Chapter Text
The Daily Planet newsroom was buzzing.
Despite it only having been two days since the whole city had been evacuated and essentially split in half, phones were ringing, keyboards clicked like the fire of machine guns, and put-upon interns were running around making copies and coffee. It was that kind of day.
Of course, Perry White wouldn’t have hired any of them in the first place if they couldn’t handle it.
The adrenaline only breaking a big story could bring hadn’t worn off just yet, but the aftermath was beginning to settle. Big time.
Lois Lane sat by her desk, staring at her computer screen with a pen in her mouth and having just finished her fifth cup of coffee.
Well, mostly coffee.
Okay, fifth cup of sugar with coffee.
In any case, on one of her thousand tabs, she was looking over her most recent article, the one that had sent the Planet into its current buzz. Above her byline the headline pronounced baldly:
LEX LUTHOR:
WARMONGER, TRAITOR, MURDERER
It was all there: the orchestration of the Jarhanpur-Boravia conflict, the pocket dimension prison, the extorsion, the illegal experiments, the mutant monkey hatefarm (which was strangely enough not one of the weirdest things Lois had ever written about), and of course, how it had all been for the sole purpose of giving Luthor legal authority to kill Superman.
Loid had broken the story just as the rift running through Metropolis had finally closed. All in all it was a pretty good job, considering she’d had it transcribed straight from her mouth in a crunch during what could very well have been the end of the world.
And now?
Now came the reckoning. The lawsuits. The denials. The cries of fake news. The crackling thunderstorm of truth was raining down on the most powerful man in the country, who was now behind bars at Belle Reve.
“Lane!” Perry White’s voice cracked like a whip across the bullpen. His employees parted like waves before a ship as he strode over to Lois’ desk. “Don’t think one world-changing article is an excuse to slack off. Where are you on the follow-ups?”
“Perry, I’m insulted,” Lois said, barely looking up from her screen. “You really don’t think the moment we were back on solid ground that I didn’t start making calls?”
“Don’t act smart, Lane, you’re bad enough as it is,” said Perry gruffly, not denying it. “Well, what d’you got?”
“... Same as everyone else, basically,” Lois begrudgingly admitted. “Internationally, at least. Tons of companies who’ve had contracts with LuthorCorp are under investigation, and every world leader wants to give their opinion on the LordTech heroes’ involvement in Jarhanpur.”
“And nationally?”
“Seems our beloved Mayor Sackett is in hot water.” Lois couldn’t help a smirk. “Not surprising, considering he’s been a very vocal ally to Luthor his entire career. It’s up to us to find out how much of all this he knew or simply turned a blind eye to. Still, safe to say he can kiss that second term goodbye.”
“Thank god. If I have to go through another round of higher parking tickets, I’m dragging him outta that office myself,” said Perry. “But that’s just Metropolis. We need to think bigger.”
“Way ahead of you.” Lois looked at her notes. “I talked to one of my sources, and there’s tension among the top dogs. One of the FBI’s special agents, Mr. X - and yes, that’s actually his legal name - is furious that the handling of the whole Superman situation went to Luthor’s PlanetWatch and not his own division. There are similar stories from other departments, and it stinks of meddling, going-overs and undermining.”
Perry rolled his eyes. “Underhandedness in government? Next you’ll be telling me there’s crime in Gotham. What else?”
“Well, now that we know everything about our great ally Boravia, and after Jarhanpur’s public celebration of the Justice Gang, seems we’re in a hurry to save our image. Heard the president is sending aid both to Jarhanpur and our own rebuilding efforts.
“And McGucket might not be president anymore, but he has sway. He’s been insistent on inviting the Justice Gang and Superman to the White House for some sweetbread, robots and a...” Lois’ brow furrowed. “A ‘celebratory two-steppin’, hambonin' hootenanny’. Seriously, what even is that?”
Perry was unimpressed. “His First Lady was a racoon, Lane. Nothing about McGucket can surprise me anymore. In any case, we need to dig deeper. Hop on it and get me a draft stat.”
“On it, chief.”
“And don’t call me ‘chief’!” Perry looked around. “Where the hell’s Kent? It’s bad enough he was off sick through this whole mess.” He puffed his cigar. “He did good on that piece for Malik Ali, but I need him off his ass and on something new. Another Superman interview wouldn't hurt.”
Lois blinked. Swivelling her chair around, she found Clark’s chair unoccupied and his own cup of black coffee sitting on his desk completely untouched.
Lois quickly checked all the TV-screens on the office walls, but there were no supervillains or monster attacks or disasters in sight, so she doubted Clark had put on his cape. But then where…?
Realizing Perry was still on a Kent hunt and she had to throw off his trail, Lois said, “He had to use the bathroom.”
