Clois One-Shot Fanfiction #3
I lost you once, I'll Lose You Never
Author's note: This is my one-shot clois fanfic from the smallville prompt I posted in X. Please do note that the events that took place here is different from the actual series. I hope you guys like it :))
Six months felt like a lifetime when someone you deeply care and realized you love is gone. Clark Kent learned that the hard way.
The world had ended once already. Not in fire, not in a single catastrophic scream, but in fractures: In the way Metropolis rebuilt itself with steel and stubborn hope; in the way the sky looked the same after Doomsday and yet never felt safe again; and in the way Clark learned how silence could be louder than screams.
Lois Lane had vanished in that silence. It was supposed to be her story. She’d chased Doomsday into the wreckage of the city with a camera and a notebook and the kind of reckless bravery that terrified him. When the explosion came, Clark found blood instead of a body. Found her jacket burned through at the shoulder. Found the echo of her heartbeat and then…nothing.
Zod was gone. Doomsday was gone. And, the most fearful thought, Lois was gone with them. But Clark searched anyway. He searched until the planet felt small. He searched across oceans and deserts, through ruins and warzones. He searched through space, through abandoned Kryptonian outposts that still whispered in a dead language. He listened for her heartbeat until his ears rang and his chest felt hollow. He listened until hope hurt worse than grief. Six months… six months of waking up every day knowing he could save the world—but not the one person who anchored him to it. He stopped smiling.
The Daily Planet tried to move on. Chloe watched him with worry she didn’t voice. Martha hugged him a little longer every time he came home to the farm, as if she could keep him tethered with her arms.
And then, on a peaceful Friday afternoon, Lois Lane came back. It was almost insultingly normal. The sky over Smallville was clear. The wind moved gently through the cornfields. Clark stood in the barn doorway, sleeves rolled up, grease on his hands, listening to the rhythm of the farm, when the world shifted.
It wasn’t a sound at first. It was absence.
A silence where there shouldn’t have been one.
Clark froze. His heart slammed so violently against his ribs, his senses flared instinctively, spiraling outward, desperate and terrified and…
Familiar. Fast. Controlled. Alive.
Clark was gone in a blur of red and blue.
She stood at the edge of the Kent farm like a ghost made real. Lois Lane wore black.
Not mourning black. Tactical black. Her jacket fit too well, reinforced at the shoulders and elbows. Her boots were worn like she’d walked miles in them. Her hair was longer and her posture was rigid, disciplined, and coiled.
Clark stopped ten feet away, afraid that if he moved any closer, she’d vanish again. He won’t let that happen again. “Lois,” he breathed, she turned. Her eyes locked onto his—and whatever he’d hoped to see there shattered instantly.
No recognition nor relief. No sarcastic remark about him stalking her or standing too close.
Just calculation. Target acquired.
“Kal-El,” she said calmly.
The name hit him like a punch. She now knows was what he thought. But that doesn't matter to him at the moment, because standing few feet away from him, is the woman he never expected to fall in love.
“Lois,” he tried again, stepping forward. “It’s me. You’re— you’re safe now.”
Her mouth twitched, not into a smile, but something colder.
“You tried to kill me,” she said, cold.
“You destroyed my world,” she continued, voice flat, rehearsed. “Zod showed me everything. What you are. What you become.”
She moved faster than he expected.
A flash of motion. A weapon drawn. Kryptonian tech, humming faintly with red energy. Clark barely dodged as the blast scorched the air where his head had been. He didn’t retaliate.
Didn’t even raise his hands.
“Lois!” he said, louder now, grounding himself in the sound of her name. “Zod lied to you.” Her jaw tightened.
“Of course you’d say that.” Another shot. He let it hit his shoulder this time, absorbing the impact without flinching. Her eyes narrowed.
“You’re not fighting back,” she observed.
“I won’t,” Clark said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“That won’t stop me from hurting you.” She lunged.
Clark caught her wrist mid-strike. The contact sent a shock through him that had nothing to do with force. Her skin was warm. Real. Her pulse raced beneath his fingers. For half a second, just half, something flickered in her eyes.
Confusion. He saw it. She ripped free with a snarl and spun, sweeping his legs. Clark went down hard, more from shock than impact. She stood over him, weapon trained on his chest.
“You hesitate,” she said quietly. “That’s your weakness.”
“No,” Clark replied, looking up at her. “Losing you are.”
