dropping from what Lois can tell.

She really isn’t well-versed in this whole medicine thing. Really, considering how it took her father away from her, she’s always stayed away from it.

Dr. Klein injected him with the anti-thingamabobs he talked about. She wishes he could have looked more certain when he did it, but he was sweating and his hands were shaking, and it wasn’t comforting at all.

And now they wait.

She’s alone with Clark. Dr. Klein had to go somewhere, and she didn’t care enough to listen where. The nurses come in to check on Clark every five minutes, but they seem to trust her to sound the alarm if anything happens.

She runs her thumb across the back of his hand. “I thought you were insane, you know. That I only attract insane guys. Because why else would you always be running off in the middle of me pouring my heart out?” She pauses. “This makes a lot more sense. Though, I might still be angry later. If—”

She stops, can’t say the rest of that sentence.

Grabbing a wet towel from the table next to the bed, she dabs his sweaty forehead. He doesn’t react. She lets the towel run down the side of his face, down his throat and to his chest. His unmarred, perfect chest, heaving with every uneven breath.

“That’s how you survived being shot three times in the chest. No doctor Hamilton. You were… you were never dead.” And there is the flare of anger that will turn into a full-blown tornado when this is all over. “How could you leave me to believe you were dead?”

She hates the hoarseness of her own voice. For a second she hates him, but then she wants to take the thought back, as though her thoughts will be what tips him over the edge.

“That was the worst day of my life.” She reconsiders, “This one might beat it, though.” She swallows hard. “But you’re Superman. You’re not supposed to be like this. You’re not supposed to…”

Die.

She can’t make herself say the word.

He starts shaking. He throws his head back, all the muscles in his body tensing up, and she’s glad she’s not holding his hand, because he would have ground it to a pulp.

The machines around him blare and people rush in.

She shrinks back into the corner and watches as they give him medicine, first one shot, two, three, and she sees the desperation growing in the doctors’ eyes.

“Get me whatever Propofol and Diazepam this place has,” one doctor says, voice full of frustration.

It doesn’t sound good to Lois’ ears.

They finally make him stop shaking, and they immediately shove a tube down his throat. Lois turns away, can’t make herself watch it. She can still hear them working, though, and when the sounds become too much, she has to leave.

She walks aimlessly until she finds her way to the reception, where she asks to use the phone.

“Hello?” Perry’s gruff voice is reassuring.

“It’s Lois.” She knows he’ll know something’s wrong before she gets to the second syllable.

“What’s wrong? Where are you? Where’s Clark?”

She takes a breath. “We’re at the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“Superman…” She looks around the crowded reception area. “Superman’s sick. Diana Stride poisoned him with Kryptonite.”

“Diana Stride? Are you sure, honey? It isn’t you—projecting?”

“He told me himself,” Lois snaps. “Or do you think Superman is lying?”

“No, no, of course not. But she’s so…”

“Attractive?” She doesn’t even try to keep the anger out of her voice. “I was right. She’s a professional assassin. And Superman says Disanto is in danger, so Stride is probably going to kill him.”

“Did you tell the police?”

“The hospital is full of them.” She can see a few of them from where she’s standing.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Lois.”

“I told Superman the police will handle it.” She hasn’t been thinking much about Disanto or Diana Stride at all. Other things are much more important.

Perry is silent for a few seconds. “How’s Superman doing?”

Lois swallows. “It’s bad. He… they… it’s bad.”

“Go be with him, Lois.” Perry pauses. “Let Clark know that I understand that both of you need to stay at the hospital right now.”

He hangs up.

She’s left staring at the phone, wondering what the last comment was about. Something about it doesn’t sit right.

She shakes it off.

On the way back to Clark’s room, she’s passed by running police officers—in gas masks. Why would they need gas masks in the hospital? Her heart skips a beat again—did Diana Stride come back to finish the job on Clark? But no, it’s much more likely that Diana is back to kill her former partner, who’s also in the ICU. Lois hurries after the officers, trying not to look too interested. They take the stairs up to the ICU, but turn away from Clark’s room. She breathes a sigh of relief.

The door closes behind them and Lois can peek through the glass. The white smoke fills the corridor, police officers and medical personnel littering the floor, all out cold. She sees Mayson Drake. The gas masked men she followed upstairs disappear into the fog. Lois hangs back—if she goes into the corridor, she’s going to end up like the people on the floor, of no use to anyone.

If she holds her breath, she can get to Clark’s room. The urge to see him is intense, to make sure that nothing’s happened to him. What if he seizes again, while the medical staff is snoozing on the floor? She doesn’t need to think twice—she takes a deep breath, opens the door, and hurries down to Clark’s room. She lets herself in and makes sure the door is securely closed before she takes another breath. Some fog has leaked into the room, and after a couple of breaths, she starts getting woozy.

“I hope you don’t mind if I borrow some of your oxygen,” she says and grabs a mask from the wall, turning the oxygen on.

She stops and looks at Clark.

She doesn’t want to see him like this.

He is as pale as the sheets he’s resting upon, dark shadows beneath his eyes. Even with his broad shoulders and large muscles, he looks smaller in the hospital bed. They’ve connected the tube in his mouth to a machine that helps him breathe, because his chest rises and falls with every whoosh and silence of the machine. There are needles in both his arms, attached to bags of fluid, and they’ve even attached a needle to the side of his throat.

Her eyes burn with unshed tears.

She sits down, the mask still in place.

There is a great commotion outside, but she can’t bring herself to care. The reporter inside of her doesn’t have the energy.

“She probably killed Disanto.” Should she feel guilty? Did she lead Diana to Disanto to begin with when they found the safe house? But no, if Diana has access to Kryptonite, she likely also has access to little things like safe house locations.

The door opens and two police officers come inside. They don’t even react to the patient on the bed, and they impress Lois with their focus for a second, until she realizes that they don’t recognize Superman. He looks nothing like his usual self.

“Clear,” one officer says. He looks at Lois. “Has anyone come into this room?”

“Just me.”

“And you are?”

“Lois Lane.” She gets out her driver’s license and shows him. He searches her quickly and Lois wants to protest, but she bites her tongue and the whole thing is over within seconds. He seems satisfied, because he turns to the other guy.

“Stay here until further notice,” the other says. “No one leaves.”

Lois has no intention of going anywhere, so she’s fine with those instructions.

And she doesn’t even ask what’s going on outside, because she doesn’t care. It’s as though she’s lost the investigative journalist at the moment. She’s hollow inside, as though a part of her is missing. And it is, because Clark is lying still and can’t even breathe on his own, and she hates it, hates that she can’t talk to him, and that he can’t smile at her. Those smiles… it’s like he made them from pure sunshine.

Yesterday morning they talked about dating, and now they’re here. Now Kryptonite might tear the chance from them, and Lois might never know what it’s like to go on a proper date with Clark Kent. What it’s like to have him cup her cheek before he kisses her gently, for real, not as part of some ruse or because some lunatic sprayed them with love potion. What it’s like to wake up next to him, in his embrace.

She’s never even allowed herself to think about those things, too busy trying to protect her heart from any pain.

She’s in pain now.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there when the door opens and Dr. Klein comes in. The police have been there again, telling her it’s safe to take off the mask, and nurses and doctors have come and gone, checking on Clark.

“Doctor Klein.” Lois stands up. Her back is killing her from sitting on the hard chair.

“What happened out there?” Dr. Klein asks. “I was just coming back, and they searched me like I was a wanted fugitive.”

“I don’t know,” Lois says, wanting him off this track and to tell her about Clark instead. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s stabilized. Not deteriorating anymore.”

