Thanks to my beta KenJ!
From Part 9
“So, I might really be onto something with the helicopter explosion,” Lois concluded, not entirely sure yet that she was thrilled about that fact, given what had happened in her apartment.
“Yes, you might,” Clark conceded. “But it also means that he will strike again, if you come any closer to him. Next time, I may not be around to save you.” His expression darkened. “I should never have asked you to go after Luthor.”
“It was my decision to keep on investigating,” Lois stated, somehow managing to sound a lot more confident than she felt. “And I’m not looking into Lex Luthor in particular. I’m trying to find out what happened to Dr. Baines. That is my right as a reporter and I’m not going to let anyone keep me from doing my job. Not even you. I have to go back to Metropolis.”
She knew she sounded like a pouting child. Being patronized tended to bring that out in her, worse even when she felt that the other party was right. The thought of walking back into her apartment and facing the destruction there sent chills down her spine. Her five-lock-protected castle had been violated and it scared her.
“It’s too dangerous to go back there, Lois,” Clark hedged, clearly not comfortable with what he was going to say next. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. You may or may not continue your investigation; you may or may not find any evidence on his involvement in the explosion of Dr. Baines helicopter. No matter what you do, he’ll come after you.”
Lois furrowed her brows in confusion and folded her hands in front of her chest. “Why?” she asked simply.
“Because, after what happened tonight, he knows for sure,” Clark said ominously.
“Knows what?”
“About me – what I really am,” Clark muttered unhappily.
...I Knew The Truth
Part 10
If someone had asked Lois, how she had ended up in a cozy farm house with a cup of hot chocolate in her hands, she couldn’t have explained it. To her, it seemed like one moment she had been standing on a field, and the next moment she was sitting there on the sofa with an elderly couple. What had happened in between was a blur of bits and pieces she remembered. There had been the dim light on the front porch of a house she had not even noticed was in sight of the field Clark had landed on. She had been shaking hands with two sleepy strangers wearing their bathrobes and finally, Clark’s smiling mother had insisted on a hot beverage.
By some tacit agreement, Clark’s last confession had forged a truce between the two of them. Now they were all in the living room, sharing hot chocolate. Jonathan Kent, Clark’s father sat across from Lois in a wing chair, examining her with calm curiosity. His wife, Martha, shared the sofa with Lois. Martha’s eyes were darting back and forth between Lois and her son, Clark, who was pacing up and down in front of the fireplace. His cup, containing an extra helping of marshmallows, sat on the table, seemingly forgotten.
“So, is it true – you know about our son?” Jonathan Kent broke the silence.
Clark stopped pacing immediately, a look of surprise on his face as if he had not expected his father to start the conversation. “I had to show her, Dad. You know that. I couldn’t let her die,” he explained, before Lois had a chance to say anything.
Jonathan’s scrutiny remained trained on Lois. “Are you going to publish any of this in that paper of yours?” he asked, giving Lois the distinct impression that he knew a lot more about her than she did about him.
“I promised Clark that I wouldn’t, unless he said it was okay. I owe him that much after he saved my life,” Lois said defensively, feeling a little intimidated by the large man, who had the appearance of a teddy bear, but just as certainly would be fighting tooth and nail if necessary.
“After what happened tonight, the debt is not strictly on your side, Lois,” Martha chimed in and eyed her son warningly. “I think it’s time to tell her the complete truth, Clark.”
“Are you sure, Martha? We don’t know her all that well and she is a reporter, for Heaven’s sake.” Jonathan said.
“Hogwash! If she had wanted to print the story, she could have done so days ago!” Martha disagreed. “Besides, she already knows about Clark’s powers. How much worse could it get?” There was a smile on Martha’s lips, but the seriousness in her voice was unmistakable. It was obvious that she, too, was worried, even if she did her best to hide that fact.
Clark, who had kept standing in front of the fire place the entire time, raked his hand through his hair and heaved a sigh. His lips were drawn into a thin line, giving his face an even more ragged edge. His eyes were filled with dread, as his gaze met Lois’, ever so briefly, before he lowered his gaze again, staring at his feet. This brief moment however, brought on an epiphany. Ever since Clark had revealed his powers to her during those fateful seconds inside the shuttle and the short meetings afterwards, Lois had never once stopped to wonder what his revelation might mean for him. Now she realized with sudden clarity, how scared he was - and not only about the possibility of being exposed to the world. She had the feeling that he was hiding an even bigger secret.