Her finger tightened on the trigger. And then sirens wailed in the distance. Lois’ head snapped toward the sound. Tactical assessment. Exit routes. Risk evaluation.
When she looked back, Clark was standing again, but he hadn’t moved closer.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said. She studied him for a long moment. Then she vanished. Clark didn’t chase her, it nearly broke him not to. Instead, he stood in the empty field, heart racing, replaying every second of the encounter. Every word. Every flicker of hesitation he’d seen in her eyes. She was alive. And she wanted him dead.
That night, Clark stood on the roof of the Daily Planet. Metropolis glittered beneath him, alive and stubborn and unaware that one of its fiercest defenders had become its most dangerous weapon. Lois Lane moved through the city like a shadow. He could feel her now, her presence threading through the urban noise. She stayed just far enough away to avoid detection. Close enough to remind him she was there. Watching. Waiting. Zod hadn’t just taken her. He’d rewritten her. Clark clenched his fists.
He would undo it. No matter what it cost him.
Lois watched Kal-El from across the city, her breath steady, her mind disciplined.
Zod’s voice echoed faintly in her memory: calm, persuasive, absolute.
He will beg. He will lie. He will weaken you.
And yet, her hand trembled where she hadn’t expected it to. She remembered blood. Fire. Falling. She remembered someone screaming her name. She didn’t understand why that memory hurt. Or why, when Kal-El looked at her like she was the last good thing left in the universe, her chest felt tight in a way no conditioning could erase. She pushed the feeling down. Mission first. Always.
Clark Kent stopped sleeping after Lois came back. Not because he didn’t need rest, his body still regenerated, still endured, but because sleep invited dreams. And dreams invited memories. Lois laughing in the bullpen. Lois stealing fries off his plate. Lois standing far too close, chin lifted in defiance every time she challenged him. Lois bleeding in the rubble.
Lois calling him Kal-El with someone else’s certainty.
So Clark stayed awake. He listened.
He learned her patterns. Lois Lane moved through Metropolis like a professional predator. She didn’t linger in one place long enough to be tracked conventionally. She used rooftops and maintenance tunnels, abandoned buildings and shadowed alleyways. She avoided cameras, not by destroying them, but by slipping between blind spots with uncanny precision. Zod had trained her well. Clark felt her presence at night, a low hum beneath the city’s noise. Sometimes she circled him deliberately, letting him know she could reach him whenever she wanted. Sometimes she vanished for hours, and the absence gnawed at him worse than fear. He made a decision on the third night. He would stop running.
The ambush came at dawn. Clark stood on the bridge overlooking the river, hands resting on the railing, eyes on the horizon as the sun bled gold into the sky. He didn’t bother pretending he didn’t know she was there.
“You’re predictable,” Lois said behind him. He turned slowly. She stood ten feet away, silhouette sharp against the rising light. No weapon raised this time. Just her gaze, steady and assessing.
“I wanted you to find me,” Clark said.
“That’s your second mistake.”
She moved fast but Clark was ready. He sidestepped, letting her momentum carry past him instead of countering. She adjusted instantly, spinning, elbow aimed for his throat.
He caught it. Again, the contact sent something electric through both of them.
“You won’t fight,” she said, breath close now.
“Because fighting you won’t bring you back,” he replied.
Her eyes flicked to his mouth before she could stop herself. A fraction of a second.
She broke contact violently, shoving him back with enough force to crack the pavement beneath his boots.
“You don’t get to decide that,” she snapped.
Clark straightened, dust settling around him.
“I know you’re still in there.” Her laugh was sharp, humorless.
“You don’t know anything about me anymore.”
“I know you hate being told what to do,” he said.
“I know you never take a shot unless you’re certain. I know you don’t pull the trigger unless you believe you’re right.”
She hesitated. Just a beat. Zod’s voice surged in her mind, cold and corrective. He weaponizes emotion. Terminate the threat. Her hand snapped up. Clark didn’t dodge.
The blast hit him square in the chest, knocking him back into the bridge railing. The metal bent around his spine with a shriek. Pain flared—sharp, Kryptonite-laced energy—but he stayed upright. Lois stared.
“You should be dead,” she said quietly.
“I know,” Clark answered. Something inside her twisted. She lowered the weapon.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why won’t you fight back?”
“Because I love you, I'm sorry I realized it too late but I can’t live without you Lois. For the past six months, I was living but not alive, you are my lifeline Lois. I lost you once, I'll never lose you again.”