“But not better either.”

“Not yet. We didn’t expect this to be quick, Miss Lane. There is still Kryptonite in his body, even though it might be at least partly shielded now. We don’t know if the antibodies have found all of the Kryptonite, and we don’t know if it’s enough.”

“What do you know?” It’s more of a rhetorical question than anything else.

Dr. Klein answers anyway. “His heart rate stabilized. His fever stopped rising. Those leukocytes of his are terribly low compared to when he left a sample for StarLabs a while ago, but we don’t know if he’s susceptible to Earth viruses and bacteria anyway, so we don’t know how dangerous that is. His platelets are low, which is why he’s bleeding internally, but we can’t give blood because we have no idea how his body would react to human blood.”

“Stop.” She can’t listen to any more.

Dr. Klein looks at her, embarrassment and shame across his face. “I’m sorry, Miss Lane. I’m not used to live patients, and I’m definitely not used to talking to next of kin.”

Next of kin. She’s Superman’s next of kin.

And then she realizes that she definitely isn’t.

Jonathan and Martha Kent are Clark’s parents. They’re his next of kin. Of course, they can’t be seen at Superman’s hospital bed, having never met him publically, but—they need to know. She needs to tell them that what’s happening.

Dr. Klein’s beeper goes off at that moment, and when he excuses himself, Lois takes the chance to grab the phone next to the bed. From her wallet, she fishes out the number to the Kent’s farm, and quickly dials the number.

There’s no answer.

She remembers the busy phone line when she called Clark earlier, before she knew—everything. Are they on their way already? She’ll try again later either way.

Dr. Klein returns. “There. The latest blood samples. His platelet count is slightly better this time. Leukocytes are the same. Low erythrocytes, because he’s been bleeding and we can only fill him up with fluids.”

“But something was better?” Lois asks, grabbing onto what sounded hopeful.

“His platelets. They’ll help him clot so he won’t bleed so much.”

Lois nods. “So he’s starting to improve?”

“Starting to. He has a long way to go. And we still don’t know if his body will manage rinsing out the lead-covered Kryptonite—we don’t know what his internal organs look like, or what regeneration capacity they have. We suspect he his anatomy is a lot like ours, but we don’t know. His molecular structure makes it impossible for us to use our regular equipment—”

She holds up her hand, stops him. There is no use in knowing about all the things they don’t know. She’ll hang onto that little thing, platelets—those are better. Slightly. But still. ‘Slightly better’ is still so, so much better than the alternative.

“You should go home and sleep, Miss Lane. It’s likely it will take a while before anything happens here.”

“I can’t leave him.”

“You won’t do anyone any good if you’re so tired you can’t see straight,” he says with surprising gentleness. “I will call you the moment something happens.”

She looks at Clark. She doesn’t want to leave. Even if Dr. Klein calls as soon as something happens, if that something is bad, she might not make it back to the hospital in time.

But she knows she needs rest.

Reluctantly, she stands up. Squeezes Clark’s hand again. “Don’t die. Stay with me.”

And she leaves the hospital room.

She is supposed to be going home, but when the cabbie asks her where she wants to go, she gives him Clark’s address. As they drive, she reasons with herself that someone has to go there, because she broke the window in his front door and anyone can get into the apartment.

Lois wonders if Clark is hiding anything to do with Superman in the apartment. It would be a big problem if anyone found a suit in there, or something.

The door is unlocked when she gets there, and she lets herself in.

She’s not alone.

“Martha?” she says to the resting form on the couch. “Jonathan?” Clark’s father is sitting in the armchair.

They both wake from their slumbers immediately.

“Lois!” Martha says. “Where is Clark?”

Lois swallows. “He’s in the hospital. I tried to call you, to tell you.”

Jonathan and Martha exchange looks.

“Clark is in the hospital?” Martha asks, hesitantly.

Lois looks at her. She doesn’t understand Martha’s tone; there is something off with it. As though Martha knows Clark is in the hospital, yet isn’t sure at the same time.

And then it clicks: they don’t know that she knows.

“Superman is in the hospital,” Lois corrects herself.

“They’re… both sick?”

Lois looks at her. Surely they know? Clark couldn’t possibly have grown up with them and not have told them about his powers? Suddenly, she’s not certain. But a more close-knit family is hard to imagine, so she risks it.

“I saw him change. I saw him go from Clark to Superman.”

Martha looks at Jonathan, both chocked by her admission.

“I made sure Superman was the one who went to the hospital,” Lois continues. “It wouldn’t do for Clark to show up with Kryptonite poisoning.”

“You know.” There are sudden tears in Martha’s eyes. “Oh, Lois…”

She walks to Lois, and envelopes her in a hug. Her own mother has never hugged her the way Martha does now, warm and complete and so full of love.

“I’m so glad you know. I’m so glad you’ve been able to stay with him.”

Lois swallows hard. The images of Clark in the hospital bed flashes before her eyes. She wishes all of it had happened under better circumstances.

They pull apart, and Lois misses the comfort.

“How is he?” Jonathan’s voice sounds rough.

“There’s a doctor—Doctor Klein—he says Clark’s stabilized. They’ve tried some experimental treatment. Well, everything is experimental with him, isn’t it? It’s not like there’s anyone else like him…” She trails off, realizing she’s babbling. “Doctor Klein said he’ll call if anything changes.”

“Oh, Jonathan.” Martha takes two steps over to her husband. She looks small next to him, even though Lois knows she’s one of the strongest women she’s ever met.

She raised Superman.

“He’ll make it through,” Jonathan says. “Our boy is strong.”

“I wish you could be there with him.”

“We do, too, honey,” Martha says and squeezes her husband’s hand. “How are you handling things?”

Lois frowns. How is she handling everything? Has she been handling anything at all? It’s been about getting from one minute to the next. Surviving.

“It’s been… a long day.” She’s not sure she’s ever uttered such an understatement.

“You look exhausted,” Martha says. “You should go to bed.”

“Yeah. I was heading home, but… I went here instead.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind.”

Martha leaves Jonathan’s side to return to Lois once more, and with a hand at the small of Lois’ back, she steers Lois towards Clark’s bedroom. Lois has half a mind to protest—she can’t possibly sleep in his bed, can she?—but she’s so tired that the words never make it to her lips.

Martha locates one of Clark’s shirts and hands it to her. “I’m sure that’s more comfortable to sleep in than your suit.”

Lois looks down at the worn t-shirt. Clark’s shirt.

Sleeping in Clark’s bed, in Clark’s clothes.

The tears come without her permission. They run down her cheeks and one of them trails into her mouth, tasting salty. She grips Clark’s shirt tighter.

Then Martha is there. Lois wants to apologize, because Clark is her son and he’s sick, and if anyone should cry, it’s Martha. But she can’t get the words out, and the tears keep coming. Martha’s warm hand is on her back, rubbing circles.

“He just…” She has no idea what she wants to say. “I couldn’t do anything.”

“You were there with him.” Martha’s voice is thick, laced with pain. “You did what you could.”

Lois nods and wipes at her eyes with her fingers. She’s so tired.

“Go change,” Martha says gently.

Lois gets up mechanically and does as instructed. Clark’s shirt is soft and large, and it’s comforting to have something of his against her skin. It smells of him, and Lois closes her eyes and imagines him there with her.

Martha pulls back the covers of the bed. “Time to sleep.”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“I slept on the plane.”

Lois wonders for a second if she should insist on Martha and Jonathan taking the bed. But there is a glint of steel in Martha’s eyes, and Lois knows that Martha won’t sleep now, anyway.

Lois lies down and pulls the covers up.

