Chapter Text
I’m not even sure now what I felt that first morning, waking up from only an hour or so of sleep with what felt like a lead fist in my stomach. The entire world spun faster for me than anyone else, making me dizzy as if I had been pummeled to the end of my tolerance. Everything was off-kilter, unreal. In the space of only a few days, in what felt like the blink of an eye, I had all that I had wanted for the last year or so of my life, short of the literary prize I’ve always sought. And then we left that place and reentered a world that had been taken over in his absence, making him regret all that had happened between us. Suddenly it was gone, over, as quickly as the battle he fought to restore things to their proper order.
I knew it the moment I saw the look in his eyes, the way he turned to me. Even before he spoke a word. I had been the one to upset the balance; I was now a liability. Whether we liked it or not, being with me had interrupted his mission. He loved me, I know he loved me. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind when he stepped into that chamber. He never would have defied his father if he didn’t. But I was a selfish luxury that he couldn’t afford as Earth’s protector. What was it his father said, “ Is this how you repay their gratitude? By abandoning the weak, the defenseless, the needy - for the sake of your selfish pursuits?” Maybe he was right, maybe not. All I know was that all the brave words I had voiced the night before were only that: words. And I had shards were my heart had once been. As stupid and purple and girly as that sounds, it’s dead on the money. How I managed to get through the confrontation with him the next morning, I’ll never know.
He seemed to be in pain, somewhat hurt by the situation that we were in, unhappy. But I’ve come to believe that that was more due to my distress than anything. I wanted to be stronger than that, be the strong and sure woman that he’s always known me to be, a pretty face with an intelligent brain and a steel spine. But just seeing his face that morning was like scrubbing your heart with steel wool. I was forcing myself to hold on then, having him there in front of me, trying to be caring and sensitive while he carefully chose words to make things easier, make our mistake seem like something less than it was. Yes, a mistake. “Look, Lois, someday you’ll….” You’ll find somebody? The fact that he could even think it stung, that it didn’t pain him to say it out loud. That he could stand to think of me with someone else even before I could myself. I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt so wounded in my entire life.
I tried to shrug it off, hoping for an instant that he’d just leave. But then he made a comment about liking worrying about me, which was just too much. I broke then, my damned traitor mouth letting every sharp-edged thought out into the open. Like a fool, I turned around as I finished, crying as I looked over at him. I remember an incident in my childhood when I had scooped up a handful of finely-broken glass and rubbed it between my fingers out of curiosity, to see if it wasn’t softer when ground up. The pain I felt then came back to me at that instant, as he murmured to me, “I don’t know what to say.”
And like a schoolgirl with a crush, like the fool I’ve always been for him, I responded back to him what he had said to that reply that night in his Fortress. “I don’t know; just tell me you love me.” I didn’t even have time to realize what I was saying, or how it sounded. All I cared about was just that, another reassurance that it hadn’t been a mistake, that he had truly felt for me before his mission got in the way. After a moment, he slipped the glasses off. That last kiss was the tenderest and most bittersweet I’ve ever known. At some point during, I remember seeming to black-out, reality seeming to slide away. When I started to come-to, I realized from the look on his face and the fact that his glasses were intact, he thought I had forgotten. He thought he had ended it between us, it seemed. Something about that kiss…
Seems that whatever he had done had something of an amnesiac effect, enough so that it took some time to have those thoughts come back. Time in which life went on as it always had, same old Clark, same old Lois, same old banter. A month went by. Fragments of memory teased at the edge of my mind, memories of events that seemed like dreams to me, but they seemed nothing more than daydreams of the sort I had had since the day I met him. And then one day, Clark Kent didn’t come to work. Didn’t call, didn’t leave notice with Perry. When called, his mother mentioned something about travel, needing to get away from the city for a while. Then Superman disappeared from our skies. I called everywhere, checked with all other news agencies. Scoured every photo and news service bulletin. I even found excuses to be a foreign correspondent for a time, in hopes of finding a clue. Nothing. As if he had vanished into nowhere. He was simply and completely gone. As much as I told myself that I didn’t care, that he had only been a crush, only a relative daydream, I felt my heart break and wondered what had happened, what had gone wrong? Where did he go? And why?
And then the memories came back just in time to discover that I wasn’t the only one he left behind.