#loislane

His shoulders, usually so broad and capable of carrying the weight of the world, seemed stiffer these days, perpetually braced for impact.

You knew you were the source of that tension.

The weight you were putting on them was of a different, more insidious kind than any supervillain could muster.

It had been almost six years.

Six years of temperature charts, ovulation kits, and a special app on your phone that cheerfully notified you of your "most fertile window!" with a chirp that felt like a taunt.

Six years of hope so acute it was painful, followed by a crushing, soul-deep despair that arrived with a ruthless punctuality every twenty-eight days.

You didn't talk about your day anymore; you talked about cycles. You didn't make love; it was a ritual.

The desire for a child had started as a shared dream you had since you were young. Wanting at least three kids to fill your future home. You’d lie in bed in your first apartment, Clark’s arms around you, and paint the picture together.

"A little boy with your curls," you’d murmur, tracing his jaw.

"And a little girl with your smile," he’d counter, pressing a kiss to your forehead. "And maybe one more, just to keep them on their toes. We’ll need a big house with a yard. Somewhere they can run, maybe even fly without me having to worry."

"They’ll have your eyes,” you’d said with certainty. "All of them. I want them to have your kind eyes."

Now, that dream was a desperate, all-consuming need. It had eroded the foundations of your marriage, brick by painful brick.

The grief wasn't confined to the four walls of your home. It bled into everything.

It was the way you’d automatically drift toward the baby section in every store, your fingers brushing over impossibly small socks or a tiny onesie with a cartoon rocket on it. You’d stand there until the ache in your chest became a physical pain, then you’d flee, empty-handed and heartsick.

It was the way you’d had to stop babysitting for your friends. You used to love it. You’d be the first to offer to take little Sophie or baby Theo for the night, delighting in the temporary, borrowed joy.

Now, the sound of a child’s laughter in your quiet apartment was a torture. Handing them back to their parents felt like having a limb ripped off. The last time, you’d cried in your car for twenty minutes before you could drive home. You’d made up a flimsy excuse about a busy work schedule after that.

Your friends had stopped asking.

It was the way they asked, too. The constant, well-meaning, utterly devastating questions.

"You two are so good together," they’d say. "When are you going to start a family?"

"Clark would be such a great dad," another would sigh, as if you weren’t acutely, painfully aware of that fact every single day.

The worst was your friend Lena, complaining over brunch about her toddler’s tantrums, moaning, "Enjoy your sleep while you can! You’re so lucky you don’t have to deal with this!"

You’d had to excuse yourself to the bathroom, pressing a hand to your mouth to stifle a sob. You would give anything, anything, to be woken up by a crying baby. You felt lucky about nothing.

It was the way Ma and Pa Kent looked at you with so much hope during your visits to Smallville. Last Thanksgiving, it had come to a head. The table was laden with food, the smell of pumpkin pie filling the warm, cozy farmhouse.

"This house is too quiet," Martha had said wistfully, passing Clark the mashed potatoes. "I can’t wait for the day there are little feet running around this table. It’s built for a big family."

Jonathan had nodded, smiling at you both. "Best to get started when you're younger ya know, you don't want to be old parents like us."

It was a gentle, loving nudge.

It was a dagger to your heart.

You’d frozen, your fork clattering loudly against your plate. The room swam. You mumbled an apology, pushed your chair back, and fled to the guest room, collapsing on the bed as silent, heaving sobs wracked your body.

Later that night, back in Metropolis, an argument ensued.

"You couldn’t just smile and change the subject?" you’d cried, the frustration and pain of the day finally erupting. "You just sat there!"

"What did you want me to do?" Clark had asked, his voice strained with his own pent-up hurt. "They don’t know. They’re not trying to be cruel."

"It feels cruel! Everything feels cruel! The whole world is just… rubbing it in my face!"

The argument had spiraled, touching on everything and nothing, until you’d both fallen into a exhausted, miserable silence.