She thinks it’s going to take a while to fall asleep, but it doesn’t.

Chapter Text

She’s awoken by the phone ringing. It cuts through her uneasy dreams and has her sitting up straight in bed.

Clark’s bed.

In Clark’s shirt.

She scrambles out of bed but by the time she reaches the living room, Jonathan has already answered.

“No,” Jonathan says. “Clark’s not here. But Lois Lane is—maybe Superman would be all right with you telling her what’s going on?” He waits, nods. “Yes, she’s here.” He holds out the phone. “The hospital.”

“Hello?”

“Miss Lane.” Dr. Klein’s voice comes through, and she wonders if he always sounds so nervous. “I tried your home number, but no one answered, and I thought—”

“Well, I’m here.” She doesn’t want to get into her staying at Clark’s apartment. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, right. They’re going to extubate him. He’s waking up, and it’s looking very promising, really.”

“I’ll be right there.” Lois hangs up, because she doesn’t need his report on anything else—she just wants to see Clark.

She runs to Clark’s bedroom and throws on yesterday’s clothes. When she gets back out, Martha and Jonathan are watching at her with fear in their eyes, and she stops, realizing that they didn’t hear what Dr. Klein said. Her sudden rush to get to the hospital could mean anything.

“He’s waking up,” she blurts, mentally berating herself for being so inconsiderate. “They’re going to extubate him.”

Pure relief floods their features. Martha raises a shaking hand to her mouth.

“Thank goodness,” Jonathan mumbles.

“Come with me. He’ll want to see you.”

Martha closes her eyes briefly. “We can’t, honey.”

Lois looks at them. “But we can say that Clark’s parents are in town, and—”

Jonathan shakes his head. “We can’t have any contact with him when he’s Superman.”

Martha looks at her husband. “That kind of connection between Superman and Clark—it wouldn’t be any good.” Her voice is heavy. Lois knows that she would give anything to be at Clark’s bedside.

Jonathan nods. “Keep us updated. We’ll be here.”

Lois swallows hard, but nods. Are these the two strongest people she’s ever met? They may be even stronger than their son.

She hurries out and hails a cab, and it’s early enough in the morning that the traffic is still light. She glances at her watch, realizing its only four fifteen in the morning. Dim light floods the city, the sun not yet up. Still, she’s not tired, even though she must have only gotten a few hours of sleep.

She rushes through the front doors of the hospital, almost before they have time to open, and takes the elevator up to the ICU, tapping her foot impatiently all the way. The corridor is empty. They’ve cleaned up all signs of yesterday’s chaos. Visitors hour haven’t begun, but with Superman, there’s an exception to every rule and Lois doesn’t ask.

His room is quiet but for the beeping noise of the heart monitor, going much more slowly today than yesterday. Two nurses and one doctor besides Dr. Klein are present, all standing silent around Superman’s bed.

“Ah, Miss Lane, there you are.” He nods towards Clark. “We extubated him, and he seems to breathe just fine on his own.”

There’s still a mask covering his face, but they’ve removed that horrible tube that Clark had stuck down his throat yesterday. His skin is not as pale anymore either, though it’s far from rosy and healthy.

She walks over, grasping Clark’s hand. She needs to touch him, feel the warmth of his skin.

“His blood tests are showing a marked improvement,” Dr. Klein says. “He’s getting better quicker than we could have hoped. Perhaps he’s regaining some of that super healing of his.”

“Thank you.” She’s not entirely sure if she’s thanking Dr. Klein or Clark, or both.

“We’ll leave you alone for a while. Press the button if you need us.”

Lois nods and sinks down in the chair next to the bed. It’s as uncomfortable today as it was yesterday, but she doesn’t care. Clark is getting better. He’s breathing on his own. His blood tests are better, whatever that means.

He’ll make it. She pushes away any fears about blood clots and Kryptonite still in his body that tries to make it to the forefront of her brain.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, but the sun rises outside the window, and it floods the room with light.

And he moves.

At first, all Clark is aware of is pain. Kryptonite. He needs to get away from it. But his body won’t work with him, and every little move makes the pain burn white. A cry of agony escapes him and he doesn’t know if he’s ever made a sound like that before.

There’s a cool hand on his cheek and calming words spoken near his ear.

Lois.

He’d know her voice anywhere.

“Shh, it’s all right. Don’t move. You’re in the hospital and you safe, you’re going to be okay.”

His mouth is dry, and when he tries to lick his lips, he finds them cracked and painful. He tries to speak, tries to tell her about the pain, but all he gets out is a hissed, “’urts…”

“I know it hurts, I know, but it’s going to get better.”

He’s safe. Squinting up at her, she looks like an angel. Sunlight streams in from somewhere behind her, illuminating her hair so it looks like a halo. He relaxes, closes his eyes but still sees her image behind his eyelids. It’s comforting.

They stay like that, one of her hands stroking his cheek, the other squeezing his fingers ever so gently. The warmth of her hand and the sunlight is like a healing balm against his skin. He’s not sure which is more effective in dampening the pain.

As the pain recedes, his thoughts become more coherent, and somewhere in it all, he remembers that she knows now. She knows he’s Superman. That he’s Clark. That he’s both.

And she’s still here.

Intense gratefulness washes over him. He’s not naïve enough to believe that just because she’s here everything is going to be sunshine and roses—but they might not be so bad, either. She doesn’t seem angry.

He no longer has to hide.

It’s like a weight lifted off his shoulders, and no matter how strong he is, all the lies have been a heavy burden.

People come into the room, nurses and doctors, and some of them talk to him and tell him what’s going on. He doesn’t have the energy to listen. He trusts that they know what they’re doing—they are responsible for him still being alive.

By the time he has enough energy for the mask covering his face to start irritating him, it must be mid-afternoon, judging by how the light in the room has changed. Lifting his hand to remove it, it doesn’t hurt like it did before, though there is still an ache.

Free of the mask, he tries to speak again. “Hey.”

It comes out almost as it should.

Lois, who’s been resting her head on the bed, sits up. “Cl—” She stops herself. “Superman? Are you feeling better?”

“Startin’ too,” Clark says, mouth still dry. She gives him an ice chip from a glass next to the bed. It melts quickly in his mouth. “Thank you.”

It’s not only for the ice chip.

“You had me so scared.”

Clark gives her a pained half-smile. “I had me scared, too. I’m sorry.”

She squeezes his hand. “Never do that to me again, or I’ll…” But she trails off, unable to find something more to say. She looks tired, shadows beneath her eyes and her makeup smudged.

Still, she’s beautiful.

She swallows, is silent for a while and looks at the wall. He’s seen her thinking face many times before, the way her eyebrows knit together as she works out how to attack a certain problem.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me. Or, well, I do. But… don’t you trust me? When you got sick—how could you not tell me?”

Clark looks at the door. They can’t have this conversation here. “I wanted to. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to.”

“Why didn’t you? A year and a half of lies.” He hates the hurt in her voice. He’s always figured she’d be angry when she found out, but hurt—that’s way worse.

“I was scared.” The truth must be the best way to go, after all the lies. Right? “I was afraid I’d lose you. That you’d be so angry that you’d… or that you’d just see Superman.”

“But you are Superman.”

“Superman is what I can do. It’s not who I am.”

He glances at the door again. Even without super hearing, he picks up on the sound of people bustling about outside. Lois follows his gaze and realizes what kind of conversation they’re having in a room where anyone could walk in, or be standing with their ears pressed against the door, listening in.

“We’ll talk later.”

He nods, relieved. “When can I go home?”