“Everything you tell me is strictly off the record,” Lois vowed. “What makes you think that Luthor knows about you, Clark?” she asked in as gentle a voice as she could.
Heaving another sigh, Clark closed the distance between them, picking up his cup of hot chocolate, and sat down on the second sofa. Rolling the cup between his hands, he did nothing but watch the marshmallows dancing around in the liquid. The silence lasted so long, that Lois was beginning to doubt he was ever going to break it.
Finally, Martha could not take it anymore. “We don’t know for sure that Luthor knows.”
“Now, he does, Mom,” Clark said darkly. He looked up again, his focus solely on Lois. “You remember Luthor’s ball, how I told you that I saved his life?” Clark waited for her to nod before he continued. “He was mugged on a street right in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. Whoever did it was careful to do it as far away from the next town as possible. The emergency services would never have reached him in time. It was a fluke that I was driving down that same road. When I found him, I sent the girl I was riding with back to the next emergency phone.” Clark fell silent for a moment, taking a deep breath. “I managed to cauterize his wound with my heat vision, but Luthor was already pretty weak. I knew he probably wouldn’t survive the wait for the emergency services to arrive. Lana had always had a pretty bad sense of distance. It was a safe bet that she wouldn’t notice if I flew him closer to the next city. I thought Luthor was too out of it to care.”
“But he noticed,” Lois concluded.
Clark nodded. “I think he did. At first, there were only minor clues. He kept inviting us to have dinner with him. He exerted himself to establish a close friendship; he got me an internship at the New York Times and pulled strings to get me a job there after graduation. He also got Lana a job with his corporation. This whole thing made me uncomfortable, but I figured he was just grateful for being alive.” Full of self-contempt, he added. “I was so naïve, then.”
“The New York Times,” Lois whispered impressed, but managed to control herself in time. “Don’t you think that he was really just grateful?”
This time, Clark shook his head. He swallowed hard as if what he was going to tell her next was a sensitive subject. “Luthor also got closer to Lana. Not in a romantic kind of way, but I think the friendship he forged with her was stronger than ours had ever been – on her side anyway. Lana had always dreamt of a life in the big city. He was offering it to her on a silver platter.” Clark took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I was in love with Lana and I wanted to marry her. But I knew that was impossible unless I was ready to let her know the truth about me. So, one night I told her …”
As he broke off, the same impatience filled Lois that always rushed through her when an interviewee did not get to the point. But the look of sorrow in Clark’s eyes told more than words ever could. By the time he did continue, she almost wished that he had remained silent.
“She was terrified of me,” he whispered, jumping up from his place on the couch and walking over to the fire place again.
Any words of comfort stuck in Lois throat, threatening to choke her, as she watched Clark. His head was hanging low between his shoulders; his hands were balled into fists. Suddenly Lois felt like an intruder, a voyeur witnessing someone else strip bare to reveal his very soul.
“I returned to Smallville,” Clark went on, seemingly ignorant of the turmoil he had caused in Lois. “A couple of days later Luthor visited me as I was working on the neighbor’s farm. We talked while chopping wood. He told me that he had seen Lana and that she was taking the break-up just as badly as I was.” He turned to face Lois, something flickering in his eyes that she could not quite fathom. “When I had my back turned on him, Luthor attacked me with an axe.”
Lois gasped, staring at Clark open mouthed. “But you weren’t hurt, were you?” she ground out, figuring that was the logic conclusion.
Again, Clark shook his head. “There was something on that field that weakened me - a green glowing rock,” he continued. “I didn’t know then that such a substance even existed and I didn’t find the rock until many months later. It robs me off my powers. That day, I was lucky I hadn’t been too close to this rock or my injuries would have been a lot more serious. I had a large cut across my back and started to bleed profusely. The last thing I heard him say before I lost consciousness was ‘This shouldn’t have happened.’“
Lois still stared at Clark, not knowing what to say. But she didn’t have to, he wasn’t yet finished.
“Luthor brought me to my parents since he didn’t know how to contact an ambulance out here. He claimed that it had been an accident,” Clark finished his story. “With enough distance between me and that rock, I healed eventually. It took me days until I was completely back to my old self again.” Once again, he swallowed hard, setting the glasses back in place. “The next thing I heard was that Lana had died in a car accident,” he said with irritating calmness.
His expression turned matter-of-fact. “I believe Lana told him about me,” Clark concluded. “She was confused after I had revealed myself to her and I cannot exactly blame her. She needed a friend. Maybe that was what Luthor had been hoping to become all along, drawing Lana as close to him as he had – that she would turn to him.”