The one that was the cruelest twist of all: seeing Superman with children. On the news, there he’d be, landing in a park, surrounded by a crowd of laughing, cheering kids. He’d kneel down, talking seriously to a little boy, or he’d let a little girl try on his cape. The love and patience on his face was so profound it was like a physical blow. He was a natural. He was born to be a father. And you were the one failing to give him that. You’d have to turn off the TV, your stomach churning with a sickening mix of pride and utter inadequacy.

Everything about the situation was just so deeply unfair. So many women and even teens got pregnant without even trying, and you, someone who wanted it the most couldn't even do that.

You and Clark had looked into IVF but it was far too expensive for any of your salaries. Adoption was another one, but you had gotten a minor criminal conviction when you were young, so most adoption agencies refused to accept you and Clark.

The hopelessness of it all had begun to curdle inside you, turning into a quiet, constant despair. It started to manifest in new, painful ways.

You began to avoid physical intimacy that wasn't for conception. Why would you?

It felt like a lie, a cruel parody of the connection you once shared. It only served to remind you of what you’d lost. The act of sex itself had become linked to failure and heartbreak. It was no longer about love or pleasure; it was a traumatic exercise that ended, without fail, in disappointment.

You’d started crying in the shower, the sound of the water masking the choked, ragged sobs that you couldn’t hold back any longer. It was your only private place to fall apart.

One evening, you’d come home early from a miserable, solo walk through the park. You’d heard his voice from the bedroom, low and somber. He was on the phone.

"...I know. I just... I don't know what to do anymore." A long pause. You stood frozen in the hallway, your hand pressed to your mouth. "She's hurting so much, I hear her cry in the showers. And I can't fix it. I can't give her what she wants... what we both want."

Another pause, and his voice cracked in a way that shattered your soul. "I'm just... devastated it hasn't happened yet."

You’d backed away silently, retreating to the living room before he could know you’d heard. Devastated. The word echoed in your skull. He was putting on a brave face for you, but inside, he was as broken as you were.

It all came to a head one night. The app had chirped. The window was open. You’d initiated the ritual, your body moving on autopilot, your heart a numb, cold stone in your chest.

Clark was trying. He was always trying. He kissed you with a tenderness that felt like a brand, his hands roaming over your skin, trying to coax a response, to find the woman he married buried under the layers of grief.

But you were miles away. You were thinking about cervical mucus and basal body temperatures. You were counting the days. You were already bracing for the fall.

Clark was inside you, but he felt your detachment. He always did. But this time, he stopped. He went completely still above you, his breathing ragged.

"Look at me," he whispered, his voice rough.

You forced your eyes open. The look on his face was one of pure, unadulterated anguish.

"You're not here," he said, the words not an accusation, but a statement of heartbreaking fact. "You're just... waiting for it to be over."

You didn't deny it. You couldn't.

A tear escaped from the corner of his eye, tracing a path down his temple. "I can't do this. Not like this."

He pumped inside of you a few more times, bringing himself to his edge and in a movement that was both gentle and filled with a terrible finality, he pulled out from you. Clark's come landed on your bare skin, far from the womb you needed it in the most. But Clark refused to finish what had become, for him, an act of profound loneliness.

The rejection was absolute.

It was the ultimate failure. You had failed to conceive, and now you had failed to even perform the act required for it.

A raw, wounded sound tore from your throat.

He flinched as if you’d struck him. "Sweetheart, no, that's not—"

But it was too late. You were already scrambling from the bed, weeping uncontrollably, grabbing your robe and fleeing to the bathroom. You locked the door and slid down against it, your body wracked with sobs of utter humiliation and loss. You heard him on the other side, his knuckles resting against the wood.

"Sweetheart, please. I'm sorry. I just... I need you. I need my wife. Not just her body."

You couldn't answer. The words were lost in your tears.

That night was a line of demarcation. After that, the already scarce intimacy ceased entirely.

A long, cold winter settled over your marriage. You slept on your sides, backs to each other, a canyon of grief stretching between you in the king-sized bed. The silence wasn't just heavy anymore; it was frozen solid.

