Chapter 1: After the Fall
The rain started as a dull patter on the roof of Lana’s car, a rented sedan that still smelled faintly of antiseptic and air freshener. By the time they’d navigated the dark, winding roads from the cemetery to the old Lang house, it was a relentless, roaring downpour, a solid sheet of water that the wipers fought a losing battle against.
“You’re not driving back to Metropolis in this,” Lana said, her voice firm but soft, cutting through the hammering noise. She didn’t wait for an argument. She just killed the engine and pocketed the keys. “Come on. Spare room’s made up.”
Lois just nodded, her energy for defiance completely spent. The day had been a long, gray smear of pain. The black dress she wore felt like a lead weight. She followed Lana up the gravel path, the stones slick and shiny under the porch light, the wind whipping her hair across her face.
The house was exactly as she’d imagined it would be. Old, but meticulously kept. It smelled of lemon polish and the faint, sweet scent of dried lavender from a bundle on the mantelpiece. A world away from the metallic, humming energy of Metropolis. It was quiet, a deep, settling quiet that the storm outside only seemed to emphasize.
“Bathroom’s down the hall on the left,” Lana said, leading her up a creaking staircase. “There are fresh towels in the cupboard. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen if you get hungry.” She pushed open a door to a small, neat bedroom with a quilt-covered double bed. “It’s not the Four Seasons, but the roof doesn’t leak. Usually.”
“It’s perfect,” Lois mumbled, and she meant it. The simplicity of the room was a relief. There were no memories here. It was a blank slate.
Lana lingered in the doorway for a moment, her arms crossed against a chill Lois couldn’t feel. “It’s okay, you know. To not be okay.”
Lois just gave a tight, brittle smile. “I know.”
She didn’t sleep. She lay in the foreign bed, listening to the house settle and the storm rage. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the casket. Not the grand, symbolic one the world had seen, but the simple, polished wood box that had been lowered into the Kansas earth. Clark’s earth. She thought she’d been prepared for the emptiness, but this was a different kind of void. It was a silence where there used to be a heartbeat, a stillness where there used to be impossible speed.
When sleep finally took her, it wasn’t kind.
She was running through the Daily Planet, but the corridors were endless, twisting like a maze. The floor was tilting, and she could hear a terrible, metallic screaming. She rounded a corner and there he was, Clark, in his suit, but it was torn and dirty. He was on his knees. He reached for her, his eyes wide, not with fear, but with a profound, heartbreaking apology. “Lois,” he said, and his voice was just a whisper, a rustle of dry leaves. Then the light in his eyes went out, not all at once, but like a city having a blackout, block by block, until there was nothing left but a dull, gray void. The screaming got louder. It was her own.
She woke with a gasp, a strangled cry caught in her throat. The room was dark, the storm still howling outside. She was tangled in the sheets, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The weight of the dream, the crushing finality of it, pressed down on her chest, making it hard to breathe.
The door creaked open. A sliver of hall light cut across the floor.
“Lois?”
It was Lana. She was silhouetted in the doorway, her form backlit, clutching a faded blue robe around herself.
Lois couldn’t speak. She just shook her head, pulling her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself smaller. The tough, Pulitzer-winning reporter was gone, stripped away by the raw, childish terror of the nightmare.
Lana didn’t turn on the light. She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped with her weight. “Was it the… the falling one?” she asked softly.
Lois shook her head again, swallowing hard. “Worse. He was just… gone. The light went out of his eyes.” The words came out in a broken whisper.
Lana didn’t offer empty platitudes. She didn’t tell her it was just a dream. Instead, she reached out, her hand hesitating for a fraction of a second before she gently brushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from Lois’s forehead. Her touch was cool and startlingly gentle.
“I have that one too,” Lana murmured. “Sometimes he’s in the cornfield behind the old house. He just… dissolves into the stalks.”
The shared specificity of it broke something open inside Lois. A sob escaped, harsh and ugly in the quiet room. She leaned forward, and Lana was there, her arms coming around Lois’s shaking shoulders. It wasn’t a dramatic, cinematic embrace. It was quiet. Practical. A holding together of something that was coming apart.