Her eyes narrow. “You weren’t breathing on your own this morning. I’m pretty sure you’re not going home for a while.”

“Lois—”

“You’d be dead if it weren’t for the Doctor Klein and his thingamabobs,” Lois snaps. “You’re staying here until the doctors say otherwise.”

“Thingamabobs?”

“Anti-somethings. Anti-Kryptonite-somethings. I don’t know. But it seems to have worked, because you’re awake.” She mutters something about ‘awake and annoying,’ but he’s not sure.

“But I’m better now.” He really wants to go home. He’s sure that what he needs now is sunlight, lots of it, not this hospital room.

Lois closes her eyes and takes what can only be called a calming breath, opening her mouth to speak when the door opens.

“Oh, Superman, you’re looking much better,” Dr. Klein says.

“I’m feeling much better.” He tries to sound as much as Superman as possible. It’s difficult, lying in a hospital bed, wearing a flimsy hospital gown, while hooked up to a bunch of machines. “Can I go home?”

“You have a home?”

“Yes.” Clark clamps his mouth shut after that, because he doesn’t need follow-up questions he can’t answer.

“Well, it’s really against my advice—you’ve been quite sick, really. Miss Lane and I weren’t sure you’d survive. Really, none of us thought you would.” Dr. Klein is looking at the charts, studying them as if they’re the most interesting thing in the world. Clark knows he owes Dr. Klein everything, but he still doesn’t want to be here. The smell of antiseptic, the starch white walls, the noises of the surrounding machines—he’d much rather be at home.

There must be something in his expression, because when Dr. Klein looks up, he falters. “Well, we could compromise. You stay until tomorrow morning, and then, if things continue to improve, maybe you can go home.”

“That’s a lot of ifs and maybes, doctor.”

Dr. Klein gives him his sternest face. It’s not all that stern, really. “That’s my offer.”

“He’ll follow doctor’s orders.” Lois’ stern face is a lot more threatening than Dr. Klein’s. Clark has been on the receiving end of it before, as Clark, but never as Superman. Her days of mooning over Superman are over. Though he’s always hated it, right now, he’s not sure whether it’s a good thing or bad.

“Good, good.” Dr. Klein looks relieved to not have to face off with Superman. “Of course, even if you go home, you must come back for check-ups. This is the very definition of experimental treatment.”

“Lois said something about thingamabobs,” Clark says, and that launches Dr. Klein into a long-winded explanation of antibodies and things Clark understands nothing about, and eventually, he finds his eyelids closing no matter how he tries to keep them open.

The warmth of Lois’ fingers are safe around his own as he slips into sleep.

It’s like an eternity has passed since Lois walked up the stairs to Clark’s apartment and found him sick inside, even though it’s only been two days.

Now she helps him back into the apartment, and he’s leaning on her heavily enough that she wonders if it was really such a great idea to allow him to leave the hospital. He usually throws rocks into outer space, but now the stairs make his chest heave.

“Almost there,” Lois says, pointlessly, because he can see where they’re at.

“All right,” he concedes between labored breaths, “I might have some recuperating left.”

Lois purses her lips and bites back a scathing retort. “Well, there are two people who are very willing to help you recover.”

The door opens and Martha and Jonathan step outside, their arms outstretched to relieve Lois. She lets them, even though a part of her that is reluctant to let him go. She watches them, and it’s almost like an intrusion when Clark buries his face in his mom’s neck and hugs them both fiercely.

“I’m sorry I scared you.”

Lois watches them for a minute, unable to look away. She wonders what it’s like to have a family like that.

“Maybe we should go inside.”

They look up, as though they’d forgotten she was there. Should she leave? She’s not part of this family, this tight-knit trio.

But Lois doesn’t have time to make her excuses before Martha says, “Of course!” and ushers them all inside. Jonathan closes the door behind them while Martha leads Clark down the few stairs—he looks like he’s about to fall over from exhaustion—to the couch, where Clark drops unceremoniously and sinks back into the cushions. He looks smaller than usual. Her partner is clumsy and can’t open a can of anything on his own—and what a lie that is—but she’s always seen his frame as large and—

And safe.

She realizes that she’s felt the same safety lately when she’s been close to Clark, as she’s always felt in Superman’s arms. Perhaps she would have figured it out, eventually, even if Diana Stride hadn’t poisoned him?

Or not. Glasses and different hair. How could she have been so blind?

“Do you want something to drink, honey?” Martha asks her son, already grabbing a teapot. “Or to eat? Or—”

“Mom, it’s fine,” Clark says, though he’s obviously far from it. “I just need to rest a little. Rest and your company.” He holds out his hand and Martha comes to him, sits down and hugs him as she must have done when he was a child.

“My boy,” Lois hears her whisper, and the two words contain so much emotion that Lois must look away.

Lois is still standing right below the stairs and when she looks down at the floor, she sees where the floor dented beneath Clark’s weight. Lois blinks and in her mind’s eye, she sees him fall again and again.

She needs to do something.

She needs to work, to write everything she knows about Diana Stride. That woman needs to pay.

“Lois?” Clark’s worried voice filters through her thoughts, as though her brain is hard-wired to listen for it no matter what else is going on. “Are you all right?”

“I need to go.” Lois hopes her voice is as steady as she intends it to be. “Diana Stride—the article won’t write itself, and it’s not like you’re going to be much help right now.” She wishes immediately that she could take the words back, because being mean to Clark is not what she wants to do right now. Not ever, not anymore, but least of all now.

“And you will write a great article.” Clark looks at her with calm, trusting eyes, as though he didn’t hear what she just said. Is he used to her being unkind? What does that say about her? Mad Dog Lane. “But if you stay, perhaps you can even get a quote or two from Superman.”

There’s a twinkle in his eyes and she’s missed it in these last few days, missed it like it was a lost limb. Her resolve crumbles. She doesn’t want to leave. He’s not safe yet, and they still don’t know about the long-term effects of the thingamabobs Dr. Klein injected him with.

She wants to stay.

She wants to say words, though she’s not sure which words would come out of her mouth.

Clark’s father places a hand on her shoulder and leads her to sit down next to Clark on the couch. She sits stiffly, though to her horror she finds herself wanting to melt into his embrace. Clark easily lets his arm fall down to around her and she relaxes a fraction into his touch.

“Surrounded by wonderful women,” Clark mumbles, and looks from Lois to his mother.

Martha reaches out a hand and places it on top of Lois’. Her smile is warm and kind. “Welcome to the family.”

Despite having been on the brink of death, Clark recovers pretty quickly to a state where he’s at least functioning like a normal human being. Three days after coming home, the stairs up to the apartment are no longer as tough as throwing a rock into outer space, and he isn’t vomiting after every other meal. His powers, however, take longer to return, and the newspapers including the Daily Planet are wondering where Metropolis’ resident superhero has disappeared to.

“We need to write something,” Lois says. “You can’t disappear—we’ve seen what’s happened before when you’ve been gone. Crime rates spike pretty quickly.”

Clark looks at her from his place on the couch. Though he’s much better, it’s still where he spends most of his time. “We can’t publish the truth.”

“Of course not. Do you really think I would do that?”

He shakes his head quickly. “No, no. But do you have anything in mind?”

“Well, I’m sure I can come up with something better than Cheese of the Month.” She gives him a pointed look.

He blushes.

“Lying has never been your strong suit, has it?” It’s not a question.

Martha, who’s making dinner a few feet away, lets out a laugh. “Oh, you should have heard him the one time he skipped class, and I found him in his room reading comics instead. It was so hard, trying not to laugh. The more I asked, the stranger his explanations, until he broke down and told the truth.”