Clark’s face was still a mask of poorly disguised anguish. He sat down again, downing his cup of hot chocolate in on large gulp. “That’s what she must have done. Luthor finally had the last piece of the puzzle and he came right to me to get his evidence. He would have succeeded, if it hadn’t been for the strange glowing rock that robbed me off my powers. When his attack on me did not supply him with leverage that he wanted against me, he must have decided to kill Lana. She could have reconsidered, could have proven what kind of a man Luthor really is.”
The living room of the old farm house fell deadly silent. None of its four occupants seemed to know what to say, least of all Lois. She found it hard to merge the man she had gotten to know with the picture of Luthor Clark had just drawn. If any of what Clark had told her was true, it certainly explained the deep rift she had witnessed during the White Orchid Ball.
“Clark, you were unconscious when Luthor brought you here. You didn’t see the despair in his eyes, when he thought you were going to die,” Martha said quietly. “He was inconsolable, offering us all the help money could buy. It wasn’t until we cleaned your wound, revealing that it was fairly superficial that he calmed down somewhat. It could have been as he said; it could have been just a terrible accident.”
“Mom!!” Clark argued, his eyes narrowing in anger.
She held her hands up defensively. “I’m just playing the devil’s advocate here, Clark. You know, I’m on your side, honey. But if you truly want Lois to help you, she needs to hear the full story, not just your version.”
His shoulders sagged and he bent his head in acceptance. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“You better be,” she added, her eyes twinkling with mischief, making Lois wonder what kind of a woman Martha Kent was, even more so, when Clark’s mother finally turned to her. “This was a bit much for one evening, wasn’t it, honey?” she asked, her voice full of sympathy. Barely stifling a yawn, she continued. “I believe it’s time for all of us to get some sleep. Jonathan and I need to get up early.” The couch rebounded slightly as she stood up. Jonathan, too, rose from his wing chair, straightening his bathrobe.
“Good night,” the two older Kents wished in unison.
“Good night,” Lois replied automatically, eying Clark wearily, who was still sitting on the other sofa, brooding over what his mother had said.
“Clark will prepare a room for you, Lois,” Martha added and once more said “Good Night” before she followed her husband upstairs to their bedroom.
As if on cue, the old clock sitting on top of the fire place started ringing twice, announcing that another hour was over. Stirring from their silent musing, Lois and Clark looked at each other. Neither of them was sure what to say now that they were on their own again.
There was so much going on inside Lois’ head that she did not know where to start. The order in which her acquaintance with Clark was progressing seemed completely off. By some accident, she had been entrusted with his deepest secret and she had absolutely no idea how to handle that. And judging from the expression on his face neither did Clark. Now she had been invited to sleep in his home, which was another source for conflicting emotions. Should she be grateful for being safe, assuming that what Clark had told her about Luthor was true? Or should she be angry for being dragged from her home without her permission? After all, she hardly knew Clark, much less his parents, who could be harboring the same powers as he did. Perhaps, and her heart started to beat wildly at that thought, she was in more danger here than she had ever been in Metropolis.
“Are you tired?” Clark asked eventually
“I couldn’t sleep, anyway,” Lois admitted.
“Yeah, me neither,” he muttered softly, his honey brown eyes resting on her. He was still holding the empty cup of hot chocolate in his hands. “Can I get you anything, Lois?”
“No, I’m good,” she said, her voice quivering, because she really was not, far from it.
He had no trouble seeing through her flimsy veneer of bravery. “I’m sorry, Lois. Mom was right. This was a bit much for one evening.” He set his cup on the table. “Perhaps, I should have left you in Metropolis, it wasn’t exactly fair of me to bring you here. After all, we hardly know each other.” He gulped. “I can only hope that now that I told you everything I know about Luthor, you will forgive me for being so bold. After what happened to Lana, I was afraid that Luthor would use you to get to me.”
“Why would he use me?” Lois asked, curiously.
“The guy who attacked you shot me square in the chest before I knocked him out,” Clark confessed. “If Luthor learns that, he will know that my powers really exist. He will certainly assume that you know about them as well.”
Lois nodded her understanding, studying Clark’s face in silence. It was no question whether he was genuinely concerned. From years of experience as a reporter, Lois could usually tell if anyone was hiding anything. And she would dig her teeth into it, until she uncovered the truth. Thinking about it, she felt that Clark had nothing left to hide. He would tell her whatever she wanted to know about him. With Lex Luthor, it was different. He presented a shiny version of himself, always trying to impress the people around him. Getting to know the real man, Lex Luthor, would take long hours of peeling away all those layers of self-importance.