“Again?!” Perry shook his head. “I swear, that’s Kansans for you. Smallest bladders you’ll ever see… Olssen!” he shouted, finding a new target. “Olssen, you better have some decent pictures of the reparation efforts this time!”
Jimmy put away his phone, on which Lois guessed he had been texting that Teschmacher girl for like half an hour, and shot out of his chair. “Got ‘em right here, chief.”
“Don’t call me ‘chief!’”
“Sorry, chief.”
No longer under the hard, scrutinizing gaze of Perry White, Lois rose from her desk. Her keen eyes scanned the bullpen, only to find no sign of a six-foot-four dork in a loose-fitting suit.
Rising from her chair and setting out to find him, Lois first found herself annoyed. It was a small miracle Clark’s absence through all this had flown under the radar, and now wasn’t the time to be testing it by vanishing every other moment.
Then again, Lois admitted, she couldn’t begrudge her boyfriend for wanting to have some time to himself.
Clark was basically fresh off of the worst week of his life. The revelation about his birth parents, the hate and fear, being imprisoned and poisoned, the cold-blooded murder of Malik Ali… Any one of those things would’ve been enough to break a man.
But not Superman.
After the rift had been closed and them sharing a (quite honestly) magical kiss, Clark had set straight to work. Since then, both in and out of his spare time, Clark had been helping to rebuild Metropolis.
He had been spotted lunching with construction workers, moving debris, helping people recover their possessions that otherwise would have been lost to the rubble. Just yesterday a very grateful father had posted about how Superman had helped his little boy find all the missing pieces to his Good Witch Azura Lego set.
Lois finally found him alone in a frost glass-walled conference room. Clark stood by the windows, looking over the Metropolis skyline.
Arms folded. Shoulders tense.
Lois walked up behind him. “Saved all the cats already, huh?” she said wryly.
Clark turned half-way towards her, saying, “No cats today. Not yet anyway.”
He didn’t smile. There wasn’t even a chuckle.
Something was off.
Not Clark Kent off, as in “accidentally wore two different socks again” off. No, this was deeper. Quieter.
Groaning, Lois crossed her arms and sat herself on the edge of the conference table. “All right, spill it. You look like a kid who just found out Santa isn’t real.”
“Santa is real, Lois,” said Clark absentmindedly.
“Uh-huh.” She decided not to get into that at the moment. “Come on, Clark. You’re a Grade A liar, but you’ve never been good at lying to me .”
He creased his brow, fully turning toward her. “I was decent.”
“Not decent enough. I figured out your big secret, for one.”
“Hey, Cronkite, I was the one who told you.”
“Only because I put it all together first.”
“Hounded me about it is more like it,” Clark muttered, only half-a-smile on his face. “But that’s you, isn’t it? You’ll follow a story wherever it goes. Off a cliff, if you have to.”
“Flattery won’t save you, Smallville,” said Lois. “And for the record, that’s only happened twice.”
“Pretty sure I can think of three times-”
“Twice. That thing with the Toyman doesn’t count.”
“If you say so,” Clark said wryly.
Some ice had broken but not enough for Clark to shine through. Silence was threatening to fall, and Lois would be damned if she let it.
“Come on,” she prodded gently. “Don’t shut me out. Talk to me.”
“... It’s nothing, Lois, I-” He frowned, looking forlorn. “I just can’t stop thinking about him.”
God, Lois hated when people played the pronoun-game. Fortunately, it didn’t take a genius to guess what him Clark was referring to. “Is this about Mali?”
Surprisingly, he shook his head. “Not Mali. I’ve…It’s been getting better. I was at his old spot this morning, actually. Talked a bit with Reggie and left some new flowers.”
“Okay. Is this about the dog?”
“No.”
“Your biological dad?”
“No.”
“Then who?” Lois’ lips curled. “Not Luthor?”
An almost snort. “Close, but no. It’s, um… It’s about Ultraman.”
“Ultraman?” Lois was surprised. “That cheap knockoff of you that kicked your ass?”
“He didn’t completely kick my ass,” Clark said, but it was on autopilot, with none of his heart in it. “And he wasn’t just a knockoff.”
Lois blinked.
“Clark. He was a clone,” she said slowly. “A failed clone designed to kill you.”
“But he didn’t choose that, did he?” said Clark, still looking down. “He didn’t ask Luthor to make him, and he… He didn’t ask to die.”
The words hung between them with a weight not even Superman could have lifted.
Clark shifted, crossed arms tightening. The gloom seemed to cast his handsome face into shadow.
Lois watched him, fascinated and endeared.