“Mom.” Clark leans his head back and closing his eyes. “Lois doesn’t need to know about that.” She doesn’t need reminders of his lies.

“Oh yes, I do. I’m looking forward to hearing all the stories about your childhood.” Lois smiles.

“Weren’t we talking about what lie to tell the public?” Clark tries to get the conversation back on track. His mom telling Lois every embarrassing childhood story is not something he needs to be present for, no matter how much he loves them both.

Lois narrows her eyes at him, sees right through him, but obviously decides to take pity on him. “Fine. So what do you want to say?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it. I’m just glad Diana Stride seems to have stopped coming after me.”

“Coming after you?” Lois asks. “More than giving you a Kryptonite kiss?”

“Kiss?” his mother echoes from the kitchen.

“She had some sort of tracking device, and I think she had a tracker on me somehow.” Clark ignores his mom, unwilling to get into how he let the woman kiss him. “She wanted to expose my secrets. I guess she wanted to figure out my secret identity.”

“That beeping machine she had every time she came by the office. She was tracking you.”

Clark gives a helpless shrug. “But not anymore, it seems. Or she thinks I’m dead.”

Lois shakes her head. “They cut your suit off, and they cleaned you thoroughly at the hospital. Whatever tracker she had on you, they must have gotten it off, right?”

“They washed me?” He has no memory of it. He wonders what else Lois had to witness in the hospital.

“You were pretty out of it. Be glad you don’t remember all of it.”

Clark nods, taking her word for it. He mostly remembers pain and nausea, then nothing.

And Lois, he remembers Lois.

“But the police are looking for Diana after my article on her, so we can concentrate on you. You being in another country wouldn’t work, you’re in other countries all the time. And ‘personal issues’ or something like that invites too many questions and is a little close to home.” She pauses. “What about saying you’re on business to another planet, and you sent a message somehow, saying you’re not exactly sure how long you’ll be gone but that you will be back?”

Clark smiles, relief filling him. This is what it’s going to be like now—she’ll help him, and she’s much better than he ever was at thinking on her feet. He’ll to have to keep lying, but not to her. Perhaps he should feel bad that he forces her to lie, but relief is still more prominent.

“As long as you write it, everyone will believe it.”

“And you’ll give me a quote or two.”

“Anything you need, Lois.”

The article comes out, a Daily Planet exclusive that has Perry happy for about three seconds before he wonders what Lois and Clark have lined up next. Clark has shown up to the office for the first time since they admitted him to the hospital and mostly hangs back and lets Lois do the talking.

“You sure you’re okay, Kent?” Perry cocks his head slightly to the side.

Clark tries to not fidget under his scrutiny. “Sure, chief.”

“Mm-hm.”

A few hours later, they are both in Dr. Klein’s office at StarLabs. His assistants have done a series of tests on him, taking full advantage of being able to draw blood from him. Clark doesn’t like it, but it’s better than a year or so ago, when they exposed him to Kryptonite just to get blood samples from him.

They’re following his improving bloodwork closely. Clark hasn’t bothered to even attempt to understand all the medicine, but he’s definitely getting better.

And Dr. Klein is pretty sure that Superman’s powers will return at some point.

“They always have before, haven’t they?” Dr. Klein says, and Clark wishes he would sound more certain of himself.

Lois, who insisted on coming with him to the appointment, isn’t so quietly accepting. “That doesn’t sound very convincing. Are they going to come back or not?”

Dr. Klein takes off his glasses and polishes them. “Well, Miss Lane, this exposure—Superman has never had this kind of prolonged exposure to Kryptonite before, and he’s never been so ill from it. And it was in his body, not on the outside. So, we have very few data points—none, really—to compare this to…”

“Lois, if they come back, they come back.” Clark tries to sound calm, though he’s not. “If they don’t, we’ll figure it out.”

We.

It’s a relief that she’s there with him. What would he do if she wasn’t? Would he still be alive, or was it her presence that kept him going? He can’t say. Even amid the darkness, he felt her with him.

And she’s not angry. A few small barbs here and there, but no more than that.

So far, anyway.

“What?” Lois turns to glare at him. “So if they don’t come back, you’ll hang up that cape and take a job like a regular Joe?” She raises a challenging eyebrow at him.

“I didn’t mean that I’d—” Clark doesn’t get any further.

“Well, I’m sure someone will be really excited to work right next to you. Working with Superman. That must be a real dream, don’t you think? Except you won’t be Superman anymore.”

“I’m just going to go out and check on this… thing,” Dr. Klein mumbles, and hurriedly exits the room, casting nervous glances at Lois. Clark wishes he could do the same.

The door closes behind the doctor as Lois continues. Her hands are on her hips now and Clark can tell she’s getting angrier with every word, as though he opened the floodgates with his simple attempt at reassurance.

“So really, it’ll be like working with anybody. With nobody. Like working with Clark Kent.”

There it is, the fury he’s been expecting.

Even though he’s been waiting for it, it still hurts.

“Lois, I—”

“Don’t you ‘Lois’ me. You don’t get to do that. Not after everything. Not after—how could you not tell me? ‘Hey, Lois, by the way, when I’m not Clark Kent, I wear tights and fly around the world in five seconds.’”

She looks at him and he doesn’t know what to say.

She has no trouble finding words. “But no, let’s keep stupid, blind Lois Lane in the dark. I’m sure you were laughing at me. Leading me on as Clark and watching me moon over Superman—”

“Now wait a second,” Clark says, and he stands up because he can’t sit there and listen to her warp the truth. “Do you think it was fun, having you fawn all over my powers, and yet ignoring the real me? Do you really think I enjoyed that?”

“I did not fawn over your powers!” Lois protests. “I found your ideals, your morals, your work appealing—”

Clark stares at her. “Those are my ideals and my morals. Mine. Clark’s. Not Superman’s.”

“I didn’t know that, because you wouldn’t tell me—”

“I showed you every day what kind of man I am. I’ve been there for you when you were sad, when you were angry—”

“You’ve left every single time I tried to have a conversation with you!”

“Because someone needed my powers. Someone needed my help.”

“And what about me? What about what I need? What about telling me the truth?”

She’s beautiful when she’s angry.

“I wanted to tell you. Every single day, I wanted to tell you.” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I just didn’t want—”

“What didn’t you want? Don’t you trust me?”

“I didn’t want you looking at me like you’re looking at me right now.”

She stops for a second, as though he’s surprised her.

He fills the silence. “I trust you with everything, Lois. I couldn’t stand the thought of you hating me.”

She stares at him. There are red stains of fury on her cheeks, and she looks so alive, so perfect. If only she could look at him with a different expression. The seconds drag out, long and painful, until she whispers, “I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?” The words escape him before he has the time to edit himself.

“I’m angry with you. I have a right to be angry, all things considered.”

He ducks his head. “Of course you do.”

“I just have trouble understanding it. You say you trust me. You say you wanted to tell me. You say you don’t want me looking at you ‘like this’—but the longer you waited… You must have known it’d be—”

“Worse? Harder? Like flying into space to crash into an asteroid? Yeah.” He gives her a small smile. “Though to be honest, any time after the first time we met, would have made you angry.”

She snorts, features softening. “Maybe.”

They stare at each other, standing in the middle of the small examination room at StarLabs. Clark hopes fleetingly that the surrounding walls are soundproof, otherwise they might have even bigger problems than Diana Stride trying to expose him.

“You still should have told me.”

“Yes.” He should have. He knows. He’s known it all along.

There are a lot of things he should tell her. Well, one, more specifically.

