A/n: Sorry again for the long wait between updates! I can't even blame it on school this time, although I will blame it on Batman, lol. He wanted to spend some time with Clark and refused to let me write about Lois ... but now he's learning to share a little bit, heehee. :-P Anyway, what was I doing? Oh yes ... next chapter!

Chapter Eight: Is This What You Were Looking For?

"Are you asleep?" Lois whispered, directing the question, not at Superman, but at the darkness hovering above their heads.

From beside her, there came the slightest sigh, followed by the slightest chuckle, and a soft, "No."

For the moment, Lois didn't say anything in response, and let it rest at that. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, listening to her own heartbeat, and to the breathing of the man next to her. She drummed her fingers against the mattress. She wished that there was something she could do to distract herself from her current reality, and everything that it entailed.

After the revelations about Zod, and the possibility of there being multiple universes containing multiple incarnations of everyone and their cousin, she and Superman had talked for a good while longer. They had discussed other potential explanations for what was happening, and more importantly, they had discussed potential ways to fix it. In the end, though, one thing had become clear above all else: they weren't going to be able to do anything about this situation tonight.

And so here they were, lying side by side on the mattress, neither of them sleeping, neither of them voicing the thoughts that were surely raging through both of their minds. Lois turned her head to the side to look at Superman. His back was to her, shoulders hunched in a way that made her think of those little pill bugs that curl up into balls when you poke them. There were still so many things that she wanted to ask him, from how Zod had managed to take over, to why the Lois in this world was apparently having an affair with him when she was really married to … Clark?

For once, though, Lois fought her curiosity, and kept quiet. Superman had said that he needed to get some rest before going to work in the morning—apparently he worked in some kind of factory, along with most of the people in Metropolis—but Lois suspected that, really, what he needed was more than a good night's sleep. It hadn't taken him long to drop the subject of "his" Lois's possible death, but the haunted look had remained in his eyes long after the fact, lingering like an after image that follows a flash of bright light. And so Lois watched him, eyes following the strange, defeated curve of his shoulders, and she kept quiet.

-----

"Are you asleep?" a voice asked, slipping into Lois's subconscious.

"I was," she grumbled as she opened her eyes, although that wasn't entirely true. She had been dreaming fitfully, dancing along the razor's edge that separates sleep from wakefulness, entertaining visions of home, but always aware of her foreign surroundings. She had dreamt of Richard playing with Jason, of Lucy and their parents—of the Planet staff even. Jimmy toying with his camera, Perry dishing out assignments, Clark tripping over the waste bin next to his desk for the tenth time in a day—

"I'm sorry for waking you," Superman apologized.

"That's okay," Lois answered, trying to make out his face in the dark. He was lying on his back now, too, so that they were nearly touching at the shoulder and along the length of their arms. She felt the urge to reach out and take his hand—she would have only needed to move her fingers over by a centimeter—but she didn't. Almost as if he had sensed her small desire, he shifted away from her, and for some reason, Lois felt slighted.

"This is awkward," Superman chuckled, not looking at her.

"You don't say," Lois remarked. She rolled over onto her side, turning her back on him to make up for her earlier thoughts of even touching him.

Come on, Lois, she berated herself. Just because you find yourself in Oz doesn't mean you're not still engaged. She rubbed at the band of her engagement ring with her thumb, swiveling it back and forth on her finger.

"Why don't I sleep on the floor?" she suggested, at the same exact time as Superman. They had both sat half way up, and were now staring at each other.

"It's your apartment, I should be the one—" Lois began, scooting towards the edge of the mattress.

"No, no, it's fine. I really don't mind—" Superman was talking over her, gesturing for her to stay put, and starting to get up himself.

Lois grabbed his arm. "I'm not even tired. It was daytime before I ended up here—"

"I can't let you sleep on the floor—"

"Who said anything about letting me sleep on the floor?" Lois demanded, practically hanging from his arm now. Somehow, she managed to drag him back down onto the mattress next to her, although it was probably only because he let her. "You. Lie down here. Now. I am sleeping on the floor, with or without your permission, and that's final."

"You always have to have everything your way, don't you," Superman laughed. He grabbed her by the elbow as she tried to move away, then seemed to think better of it, and released her. "You'll be really uncomfortable."

"Stop being so chivalrous," Lois groaned.

"I'm not being chivalrous, I'm being considerate. Besides," Superman grinned at her, mischief twinkling in his eyes, his smile glowing even in the shadows. "Isn't that why you fell for me?"

For a second, Lois could only gape at him. If it hadn't been for her ankle, she would have jumped to her feet. As it was, she could only reach for the nearest pillow and fling it at him. Another surge of anger, this one stronger than ever, was threatening to engulf her. She thought of the argument she'd had with "her" Superman, and what he'd done to her. She thought of this Superman, having liaisons with another man's wife—with her double. And Clark—for the first time, she found herself wondering where he was in this universe, how he was faring, whether he was aware of this mess. She knew that she wasn't really the one hurting him, but she still felt terrible nonetheless.