Lois buried her face in the soft terrycloth of Lana’s robe. She smelled like sleep and soap and a faint, clean perfume. It was a real smell, a human smell. It grounded her. The frantic pace of her heart began to slow, syncing with the calmer, steadier rhythm of Lana’s.
She became aware of the solid warmth of Lana’s body through the robe. The way her hand was moving in slow, soothing circles on Lois’s back. The quiet sound of their breathing in the dark. The storm outside was fading to a steady, soaking rain.
Lois lifted her head. Their faces were close, inches apart in the dim light. She could see the tracks of old tears on Lana’s cheeks, glistening faintly. She could see the deep, unspoken loneliness in her eyes, a mirror of her own.
Lana’s gaze dropped to Lois’s lips for a heartbeat, then flicked back up. Her hand stilled on Lois’s back.
The air in the room changed. The grief was still there, a vast, dark ocean around them, but in this moment, they were on a tiny, intimate island. The need for comfort, for connection, for feeling anything other than this crushing loss, became a physical force in the room. It was dizzying. Terrifying.
Lana’s breath hitched. She didn’t pull away.
Lois, acting on an impulse that came from a place deeper than thought, closed that small, impossible gap.
The kiss wasn’t passionate. It was hesitant. A question. A search for an anchor in the dark. Their lips were chapped, salty from tears. It was clumsy and achingly sad, and for a single, fleeting second, it filled the void. It was a spark of life in the house of the dead.
They broke apart just as quickly, both of them breathing a little unsteadily. The reality of what they were doing, who they were mourning, crashed back down around them. The silence now was thick, charged with confusion and a shocking, nascent heat.
Lana didn’t speak. She just looked at Lois, her eyes wide and searching. Then, slowly, she shifted on the bed, lying down beside her on top of the quilt. She didn’t try to kiss her again. She just wrapped her arms around Lois once more, holding her tight against the storm and the night, a silent pact forged in shared, impossible grief.
The silence stretched, filled only by the fading drum of rain on the roof and the ragged sound of their breathing. Lana’s arms were a safe harbor, her body a solid warmth against the chilling void of the nightmare. Lois focused on the steady thump of Lana’s heart beneath her ear, a rhythm so vitally, painfully alive. It was a anchor in the swirling dark of her grief.
Then, a shift. Imperceptible at first. The hand on her back, which had been offering comfort, slowly splayed, fingers pressing more firmly into the tense muscles of her spine. The touch was no longer just soothing. It was possessive. A question asked with skin instead of words.
Lois froze, every nerve ending suddenly screaming to attention. This was wrong. This was confusing. This was the only thing that had felt real in weeks.
She tilted her head back, her eyes searching Lana’s in the near-darkness. The loneliness she saw there was a perfect reflection of her own, a bottomless well that seemed to swallow all the light. Without a word, Lana leaned down and captured her mouth again.
This kiss was nothing like the first.
It was not hesitant. It was not a question.
It was a desperate, starving answer.
Lana’s tongue swept into her mouth, hot and demanding, and Lois met it with a guttural sound she didn’t recognize as her own. It was a raw, open-mouthed clash of teeth and tongue and grief. All the polished edges of the Pulitzer-winning journalist, all the gentle grace of the small-town girl, were stripped away. What was left was pure, unvarnished need.
“God, Lois,” Lana gasped, breaking the kiss to trail her mouth down Lois’s jaw, her teeth scraping against the frantic pulse in her throat. Her hands were everywhere, pulling at the thin cotton of Lois’s t-shirt, rucking it up until her fingers found bare skin.
Lois arched into the touch, her own hands fumbling with the tie of Lana’s robe. “Just… feel something,” she panted, the words a broken plea. “I just need to feel something that isn’t… pain.”
The robe came loose. Underneath, Lana was naked. Her skin was impossibly soft, her breasts full and heavy in Lois’s trembling hands. Lois lowered her head and took a taut nipple into her mouth, sucking hard, laving it with her tongue until Lana cried out, her hips bucking against Lois’s thigh.