He almost died a couple of days ago. What if he hadn’t survived? What if he had died without telling her what she means to him? How much he loves her, how much he’s loved her since the first time he met her?

She’s looking at him, intelligent brown eyes scrutinizing him. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it. God, you must think I’m so stupid.”

Clark’s heart constricts in his chest, because if there’s one thing he has never, ever thought of her, it’s that she’s stupid. Reckless, crazy, tough as nails, exasperating—but never stupid.

“Never.” He dares to reach out to cup her cheek.

She shakes her head. “Then you’re a little dumb, too.”

“Not dumb, just in love.”

And though he’s sure his heart skips a beat, he refuses to even try to take it back.

She stares at him, opening her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

“I don’t know if you’re ready to hear it. And I’ll—I’m not trying to force anything. All I know is that I almost died from Kryptonite poisoning, and if I’d died without telling you—I just—” He takes a breath. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the first time we met. And it’s okay if you don’t, but—I want you to know.”

And he waits. Eternities pass, seconds or hours or years. It’s out there now, all those things he’s kept inside for the better part of two years, words he once said and took back. He’s not taking them back this time. She knows everything now, and the world makes more sense that way. No more secrets.

“I—” she starts, barely audible. “I don’t know what to say.”

Something falls within him, even though he never expected her to simply reciprocate. Lois Lane doesn’t do simple.

“It’s all right, I—”

“You’re not a very good listener sometimes.” She raises an eyebrow at him, then her expression softens. “Clark, I—when you were sick, that was—I don’t know which was worse, when I thought Clyde killed you or watching you go through the agony of being poisoned, but—this isn’t friendship. Both times it was like—like someone ripped out a part of me, as though I could never be whole again.” She stares at his chest, at the glaring ‘S’. She seems to disappear into her memories until she pulls herself back and looks up at him. “I tried to tell you, after Bonnie and Clyde.”

“You did?” He searches his memory, but can’t remember anything of the sort.

“You fell asleep.” She smiles ruefully. “I poured my heart out and your response was a snore.”

His cheeks heat. She had been irritated with him, waking him up when they reached his apartment, and he hadn’t understood why.

“I’m sorry.” He wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t fallen asleep.

She shrugs, looks away. “Maybe it’s for the better. We can start like semi-normal people now. You could ask me on a date. And we’ll take it from there.”

And the same way his heart plummeted before, it now soars.

“How about tonight?” He wonders if it’s too much for her.

She smiles at him, though he sees a hint of fear behind her smile. “You’re not a very patient man, are you?”

“I’d wait a lifetime for you, but I’d rather not.”

It’s easier to be honest, he realizes. Not having to edit himself every time he opens his mouth, it’s much easier. He’s closer to her, more connected, as though a distance between them has been erased. He hopes she feels the same, that she’s not afraid of them or him.

“Okay.” Nervousness colors her voice.

“Okay?”

“Tonight. A date.”

“Really?”

“Yes. An actual date. And you won’t be running off, because you don’t have your powers, so I won’t have to get angry. And we’ll go to dinner in a nice place somewhere. And you’ll be wearing something elegant, but not too dark. Like a charcoal suit. And I’ll be wearing something—”

She’s babbling, and he again cups her cheek calmly. She doesn’t protest, instead falls silent.

“Lois, you could wear a potato sack and I still wouldn’t be looking at anybody else.”

She stares at him. “Well, if I wear a potato sack, everyone will look at me.”

“They’d be jealous that someone can make a potato sack look great.” Clark lets his hand drop. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Eight.” She swallows visibly and nods. “For a date where you won’t leave even if I start talking about the tough subjects.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, right now, I’m as vulnerable as the next guy, and I don’t want to know what you’d do if I left.”

She flashes him a relieved grin at his attempt at lightening the mood. She looks around the room, this little doctor’s office where they’ve had one of their most intense conversations ever. It’s strange, discussing such big things in such a small, random place. But then, Lois found out his other secret when he was puking his guts out on the floor, so they’re not exactly doing this in the traditional way.

“Well then, shall we go, Mr. Nobody?” Lois asks. She smiles, and the words don’t hurt at all.

He nods and holds the door open for her. He walks down the corridor, his cape flying around his boots, and he realizes that they had this entire conversation with him in his Superman outfit. She called him Clark, and though he needs to remind her to not do that when he’s in his uniform, it still warms his heart. Somehow, she’s merged Clark and Superman into one and the same in the short time since she found out, and it’s reassuring—she’s not going after Superman now. And her admission that she’d confessed to having deeper feelings back after the Bonnie and Clyde debacle makes the warm sensation spread inside until he’s sporting a very un-Superman smile.

“You look happy,” Lois says.

“I am happy.” And isn’t that the understatement of the decade?

Chapter Text

She’s changed four times by the time the clock strikes eight and the doorbell rings. Of course he’s not late.

She runs a brush through her hair as she yells, “Just a second!” and she throws the brush away and places her hand on the door handle. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest, and she berates herself for being so nervous. It’s Clark. Her best friend, her colleague, her—she’s not sure what he is beyond that, not yet, but from the fluttering in her stomach, she suspects that they could be much more.

When she opens the door, she finds him there in the charcoal suit she mentioned before, looking as gorgeous as ever before. She thinks of him as Superman and realizes that he might be even more attractive like this, when she can focus on his eyes and his smile instead of the blaring red, yellow and blue. And he looks adorably nervous, something Superman never is.

“Hi.”

He seems to be drinking her in. “Wow. I mean, hi.”

Her cheeks flush, pleased with his reaction. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”

He holds out a bouquet, because he’s a farm boy and a dork and she—god, she loves him already, doesn’t she? She pushes the thought away, because she can’t think that way before she’s even kissed him for the first time.

Well, they’ve kissed, but not for real. Love potions and life-or-death situations, yes, but not just them.

“Thank you, they’re beautiful.”

She invites him inside while she places the flowers into a vase. “So, how are you?”

Clark looks at her, standing in the middle of her living room, looking like he belongs there. He rubs his chest. “I feel—normal. At least, normal as far as I know. No powers. I even got one of those paper cuts again this afternoon. But nothing else. So that’s good. Mom and dad left this afternoon, so I guess they’re pretty convinced I’m okay, too.”

He’s babbling, and it’s a relief that he’s nervous too. It’s not only her.

“And you have me taking care of you.”

He smiles, brilliant and open. “I’m a lucky guy.”

She’s never seen Superman smile like that. His smiles are always controlled, not quite reaching his eyes. Clark’s smile is everything but controlled, lighting up the world in the best way. He’s real, in a way Superman has never been, even in her most elaborate day dreams.

“Well, I’m ready. Let’s go, big guy.”

And it’s everything she’s ever dreamed of a date. It’s a beautiful restaurant with stark white linens and shining plates filled with delicious food, with a dreamy chocolate desert which Clark shares with her without hesitation. Most of all, it’s Clark, and she’s having trouble remembering why she’s fought this so hard. Why she risked never experiencing this—he almost died, and if he had, she would never have truly understood how well they fit.

When he kisses her—or if it’s her, kissing him, she can’t say—it’s like coming home. His lips are warm against hers, soft and careful, asking for permission even as she pulls him closer. When he wraps his arms around her, and her hands find their way to his shoulders, to his neck, that’s when she realizes that this is where she belongs. It’s where she’s always belonged.

He pulls back, and he’s breathing fast, chest heaving.

She wonders if she did that, if she really stole Superman’s breath, for a few seconds before he suddenly releases her and starts coughing.

She sees panic in his eyes.

Sees the spray of blood coming from his mouth before he has time to cover it with his hand.

“Clark.” Blind terror rises within her.