He wasn’t built for guilt. Taking a kaiju’s firebreath head on? Easy peasy. Going for a swim in an anti-proton river? No sweat. A splinter in his conscience? That could fester. Like the time he had forgotten to thank the busdriver and sulked about it the rest of the day.
“I had him,” Clark was saying, his voice low. “At the end. He was right there, I saw the debris falling, and I pushed him right into it. I knew it would take him down with it... I could have flown to him, grabbed him.”
“Could you?” Lois asked sharply.
“I could have tried.” Clark looked at her, just as sharply. “I should have tried.”
“Clark, from what you’ve told me, you were barely winning. You were bleeding, the city was going to pieces, and Ultraman wasn’t going to stop. You couldn’t just lie there and take it, and you had to stop Luthor, so you made a call. That wasn’t just the right choice, it was the only choice.”
Stubborn as ever, he shook his head. “There’s always a way.”
Lois rolled her eyes. “Not in real life. Sometimes there’s only one way, even for Superman. One horrible, messy gut-wrenching way.”
“He looked at me, you know,” Clark whispered. “Just as he was falling. He didn’t speak, just screamed. He looked at me, like he knew that I just chose to… to kill him.”
Something about the way his voice broke made Lois hurt inside. She slid off the table and walked up to him.
“Clark,” she said, her voice quiet now, “you didn’t owe that thing your life.”
“He wasn’t a thing. He was still alive, Lois. Just because he was a clone doesn’t mean-”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous,” she cut in. “From everything we know Ultraman was pretty much a trained attack dog in a you-shaped package. Your dad said our choices makes us who we are, right? Well, even without Luthor’s commands, he chose to keep pummeling you and would have continued to do so. It’s what he was designed for.”
“But that’s exactly it,” Clark insisted miserably. “He was what Luthor made him. What if there was more in him? Maybe it was twisted. Twisted a-and broken, but… that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be fixed.”
“You’re not a mechanic,” said Lois. “The AC in your apartment proves that.”
A flicker of old annoyance broke through the shadow in Clark’s face, in the way only the SuperShit-hashtag had managed to do.
“The tech in the Fortress is easier to fix,” he mumbled. “Whoever wrote that manual is a hack-”
“You,” she cut in, “are Clark Kent from Smallville. You call your mom every day, you write decent fluff pieces, you’re a great kisser, and you save the world on your lunchbreak. But you can’t fix everything.”
Clark looked her right in the eyes.
“I wish I could,” he said.
“I know.”
“Also,” he gave her the smallest smile, “you think I’m a great kisser?”
Rolling her eyes, Lois smacked him on the shoulder. “Keep it in your pants, Smallville. We’re on the clock.”
Clark stepped closer, leaning down so his forehead brushed against hers.
“And when we’re not?” he whispered right in her ear.
“Then it’ll be up to you to prove me right, won’t it?” Lois breathed in his.
Clark’s smile grew. “Now that’s journalism I can get behind.”
Their lips did not meet, even though both of them desperately wanted them to. Instead they leaned closer, arms winding around each other in a wonderful, warm embrace. Lois rested her head on Clark’s chest, listening to the comforting beat of his heart.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
It was liberating, how easy those words now fell out of her. The two of them stood like that for a good while, neither in a hurry to let go.
“I just can't stop thinking about how close we came,” Clark said quietly, rubbing circles on her back. “Not just the rift, but the pocket universe, Krypto, Rex and his son, Jarhanpur, Terrific and the others. So many things had to go right. If it hadn’t…”
“But it did,” said Lois, reluctantly dislodging and looking imploringly up at him. “We stopped it. All of it. And we got the truth out. That bald bastard is in a cell where he belongs.”
Clark nodded slowly, then he frowned.
“Think he’ll stay there?”
Lois smirked. “He’s in Belle Reve, Clark: Amanda Waller territory. If even half of what my dad’s said about her is true, we’re good. Besides, not even Lex Luthor can lawyer his way out of starting a war.”
Outside the frost glass walls they could hear Cat and Jimmy chatting about logistics of the Planet’s TikTok account, followed by the sound of Steve arguing with Ronnie that this whole Superman debacle was nothing compared to, “the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school football.”
But nothing was as loud as Perry’s bellow of, “LANE! KENT!”
And just like that, the spell was broken.
“Come on,” Lois said. “We better get out there, or I think Perry might just finally pop a blood vessel.”
Clark nodded, still looking far away. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
Lois sighed. “You’re going to keep beating yourself up over this, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
Half-exasperated, half-fond, Lois took his giant hand in her’s. “You can’t save everyone,” she said.
Clark looked at her. Behind the glasses his blue eyes - bluer than blue, a blue found nowhere on Earth - were soft.
And then he smiled.