The word hung between them, raw and unguarded.
Lois recoiled like he’d struck her.
“That’s not real,” she said. “That’s what he wants you to say.”
“No,” Clark replied softly. “That’s what I want to say.”
Her head shook once, violently, as if trying to dislodge the sound of his voice from her skull.
“Stop saying my name.” Clark stopped.
She breathed hard, chest rising and falling beneath the tactical jacket. For a moment, she looked less like a weapon and more like a woman standing at the edge of something terrifying.
“Zod showed me the future,” she said. “Cities burning. Worlds falling. You standing at the center of it all.”
“Then why does it feel true?”
“Because fear is easier than hope.” Her gaze snapped back to his.
“Hope gets people killed.”
“I know,” Clark said. “But so does giving up.”
The silence stretched. Then she was gone.
Chloe Sullivan slammed her laptop shut and looked up just in time to see Clark appear in a rush of displaced air.
“You let her shoot you?” Chloe demanded.
“I didn’t let her,” Clark said. “I just didn’t stop her.”
Chloe crossed her arms. “Clark, this isn’t Lois being stubborn or confused. She’s conditioned. Zod turned her into a sleeper agent with feelings.”
“You think you can reach her.”
Clark met her gaze. “I know I can.”
Chloe sighed. “Then you’re going to need help.”
Lois didn’t sleep either. Sleep was dangerous. Sleep loosened discipline. But when it came, it came violently. She dreamed of cornfields and warm sunlight. Of a red jacket draped over a chair. Of hands—gentle, careful—bandaging her legs. She woke with a gasp, fingers curled around nothing.
Zod’s teachings surged to the forefront of her mind, pushing the images away. Emotion is weakness. And yet, Her heartbeat wouldn’t slow.
Three nights later, she cornered him. Clark didn’t sense her approach until she was already inside his space, blade at his throat, pinning him against the wall of an abandoned train station.
“You wanted me to find you,” she said. “Now I have.”
Her body was close... too close. The scent of metal and rain clung to her. Her breath brushed his jaw.
“You could kill me,” Clark said calmly.
“But you won’t.” Her grip tightened.
“Because if you wanted me dead,” Clark said, voice low, “I wouldn’t still be breathing.”
Her eyes searched his face, anger, doubt, something dangerously like longing flickering beneath the surface. Zod’s voice thundered in her mind. End him. Her hand trembled.
Clark lifted his hand slowly, deliberately, and covered hers.
The contact shattered something inside her.
A memory slammed into her consciousness, Clark pulling her out of wreckage, whispering her name like a prayer. His arms around her, unbreakable. She gasped.
“Get out of my head,” she hissed.
“I’m not in your head,” Clark said. “I’m right here.”
Her blade clattered to the floor. For a moment, she looked terrified. Then furious.
She shoved him away and fled, leaving Clark alone in the echoing station, heart pounding, not from fear, but from hope. Zod watched through her eyes as she collapsed onto a rooftop miles away. The conditioning strained.
The human emotion fought back. He would correct it. Soon. Clark stood in the quiet afterward, breathing in the place where she’d been. He knew now. Zod hadn’t erased Lois.
He’d buried her. And Clark would dig her out, no matter how deep the grave.
Zod chose the Fortress of Solitude for the final correction. It was poetic, in a cruel way.
The crystalline structure rose from the Arctic ice like a blade driven into the earth, humming with ancient power. Kryptonian glyphs glowed faintly along its spires, responding to Lois’s presence as she approached responding to the trace of alien technology threaded through her nervous system. She didn’t question why her feet carried her there. She didn’t question the pull in her skull, the command buried beneath layers of discipline and pain.
She only knew one thing: End Kal-El.
Clark felt it the moment she crossed the ice. The Fortress sang differently when she arrived, its harmonic resonance shifting, uneasy. Clark stood at the center platform, breath fogging in the cold air, heart pounding so hard he felt it in his throat.
“She’s here,” he whispered. Jor-El responded in a voice too calm for what was coming.
“Zod has activated a secondary control protocol.”
Clark clenched his fists. “I won’t fight her.”
“That decision may result in your death.”
Ice cracked beneath his boots as Lois emerged from the corridor, framed by light refracting through crystal walls. She looked almost unreal, dark against the luminous blue, eyes sharp, movements precise. But something was wrong.