Weeks bled into months. The chill began to terrify you. You were losing him. You were losing everything.

One night, desperate to bridge the gap, to feel something other than this icy despair, you initiated. You turned to him in the dark and kissed him. It was a clumsy, desperate kiss, born of fear rather than passion.

He responded, because he was Clark, and he would never outright reject you. But his response was hesitant, confused. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for you to check an imaginary clock.

You tried to lose yourself in the sensation, to remember what it felt like to want him for him, but your body wouldn't cooperate. It was unresponsive, frozen by months of trauma and grief. You were just going through the motions, a marionette with its strings cut.

He felt it. Of course he did. He stopped, pulling back to look at you, his face a mask of pain in the moonlight.

"Stop," he breathed, his voice hollow. "Just... stop."

"What?" you whispered, fear clawing at your throat.

"You're just going through the motions. It's like... Gosh, it feels like I'm making love to a corpse."

The words were like a physical blow.

They stole the air from your lungs. He hadn't meant them to be cruel; they were a confession, torn from a place of such deep hurt that it left you both bleeding.

You stared at him, your eyes wide with shock and a pain so acute it was blinding. You didn't say a word. You just slid out of bed, walked into the living room, and sat in the dark until the sun came up.

He didn't follow you. 

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Today was a new day though.

You awoke with that dreaded notification that today would be a great day to get pregnant. A part of you wanted to ignore it, but deep down you knew you couldn't when today could be the day, even if you knew it wasn't.

So you waited for Clark to get back home from work, for him to finish the dinner you prepared before you finally spoke up.

"Clark?" Your voice sounded foreign, too bright in the thick quiet.

He looked up immediately, his Superman-speed reflexes nothing compared to the instant, wary attention he gave you these days.

A flicker of hope darted across his face before it was shuttered, replaced by careful neutrality. He knew what that tone meant.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"I want you." You didn't need to elaborate.

The neutrality on his face solidified into something that looked horribly like resignation. He nodded slowly, closing his laptop with a soft, definitive click. "Okay."

The journey to the bedroom was a silent funeral procession for the spontaneous, passionate love you used to share. Once inside, the routine was achingly familiar. You moved with a grim efficiency, shedding your clothes, getting into bed.

Clark followed, his movements gentle but devoid of the playful teasing, the worshipful touches that used to make you feel like the most precious thing on Earth.

He reached for you, his hand cupping your cheek, his thumb stroking your skin. For a glorious, heartbreaking second, it felt like it used to. Like he was seeing you. You saw the love in his eyes, fighting its way through the layers of grief.

But you couldn't let it in. You couldn't afford to get lost in him. This wasn't about connection. It was about results.

You turned your head, breaking the contact, and shifted into your back, pulling the sheet up to your chin. "I saw online that this new position is supposed to be-"

You started reciting the cold, clinical advice from a dozen online forums, your voice monotone.

Clark’s hand dropped from your face as if he’d been burned. The air in the room changed.

You closed your eyes, waiting. A minute passed. Then another. He hadn't moved.

Confused, you opened your eyes. He was just staring at you, and the look on his face finally, finally broke through the obsessive fog in your mind.

"Clark? What's wrong?"

He didn't speak at first. He just stared, and the devastation on his face deepened into something more profound: a heartbreak so complete it seemed to reshape the very air in the room. When he finally found his voice, it was low and rough, stripped of all its usual gentle warmth.

"You want me?" he repeated, the words laced with a pain that made you flinch. "Is that what this is? Because it doesn't feel like you want me."

He pushed himself up, sitting on the edge of the bed, his large back to you. The muscles there were coiled tight, a statue of suppressed anguish.

"You don't… you don't even see me, do you? You see a means to an end that keeps failing."

Tears pricked your eyes, hot and immediate. "That's not true," you whispered, but the protest was weak, hollow. A lie you told yourself.

"Isn't it?" He stood abruptly pulling on his pant, pacing away from the bed, running a hand through his black curls in a gesture of pure frustration.