He sinks to the ground as though his legs won’t hold him any longer, and she flashes back to when she found him in his apartment.

Oh god, no.

She sits down beside him, mumbling something she hopes is comfort as she, with shaking fingers, calls Doctor Klein.

He answers after the third signal, sounding distracted.

“It’s Superman. Please, help. He’s coughing up blood and—”

For once, he seems to focus immediately. “Give me your address.”

She does. They haven’t gotten far from the restaurant, because they walked and talked and laughed and they wound up kissing and now—

Now this.

He’s kneeling, hunched over, supporting himself on one arm and covering his mouth with the other as he coughs. His breath is labored, chest heaving, and when she places two fingers to his carotid, his pulse is racing, too fast for her to count.

“Help is on the way,” she whispers between his coughing attacks. There is blood all over his hand and smeared around his mouth. “I called Doctor Klein and there’s a team coming, the one he talked about, and they’re going to help you—”

“This wasn’t how—I imagined—this date ending…”

Her eyes burn with unshed tears. “I bet it wasn’t.”

Looking at Clark, she realizes that he is just that—Clark. She can’t send Clark when Dr. Klein’s people are expecting Superman! Glancing around, there is a thankful lack of people around them. She quickly pulls his glasses off, and combs his hair back with her fingers as he coughs again.

“Are you wearing the suit?”

He nods. “Thought it best if—something happened.”

She hates that he prepared for this, even though she’s glad he did. Looking around carefully to check that there aren’t any people or cameras around, she helps him discard the suit jacket—also bloodied—and shirt. His cape unfolds behind him, cascading over his back and onto the ground. The pants are trickier, but they get them off. In the end, he sits panting against the building wall. Lois hides the suit in the alley behind a dumpster and pockets his glasses in her purse.

They’re just in time; a minute later, a large van pulls up next to them. A man, a woman and Dr. Klein jump out of the back of it, and when Lois sees the inside, she realizes it’s an ambulance. They help Clark to his feet, and he struggles and sways before they help him onto a waiting stretcher in the van. Lois climbs in behind them and takes a seat by Clark’s head, hopefully out of the way for the people needing to work in the cramped space.

“Let’s go,” Dr. Klein says as soon as the doors are closed behind them, in a voice that doesn’t quite hide the pressure he’s feeling.

“What’s wrong with him? Is it the thingamabobs you injected him with?”

She holds Clark’s hand, because she can’t not hold his hand. She sees fear in his eyes, even if he won’t say it. The man and woman who helped Clark into the ambulance are checking his vitals and sticking needles into his arms. Lois looks at the TV-screen where Clark’s blood pressure and heart rate come up, and once again she wishes she knew how to interpret them.

“It could very well be,” Dr. Klein says. “Or it could be late effects of the poisoning. Can you tell me more about what happened?”

She tells him what she knows, which really isn’t much, and he turns to Clark. “Any chest pain?”

Clark looks briefly at Lois, as though he doesn’t want to admit it with her there, but nods. “Every time I—take a breath.”

She wonders how long he’s been in pain. Since the dinner? Since he picked her up in the apartment, despite saying he was fine? Longer than that?

“His saturation is eighty-two percent,” the woman says to Dr. Klein, and turns to Clark. “I’m going to place a mask over your face now. Oxygen to help you breathe.”

Clark nods and drags in deep breaths as soon as the mask is in place, closing his eyes and relaxing a fraction. He looks exhausted already, and Lois realizes that he even though he claimed to be all right, he hasn’t been. Frustration rises within her at his stubbornness—why didn’t he tell her?

They get to StarLabs, rather than the hospital. Through a back entrance, they wheel Clark into an elevator which takes them to one of the top floors. At the end of a corridor, there is a large room built specifically for Clark. StarLabs obviously spared no expenses after realizing that the Man of Steel is not as invulnerable as they’d first believed—the room looks like it has every kind of medical equipment they could come up with, and some they’ve probably invented themselves.

Clark is too heavy for them to lift from the gurney to the bed, so they support him as best they can as he stumbles over. Once there, he closes his eyes again and without protest; he lets the man and woman work on him, piercing his skin once more with needles.

“What are you going to do with him?” Lois hates the way her voice shakes.

Dr. Klein seems a million miles away when he answers. “Try to stabilize him. Normally, there would be a computer tomography to look for an embolus, but with him that’s impossible, so we’ll have to treat what we think is wrong and try to fix it.” He turns to the woman and gives her a bunch of medications to inject, and she nods as though she understands anything he just said. To Lois, it sounds like letters thrown haphazardly together.

The man pulls up a chair by Clark’s head. “You can sit here.”

Lois automatically sits down. She places a hand on Clark’s shoulder and startles when he lifts his hand to place it heavily on top of hers and turns his head to her. She’d almost forgotten that he’s still awake, not unconscious like last time. Not yet, anyway.

“Thanks for—staying.” His words muffled by the mask.

“Where else would I be? I’m not going anywhere.”

He closes his eyes, then opens them again. “Tell my parents—I love them.”

Her eyes burn again. “You can tell them yourself.”

“Please, Lois.”

“You’re not going to die.”

They have just started to figure things out; she has started to realize everything, and he can’t be taken from her, that’s not fair. It doesn’t matter that she knows life isn’t fair. This can’t be happening.

She loves him, and she hasn’t even told him yet. They’re supposed to have years and years together, not this.

“And I love—you.” Clark squeezes her hand, ever so gently; those same hands that have stopped bullets and thrown bombs into space.

His hand falls from hers.

“His BP and pulse are dropping,” the man says.

Clark closes his eyes, and they don’t open again.

“Push fluids and increase the oxygen. Prepare the defibrillator.”

“Are we sure—with his physiology—do we know—”

“If he goes into VF or VT, we don’t have a choice—”

“V-fib!”

There is a buzzing in Lois’ ears, the world disappearing farther and farther away. Everything around her turns into white noise. No, no! Clark is the important person here, not her, she can’t pass out, she’s not—but she sees everything as though she’s looking through a tunnel. She wants to stay with him, has to be there. She can’t leave him now.

There is a loud beeping noise and a lot of movement around her.

She tries, but she can’t hold on.

She wakes up with a gasp, Clark’s name on her lips.

Sunlight is streaming in through a window, skies blue beyond the glass. She’s on a bed in a room with white walls.

“Lie down, Lois, honey,” comes a familiar voice to the right. Not the voice she wants to hear, but Perry is welcome none the less.

“Where is he? Is he alive?”

“Who?”

“Cl—” She stops herself, a little too late. “Superman.”

There is a glint of something in Perry’s eyes, and she gets the same odd feeling that she had when she spoke to him on the phone. With crashing realization, she recognizes what it is:

Perry knows.

She wonders how long. Did Clark tell him? No, he would have told her, now that she knows. If Perry knows, he’s figured it out by himself.

But as long as he won’t say it outright, she won’t confirm it for him.

“He’s in the room right next to yours,” Perry says calmly. “They haven’t told me much, because I’m not his medical proxy like some others here apparently are these days, but he’s still alive. It’s been touch and go, but since the sun came up, he’s been getting better.”

“I need to see him.” She doesn’t ask, because it’s not a request.

“Just let them come and unhook you, Lois.”

She realizes she’s hooked up to some monitor, showing her heartbeat and other stuff in wavy lines. “This is ridiculous, I don’t need this. I’m not sick.”

Perry looks at her. “Apparently, you passed out when Superman had his cardiac arrest. They put you in here and couldn’t get a hold of your parents, so Doctor Klein thought it best to call me. Someone should keep watch of you, he said.”