Her jaw was clenched so tightly her teeth ground. Her breathing was uneven. One hand pressed briefly to her temple, as if holding something back. Zod’s voice poured through the chamber, amplified and omnipresent.
“Kal-El,” Zod intoned. “Observe the perfection of my creation.” Lois’s eyes snapped to Clark.
“Don’t listen to him,” Clark said immediately, stepping forward. “Lois, whatever he’s doing—fight it.” Her lips parted.
For a heartbeat, he thought she might answer him. Then her expression hardened, shutters slamming down. She attacked.
Clark barely moved in time. She drove him backward with a series of precise, brutal strikes—Kryptonian-enhanced strength amplified by tech. Ice shattered beneath them, fragments skidding across the floor. Clark blocked, redirected, absorbed, but never struck.
“Stop!” he shouted as she pinned him against a crystal pillar, forearm pressed to his throat.
“Why won’t you fight me?” she demanded, voice shaking. “Why won’t you just end this?”
“Because this isn’t you,” Clark said hoarsely.
“And even if it were—I’d still choose you.” Her arm faltered.
Zod’s voice sharpened, “She is weak because you allow her to be.” Lois screamed.
She staggered back, clutching her head as the tech inside her flared violently, glyphs burning to life along her jacket and skin. Clark was at her side in an instant.
“Lois—look at me,” he pleaded, hands hovering, afraid to touch her and afraid not to. “I’m right here.”
“Make it stop,” she gasped. “He won’t—he won’t let me—”
Zod’s laughter echoed through the Fortress.
“You belong to Krypton now,” he declared. “Your memories, your attachments—they are liabilities.” Clark made a choice. He pulled her into his arms. The moment her body collided with his, something broke. Not the tech. The wall around her heart.
Lois froze, breath hitching as Clark held her—firm, unyielding, real. His arms wrapped around her like they always had, like they were meant to.
“Remember this,” Clark whispered fiercely, forehead pressed to hers. “Remember the farm. Remember the bullpen. Remember the way you never gave up on me—even when you should have.”
Her hands fisted in his shirt.
Images exploded through her mind.
The Kent kitchen at dawn. Coffee and sarcasm. Clark’s shy smile when she caught him staring. The way they banter. The way Lois hates that she loves him.
The glyphs flared violently, then cracked fractures spiderwebbing through the tech as Lois screamed, memories flooding back too fast, too sharp. Clark held her through it all.
“I’m here,” he repeated. “I’ve got you.”
The Fortress shuddered, Jor-El spoke urgently.
“Zod’s control matrix is destabilizing.”
Lois gasped as the final restraint snapped. She collapsed against Clark, shaking, sobbing, her face buried in his chest.
Zod’s voice fractured, distorted.
“This is not... possible—”
The light dimmed. The presence vanished.
Silence fell over the Fortress. Clark sank to his knees, still holding her, pressing his face into her hair like he might disappear if he let go.
She pulled back slowly, eyes searching his face.
“…You look terrible,” Lois said hoarsely.
A laugh broke out of him, half-sob, half-relief. “You tried to kill me.”
“Yeah,” she said faintly. “I’m gonna need you to unpack that later.”
He cupped her face carefully, reverently, as if afraid she might shatter.
“You remember?” he asked.
Her eyes filled with tears, “Everything.”
The way he looked at her then—raw, undone—made her breath catch.
“I thought I lost you,” Clark whispered. “Every day.”
Lois swallowed hard. “I was screaming your name,” she admitted. “I just… couldn’t hear myself.”
Emotion surged between them, thick and electric, the space suddenly too small to contain it. She reached for him first. Her hands slid up his chest, fingers curling into his collar as she pulled him down to her. The kiss wasn’t gentle.
It was desperate. Months of fear and loss and longing crashed together as their mouths met—hard, sure, undeniable. Clark responded instantly, hands framing her waist, drawing her closer as if he could fuse her back into his bones.
She kissed him like she was proving he was real.
Like she was reclaiming something stolen.
Clark kissed her like a man brought back from the dead.
Their lips parted and met again, slower this time, deeper breaths mingling, foreheads touching, the world narrowing to the warmth between them. Lois’s fingers slid into his hair, tugging just enough to make him groan softly against her mouth.
“You’re here,” she murmured between kisses.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, brushing his thumb beneath her eye, wiping away a tear. “Not ever.”