“Fuck, yes,” Lana groaned, her fingers tangling in Lois’s dark hair, holding her there. “Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop.”
It was a frenzy after that. A violent, beautiful collision. They shed Lois’s t-shirt and panties in a frantic tangle of limbs, the quilt bunching beneath them. The storm inside the room now rivaled the one outside. There was no finesse, no slow build. There was only the frantic, clawing need to obliterate the silence he had left behind.
Lana rolled on top of her, her dusky gold skin glowing in the slivers of light from the window. Her eyes were dark, wild. “I’m going to fuck you until you forget your own name,” she whispered, her voice husky and low.
She slid down the bed, her hands hooking under Lois’s knees, pushing her legs apart without ceremony. She didn’t pause. She buried her face between Lois’s thighs, her tongue finding her clit with an unerring, ruthless accuracy.
Lois’s back bowed off the bed, a sharp, shattered cry tearing from her throat. It was too much. It was not enough. Lana’s tongue was a wicked, knowing pressure, circling, flicking, sucking. It was a brutal assault on her senses, a direct, electric current to a system that had been shut down for weeks. Pleasure, sharp and shocking, began to burn through the numbness, a forest fire consuming the dead undergrowth of her grief.
“Oh, god… Lana… right there,” she sobbed, her fists clenching in the sheets. The coil of tension in her belly tightened, a spring wound to its breaking point. She was babbling, filthy, incoherent words she’d never spoken aloud. “Don’t stop, please, don’t stop, make me come, just make me fucking come.”
Lana growled against her, the vibration pushing Lois even closer to the edge. One of Lana’s fingers, then two, pushed inside her, curling, stroking a spot deep within that made Lois see stars behind her clenched eyelids. The world narrowed to this room, this bed, this woman’s mouth and hands and the devastating, life-affirming things they were doing to her body.
The orgasm ripped through her without warning. It was a convulsion, a seismic release that shattered the last of her control. She screamed, a raw, ragged sound of pleasure and agony all twisted together, as the waves crashed over her, wiping everything clean for one blissful, empty moment.
She was still trembling, boneless and spent, when Lana moved back up her body. Lana’s face was wet, and Lois didn’t know if it was from her own sweat or Lana’s tears. Their mouths found each other again, this kiss slower, deeper, tasting of salt and sex and shared ruin.
Lana guided Lois’s hand down between her own legs. “Your turn,” she breathed, her voice cracking. “I need to feel you, too.”
Her skin was slick, hot silk. Lois slid her fingers through the wetness, finding the hard, swollen nub of her clit. Lana moaned, a deep, throaty sound, and began to move against her hand, her hips setting a frantic, desperate rhythm.
“Harder,” Lana begged, her breath hot in Lois’s ear. “Don’t be gentle with me.”
Lois obeyed, her fingers working faster, pressing harder, driven by a ferocity she didn’t know she possessed. She watched Lana’s face, watched the beautiful features contort in ecstasy, watched as the mask of composed grief completely shattered. This was what they needed. Not tenderness, but this raw, screaming confirmation that they were still alive, that their bodies still worked, that they could still feel this.
Lana’s climax was a silent, shuddering explosion. Her whole body went rigid, her mouth open in a soundless cry, her inner muscles clenching rhythmically around nothing. She collapsed onto Lois, her sweat-slicked skin pressed flush against hers, their hearts hammering against each other in a frantic, synchronized beat.
For a long time, they just lay there, tangled together in the wreckage of the bed, breathing in the humid, sex-filled air. The storm had passed. The only sound was their slowly calming breaths.
Lois stared up at the ceiling, the ghost of Clark’s extinguished eyes finally banished from her mind. In their place was a different, more complicated darkness. The physical ache was gone, replaced by a deep, throbbing awareness of the woman in her arms. The scent of her, the feel of her, the memory of her taste.
Desire returns. It was a brutal, messy, and terrifying fact. It didn't fix anything. It didn't bring him back. But it was a spark in the cold, and for now, that was enough.