"I don't know why I never saw it before," she shook her head at herself, laughing bitterly, before rounding on the Man of Steel. "How can you be so arrogant? Do you honestly believe that, because you have all these powers, you're allowed to toy with people? That everyone should love you blindly? That you can do anything you want in your personal life because you've stopped a few earthquakes? Huh? Answer me, damn it."

Lois whisked the sheet off the mattress, balled it up, and hurled it at him as well. He caught it and held it along with the pillow she'd thrown a few seconds earlier, obviously startled by her latest outburst. His eyebrows had jumped skywards, and his eyes had gone wider than Lois had ever thought possible. As for Lois herself, she was breathing heavily now, her pulse roaring in her ears. She tore her gaze away from him, feeling that she might start screaming uncontrollably if she had to look at the expression of feigned innocence that he wore for one second longer.

"Lois, I'm sorry," he finally said after a long silence. "I didn't mean to say that. I don't believe … any of that. I just … you're so much like her. For a moment … for a moment I forgot that you're not—"

"That I'm not what? Your mistress?" Lois spat, still not looking at him.

"No, that—what?" he asked, suddenly sounding very confused, and more than a little angry. "Is that what you think she is to me?"

Lois took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and rubbed at her temples with both hands. "You know what? It doesn't matter. What you do here is none of my concern, because I'll be gone—"

She gasped, cutting off abruptly as he took hold of her wrist. "I am married to the Lois Lane here," he told her through gritted teeth. "How dare you suggest that I treat her with anything less than the utmost respect, when she is the only—" he stopped, his voice breaking. "She's the only reason I have left to live."

With that, he held her left hand up to her face, and she realized that what she had thought was her engagement ring was actually a wedding band. Well, all things considered, that wasn't much of a surprise. But then he released her, and extended his own hand so that she finally got a good look at the ring he wore, the one she had caught a glimpse of earlier, and it—it matched her own perfectly.

"But before, you said that … but you called me … but you …" Lois trailed off as she began to realize what it all meant. On impulse, she reached out with both hands and dragged her fingers through Superman's hair, until it hung down into his eyes in shaggy, black chunks. She kept going after that, letting her fingertips trail down his forehead, past his eyebrows. She closed his eyelids, covering his eyes as though she was about to surprise him with something, and all the while he kept perfectly still, as if what she was doing made complete sense to him. Which, she decided, it probably did.

Biting the inside of her lip, she splayed her fingers wide, making something of a mask out of her hands. He opened his eyes, eyelashes brushing against her skin as he did so. Blinking, he peeked out from between her fingers, then raised his eyebrows in expectation.

"No," Lois tilted her head, observing her own handiwork. "That isn't the same as a pair of glasses at all."

All the same, though, she had found the word on the tip of her tongue. She swept her hands along both sides of his face, jerking away abruptly, almost as if she had been burned, when she realized that she wasn't just touching him anymore, but caressing him.

"It did seem like you might not know about my identity," Superman—or was it Clark?—said. "I wasn't sure, though."

"Couldn't be bothered to ask, huh?" Lois remarked, feeling strangely … unmoved by this revelation. It seemed like she should be angry, or intrigued, or blown away, or … something. Instead, she felt frighteningly indifferent, as though someone had just corrected her spelling on a tricky word. So it's K-E-N-T and not S-U-P-E-R-M-A-N? Oh. Okay. Got it.

"Well," Clark gave her a sheepish look—and now he was definitely Clark, with that expression on his face. "With everything else that we're dealing with, it sort of slipped my mind."

He stood up and began walking across the room. "So, um, the Clark in your universe—he never told you who he was?"

"I think that maybe he was trying to," Lois speculated, suddenly remembering some of the last words "her" Superman had said before flying away the other night: Lois, there's one more thing you need to know. "You haven't really told me who you are, either, though. Are you Clark? Or are you Superman? Or …?"

"Hmm. Good point. I haven't had to think about that one in a while. Growing up, I was just Clark Kent. And now, um, I suppose I'm just Clark again," he was walking back towards her now, holding something that he had picked up off of a table on the other side of the room. As he got closer, she recognized the object in his hand as Clark's pair of coke-bottle glasses. "During the time in between, though … I was a lot of things, then. Sometimes I even got confused. Especially when I was around you," he offered up a self-conscious chuckle, and slipped the glasses on. "Is this what you were looking for earlier?"

"No," Lois told him, shaking her head. Behind those thick lenses, Clark's eyes widened in surprise—and at first, Lois was surprised by her response, too, although she quickly realized that it was the truth. Gently, she removed his glasses, and folded them up with two clicks. "There aren't many things in my life that make sense anymore. Clark made sense, though. He was my friend, and that was enough. I was never looking for him to be anything different."