Heat rises in her cheeks, because that means Perry must have sat by her bedside and watched her sleep for hours. Her boss! She loves him, but—he’s her boss.

Dr. Klein comes through the door. “Miss Lane.”

“How is he?” She doesn’t bother with niceties.

“Alive,” he says. “His heart stopped, but we got him going again. A couple of strong sun-imitating lamps seem to have helped, though of course it’s better with the real thing now that it’s come up. We suspect he had a lung embolus from the Kryptonite antibodies, but it’s impossible to know for sure. He’s still sleeping, but his vitals are improving. We’ve taken him up to the roof, to maximize the sun exposure.”

She tries to take it all in. His heart stopped. Lung embolus. Getting better.

Dr. Klein looks at the monitor. “You can come with us up there. I’ll have my assistant remove the heart monitoring. We thought it best to keep track of your vitals, your body wasn’t handling the situation well last night. But now it all looks fine.”

She is about to ask what he means, but decides that if she does, it’s only going to take longer before they can get to the roof to see Clark, so she presses her lips together and nods.

There is still heat in her cheeks when she says goodbye to Perry a few minutes later.

“Tell Superman to get better soon,” Perry says before he leaves. “Lots of people miss him.”

Lois stares after him for a few seconds, wondering if she’s imagining it all, before she shakes her head and follows Dr. Klein to the stairs. She gets unusually winded—perhaps the night has taken more of a toll on her than she wants to believe. Or it’s the entire ordeal, ever since Clark was poisoned.

Dr. Klein opens the door to the roof, and Lois breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of Clark. Then she blushes, because he’s nearly naked, wearing only underwear. She assumes it’s to ‘maximize sun exposure’ as Dr. Klein said earlier, but it’s still Clark. Nearly naked.

She remembers when she asked him what his secret was, back when they first met and she looked into his refrigerator and saw only candy. She knows his secret now. Alien metabolism. Nope, she can’t have it.

She jumps when he turns and his tired eyes meet hers. “Lois.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“Just woke up. Heard your heartbeat.”

“Heard my—” She stops and stares at him, turning the information over in her head until it makes sense. “Is your super hearing back?”

He smiles and nods. “I don’t think the rest is back yet, because I still feel like I’ve been run over by an asteroid, but—yeah. Super hearing.”

In that moment, Lois knows that it will be all right. He’s going to live and not only that: he’s going to be everything he’s supposed to be.

She only barely keeps herself from throwing herself in his arms and kissing him. It wouldn’t be the best idea to do in front of Dr. Klein and his assistants.

“I’m glad.” She almost chokes on the words. She moves forward and places a hand on his shoulder. His skin is soft and warm to the touch.

He smiles, and it’s the only thing existing in her world. His smile, his warmth, his heart beating steadily inside his chest. It is everything to her. She wants to tell him, but can’t with other people around. But looking at him, she thinks he might already know.

This time, Clark stays at StarLabs until he’s well and truly cleared. He’s not happy about it, but Lois narrows her eyes and he decides not to argue. She’s not going to take it lightly if he leaves before Dr. Klein has signed off on it.

Staying out in the sun in only his underwear the entire day—thankfully a warm and entirely sunny day—works wonders for him, and after three days of the same treatment, the good doctor and his assistants conclude that he’s back to his usual self.

He hopes he never takes for granted again, what it is to be healthy, what it’s like to fly.

“You’re lucky the embolus—or whatever it was, I suppose—came so late,” Dr. Klein says. “Had it come earlier, your super healing wouldn’t have kicked back in yet, but it was already coming back and probably saved your life.”

“And you, Doctor,” Clark says. “Without you, there would’ve been no time for super healing to kick in.”

Dr. Klein looks uncomfortable. “Well, ah, it’s my job.”

“Thank you.” Clark means it with every fiber of his being.

“Of course, of course, you’re welcome.” Dr. Klein cleans his glasses with a handkerchief.

Lois is there with him. She says nothing, though she shares a smile with Clark at the nervousness of Dr. Klein. He seems utterly uncomfortable receiving praise.

This time, they don’t have to take a cab home. Clark easily lifts Lois into his arms and they soar out through the open window of Dr. Klein’s office. Clark breathes in deeply, enjoying being able to take a full breath without pain. Being unable to breathe was awful, right up there with Kryptonite poisoning. Dr. Klein said they’ll have to do tests later, to see if there are any long-term effects of the poisoning or treatment—they suspect his lung function might have been affected—but if that means he can only hold his breath for ten minutes instead of twenty, he’ll just have to make do.

He’s alive.

Lois leans her head against his shoulder.

“I wasn’t sure we’d ever get to do this again,” she breathes, but he hears every word.

“I wasn’t either. These have been some of the worst weeks of my life.”

Lois looks at him. “What other weeks could possibly compare to these?”

He hesitates. “The ones when you were going to marry Luthor were pretty awful.”

Her features soften. “Yeah, they were. But at least you were alive and well then. Even if I couldn’t see you.”

“I never told you about Luthor’s Kryptonite cage, did I?” Clark says ruefully.

She whips around sharply. “His what?”

Clark sighs, because talking about Lex Luthor is not what he wants to do. “Let’s just say that Diana Stride isn’t the first one with creative ideas of how to kill me. Luthor thought I deserved to suffer, so he made a Kryptonite cage right below where the two of you were getting married.” He pauses. “I got out, but that was why Superman couldn’t save him. I didn’t have my powers.”

“I had no idea,” Lois breathes. “I thought—Superman hated him and—”

“It took me a day or so for my powers to come back. I swear I would have caught him if I could’ve.”

“Always the hero.”

“No. But I wanted him to rot in jail, not take the easy way out like he did.”

Lois looks at him, thoughtful and intelligent eyes seeing right through him. “There’s a lot I don’t know about, isn’t there?”

“I thought you had me figured out.” Clark winks at her.

She smiles and his heart speeds at the sight. “There might be a little more to you than meets the eye.”

He stops them in mid-air and shifts his hold of her carefully so they face each other. The breeze sweeps through her hair, and there is color in her cheeks. She’s so beautiful he can’t even begin to describe it. The last two weeks since Diana Stride poisoned him have been awful, but now she knows everything, and she’s still there. Somehow, that’s worth all the pain and suffering in the world to have her look at him like that. As though he’s important to her.

“I wouldn’t have made it through this whole thing without you,” he says. “But I’m so sorry you had to go through it.”

“I didn’t do anything—”

“You were there.” He watches her blush.

“There was no other place for me."

He hesitantly bends in to kiss her, unable to resist. She melts against him, wrapping her arms around him like his are already around hers. It’s perfect and unbelievable and everything he ever dreamed of.

“I love you.” The most important words in the world and he’ll tell her every day until he dies.

She smiles shyly. “I love you, too.”

He stops, staring at her. “Really?”

She huffs out a laugh. “Yes, really, you big lunkhead. I—I didn’t know—but these two weeks—” She’s never this bad with words, this award-winning reporter he has in his arms. He finds it adorable. She shakes her head. “These two weeks have been horrible, and I had to imagine a life without you. And that life would suck.”

His smile reaches from ear to ear. “Then I think it was worth all the pain.”

“Don’t say that.” She swats his chest. “Don’t you ever do this to me again.”

“I can’t really promise that. The bad guys have great imagination with the whole ways-to-kill-Superman-thing.”

She looks irritated for a moment, that there are things she can’t control. “Well, then we’ll just have to face them together.”

He couldn’t stop smiling if he tried. “Together,” he says. “That sounds fantastic.”

And they’re kissing again.