Not the picture perfect smile used when Superman posed for the press. Nor was it the abashed, accepting one for whenever someone teased the mild-mannered reporter in the office.
It was Clark’s smile. And, in a way, it was her’s too.
“No,” he said, and gave Lois’ hand a light squeeze. “But I’m going to try.”
Somewhere else…
He flew, sort of.
At least, it felt like flying. But it wasn’t flying like when he soared above the skyscrapers of Metropolis or the LuthorCorp facility. It was like being pulled apart, slow and syrup-thick.
His fists twitched. Big, cracked things. He remembered hitting. He remembered missing. He remembered a… a… like a car, but bigger. A van? A bus! He remembered a bus.
He had fallen.
Somewhere behind, there had been light. Noise. A red cape. The sun shining. Shining on him . And then the light got small, as he got pulled into a place with no sound and too much dark.
His brain, a soft rock in his big skull, didn’t like thinking. It would start to hurt if he made it do too much. But it still tried. Tried to remember why he was flying but not flying. Why everything was pulling him in and stretching him like taffy. His legs didn't know where they were. His arms reached out but didn’t touch anything. Just the pull.
The black wanted him. That much he knew. The black was hungry.
He felt his long, unwashed hair flapping, even though there was no wind. That confused him. It made his lip curl up like when he used to growl at mirrors. The thing in the mirror was like him, but always wrong. Off. Something about the eyes and mouth and chin. About everything.
The stars were gone now.
He didn't like that. Not because he liked stars - he didn’t care much about shiny dots - but because they were things. Things to look at. Now it was all nothing. Big, black, forever nothing.
But not empty.
The nothing was full. Crammed with stuff he couldn't see. He could feel it bubbling around him like the soup they would serve him when he had been good.
No up. No down. No yesterday. No tomorrow. Just fall.
Fallfallfallfallfall.
He wasn’t scared. He didn’t think he could be scared. He’d never been allowed to.
Pain? That was gone. Somewhere behind with the fists and the fire-eyes and the sound like a planet breaking. That man… Superman? Yes. He had burned. And punched. And talked, always talking. The thing hadn’t listened. Talking was slow. Useless. Weak.
But he had won.
Because now, the thing was going somewhere else.
The black twisted. It wasn’t quiet. It had a hum. Deep and low, like a growl in a cave too big to see the end of. It tickled his insides.
He giggled once. It was a stupid sound, like wet gravel. Then he forgot why he laughed.
Light? Maybe.
Maybe light? A shimmer? He saw something wriggle. Shapes in the dark. Colours that weren’t colours. Like if red and green had a baby made of wrong .
He reached for it.
His fingers bent the wrong way. He didn’t care.
Because now he was part of the black. It slid into him, through his skin that could withstand all punishments, and into his thinking.
He opened his mouth.
Nothing went in, but something came out. A sound? A name?
He’d been called something. Not Superman. That was the real one. The dangerous one.
He was not that. He had been Made To Serve.
Ultraman, some of them had called him, but only on the outside. On the Inside - the cold, steel home where Mr. Luthor and others watched him behind glass, in rooms with the terrible machines and too bright lights - there had only had one word for him.
He was the thing.
Yes. That felt right. Thing. Like a glove with no hand. A toy with no child. The black seemed to agree. It pulsed around him, squeezing and letting go, breathing him in and out.
He liked that.
Maybe this was an end. Maybe this was a place where thinking stopped.
Where he could stop being.
Then… crack.
No sound. But he felt the crack. A seam, splitting through the dark. A line of not-dark. A peel of light in a place where light shouldn’t be. A colour that made his brain try to crawl backward.
The light grew.
It took forever, and it took no time at all.
The light pulled him now. Faster than the black. Faster than he’d ever gone. And that was saying something, because he was fast. That’s what the ones in white used to say.
“Faster than him, sturdier than him, stronger than him.”
Lies, all of it. Would he had lost if it wasn’t? He wasn’t any of those things.
Just a thing.
The light stretched. Turned into shapes. A ring? No, a mouth.
And it was opening.
Something waited on the other side. He could feel its cold breath across his face, even as the black screamed behind him. Or maybe it laughed. Hard to tell.
Then for one agonizing instant his stretched self turned cold. He thought he could see- no, sense something, but not with any of his enhanced senses. Not in the mouth, but just outside of it, there was something… huge. Huge and old and powerful and it was watching him. It was almost as bad as Mr. Luthor’s worst stare.
But he wasn’t scared. Couldn’t be scared.
Because he couldn’t be hurt.
He couldn’t.
He thought of a red cape and a smile and punches and kicks.
He clenched his fists.
And the thing fell forward.
Into somewhere else…