She kissed him again—longer, surer—until the tension finally eased into something warm and grounding. When they finally pulled back, they stayed close, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other in.
“Next time,” Lois said quietly, “maybe don’t let me shoot you.” Clark smiled—a real one, for the first time in six months.
“No promises.” She rolled her eyes and leaned into him, and the Fortress glowed softly around them, no longer a battleground but a witness.
The Fortress of Solitude was quiet in a way that felt earned. Not the cold, echoing silence it usually held, but something gentler. The crystals pulsed faintly, their glow steady instead of sharp, as if the structure itself had relaxed now that the conflict was over. Lois sat on the ice floor, knees drawn to her chest, staring at her hands. They were still shaking. Clark knelt in front of her, close but careful, as though she were something fragile and precious he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch yet. The adrenaline had drained from his body, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion he hadn’t felt in years.
“You’re safe,” he said quietly. “Zod’s gone.”
Lois nodded, but her eyes didn’t lift.
“I remember everything,” she said. “All of it. And… I remember what he did.”
Clark’s jaw tightened. She glanced up then, catching the flash of anger in his eyes.
“Hey,” she said, reaching for his wrist. Her fingers wrapped around him firm and grounding.
“I should’ve found you sooner,” he said, voice rough. “I should’ve—”
“No,” Lois interrupted sharply. “You don’t get to do that either.”
She tugged him closer until he was sitting in front of her, their knees touching.
“I fought it,” she said. “Every day. Even when I didn’t know what I was fighting. So don’t you dare take that away from me by blaming yourself.” Clark swallowed hard.
“You were so strong,” he whispered.
Her mouth trembled into a small, sad smile. “Yeah, well. I’d rather not have to be.”
Without warning, she leaned forward and pressed her forehead into his chest.
Clark froze for half a second, then his arms came around her fully, wrapping her up like he’d been holding himself together just long enough to do it right. Lois exhaled shakily.
“I’m really tired,” she admitted.
“I know,” he murmured, rubbing slow circles into her back. “I’ve got you.”
Her fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt like she was afraid the ground might give out again.
“I hurt you,” she said softly. “I tried to kill you.” Clark’s grip tightened.
“You came back,” he said. “That’s what matters.”
She pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes shining.
“Why?” she asked, even though she already knew.
“Because losing you once nearly broke me,” Clark said honestly. “I wasn’t going to survive doing it again.”
Her breath caught. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek soft, lingering, and reverent. Then another near his jaw. Not desperate. Not frantic.
When she finally kissed his lips again, it was slow and tender, like a promise instead of a lifeline. They stayed like that for a long time—touching, breathing, healing. Eventually, Lois rested her head against his shoulder, eyes drifting shut.
“Don’t let go,” she mumbled.
Clark kissed her hair, “Never.”
Metropolis didn’t notice the shift right away.
The city was used to surviving impossible things. But Chloe did. She noticed it in the way Clark walked into the Watchtower without that haunted look in his eyes. In the way Lois followed him, coffee in hand, leaning into his space like it belonged to her again.
“Okay,” Chloe said slowly, watching them from behind her screens. “Either the world ended again and I missed it, or you two finally stopped pretending.”
Lois smirked. “Wow. Took you long enough. Clark smiled, embarrassed but happy. They didn’t talk about Zod publicly. They didn’t talk about the conditioning or the nightmares or the scars Lois still carried beneath her jacket. They talked about work. About corruption and stories that mattered. About late nights at the Planet and bad takeout and the city that never quite gave them peace, but gave them purpose.
Sometimes, Clark would wake up in the middle of the night, heart racing, expecting silence where Lois should be. Every time, she was there.
Sometimes shaking. Sometimes muttering. Sometimes just breathing softly beside him.
And every time, he pulled her closer.
One evening, they stood on the roof of the Daily Planet, the city glowing beneath them.
Lois leaned against him, arms crossed, chin tilted up at the stars.
“You know,” she said, “I’m still mad at you.”
He glanced down. “For which part?”
“For thinking you had to carry everything alone.”
She turned to face him fully, hands gripping his jacket. “We save each other,” she said. “That’s the deal.”
Clark smiled, the kind of smile that came from being known completely.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s the deal.”
She kissed him then, unafraid and certain, the city watching and not understanding how close it had come to losing them both. But they understood. And this time, they weren’t letting go.
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