"You haven't touched me unless it's this… this calculated effort in months. You haven't looked at me like you actually see me. You look through me. And now you say you want me, and you follow it up with… with instructions?"

His voice broke on the last word, and the sound was more shattering than any roar of anger could have been.

"I just… I want to get it right," you pleaded, the tears starting to fall in earnest now. "I want to give us the best chance."

"Our best chance at what?" he asked, turning to face you. His own eyes were glistening. "A baby? Or us? Because I'm starting to think you've given up on us if the baby doesn't happen."

The accusation hung in the air, toxic and terrifyingly undeniable.

"That's not fair," you choked out, sitting up and pulling the sheet around you like armor. "I want this for us!"

"Do you?" The question was a whisper, but it hit you with the force of a physical blow. "Because it feels like you want it for you. And I'm just the body you're using to get it. You haven't asked about my day. You didn't care that I had to stop a bank robbery today where a hostage was nearly killed. The only thing that matters is this… this obsession. This obsession that's destroying my wife."

The pain and the guilt curdled into something defensive and ugly. "Oh, and you're perfect?" you shot back, the words sharp and brittle.

"You're never here! You're off saving the world, and I'm just here. Alone. In this empty apartment. Waiting. For you, for a baby, for my life to start! You think I don't see you? You're the one who's never really here!"

"You think I want to be anywhere else?" he raised his voice, and the windows rattled in their frames. He never lost control like that. He took a shuddering breath, forcing his volume down, though the pain in it was superhuman.

"You have no idea what it's like for me. To hear your heart rate spike with hope every morning when you take that test, and then to hear it… break. To hear it shatter into a million pieces, over and over again for years. I hear it. Every. Single. Time. I have to stand there and listen to my wife's heart break, and I can't stop it. I can lift anything, but I can't fix this for you. I can't give you the one thing you want."

You stared at him, your sobs caught in your throat. He was right. Somewhere during this journey, the one thing you wanted shifted from him, to a baby.

His voice dropped to a broken whisper. "And then, the worst part… when the hope is gone for the month, you look at me and avoid me like I'm the one who failed you. Like I'm defective."

The fight drained out of you, leaving nothing but a cold, hollow shell. This was the core of it. The unspoken truth you’d both been too terrified to voice.

"It's not you," you whispered, the words barely audible. "It's me. My body is the one that's broken. It's my fault."

Clark was at your side in an instant, kneeling by the bed, his hands coming up to frame your face, his thumbs wiping away your tears. His own eyes were glistening.

"No. Don't you dare. Don't you ever say that. It's not a fault. It's not anyone's fault. It's just… life. It's hard, and it's cruel, and it's unfair. But it is not your fault."

He rested his forehead against yours, his breath hitching. "I miss you. Gosh, I just miss my wife. I miss us. I would rather live in this silence with just you for the rest of my life than have a dozen children if it meant not losing you to this… this grief. You are more important to me than any dream. You are the dream. You've always been the dream."

A sob wrenched itself from your chest, and you collapsed against him. He caught you, gathering you into his arms, holding you so tightly against his chest as you cried for all the lost months, the lost intimacy, the pain you'd inflicted on the kindest man in the universe.

"I'm sorry," you choked out against his neck, clinging to his shoulders. "Clark, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to… I just… I wanted…"

"I know," he murmured into your hair, his own voice thick with emotion. "I know, my love. I wanted it, too. But we've lost our way."

You cried until you had no tears left, until you were limp and exhausted in his arms. He held you through all of it, steadfast, patient, strong.

Eventually, he laid you back against the pillows and climbed in beside you, pulling you into the shelter of his body, your back to his chest, his arms wrapped around you. He held you not with desire, but with a profound, aching tenderness. He held you like you were something precious he'd almost lost.

"You're enough," he whispered into the dark, long after your breathing had evened out. "You have always been enough for me."

And for the first time in a long, long time, you let yourself believe him.

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author's note: i'm so proud of this, should i make a part 2??