Heaving a sigh, Lois straightened her stance. “Where do we go on from here, Clark?”
“I don’t know. This is new to me as well,” Clark shrugged. “Perhaps we should start at the beginning,” he replied with a vague hint of a smile. Inching forward, he offered her his outstretched arm. “I’m Clark.”
“Lois,” she said, returning his smile.
“It’s nice to meet you, Lois.” His smile became broader, infectiously so.
“So, is this where you have been all this time?” Lois asked defensively. Despite herself, Lois felt drawn to Clark. She desperately wanted to be mad at him for taking her to Smallville against her will, for leaving her at all, for so many things she was not able to name all of them. But his smile and the pain in his eyes, they made it so infinitely more difficult to keep the professional distance she had imposed on herself. “At your parent’s house?”
“Most of it, yes,” Clark admitted, his expression sobering. “It all happened so quickly, I didn’t think – I just… swallowed the detonator. When I flew us out of the Shuttle, you didn’t even seem to register what was happening. I stuck around to make sure you were all right – that was when it all came crushing down on me,” he said softly, swallowing visibly. “You knew my secret. I was certain that it was going to be Lana all over again, plus a series of articles to expose me to the whole world.”
Lois nodded thoughtfully. “That was my first impulse. I wanted to write the story of the century, tell the world how I had escaped certain death. I had the whole article finished in my head. But when I started typing, I realized that I had been the only witness and that I barely knew anything about you, besides that you could swallow bombs.” She smiled ruefully. "Later, I stopped to think what such an article might mean for you. And I felt that you didn't deserve to be treated like that."
“Yeah, you said that,” Clark replied and cracked a small smile. “All I could think about was that you knew my secret; that everyone was going to find out. I panicked and rushed back here, trying to convince my parents to leave the farm. They refused and managed to talk me down somewhat until I was ready to wait what was going to happen.” He swallowed again, hard. “I could barely believe that my face was not printed all across the evening edition.”
Clark studied his hands intensely, as if trying to memorize every line. In truth, he was trying to avoid Lois. It did not take a genius to guess as much and Lois was pretty good when it came to reading people. Although he had taken her to his parent’s house, Clark was not comfortable with her being here. For him it was just a necessary evil, because he was even more afraid of the alternative - Lex Luthor finding out the truth about him. That only made it so much harder to stay angry at him for taking her to Smallville.
“The night you visited me – I told you I was not going to print the story. Why didn’t you come back to the Daily Planet?” Lois asked. “You could do so much more there than you can do here, hiding yourself.”
“I’m not exactly hiding myself,” Clark snapped back. “Luthor knows where my parents live, remember? I can’t leave them alone.” He looked at Lois angrily, but his gaze quickly faltered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you, it’s not your fault,” he added apologetically.
Lois took his hand in hers, squeezing it gently. “It’s okay, Clark. It’s been a rough night for both of us.” Figuring, that maybe the best course of action was to give him time, Lois yawned in an exaggerated manner. A second yawn followed the first, taking her a bit by surprise. “I’m kind of tired, now,” she said, realizing that it was not just an excuse.
“Of course,” Clark replied quickly and got up from the sofa. Moments later, Clark was on his way to prepare his bed for her, insisting that he sleep on the couch.
* * *
Clark was already up and about doing the dishes, when Lois came downstairs into the Kent’s kitchen after a short fitful night, filled with nightmares. Helpless against the yawn that cracked her jaw, she barely managed to hide it behind her hand. Clark obviously heard her and turned around, a cautious smile playing around his lips.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said, letting the plate he was just cleaning slide back into the foam. Grabbing a towel, he dried off his hands. “What can I get you? Coffee? Some toast, eggs?” he offered, obviously eager to turn over a new leaf in their relationship.
“Coffee is fine,” Lois replied, a bit ruffled by the normalcy of the situation. After everything she had learned about Clark, seeing him wash the dishes seemed just slightly off.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Clark invited her gesturing towards the table, while he got a mug out of the shelf and poured coffee from the pot sitting on the coffee maker. Without even asking, he added low fat cream and just the right amount of sweetener, stirring the beverage before he handed it to her.
“Thank you.” Lois took a sip, finding that it was exactly to her liking. “You know how I like my coffee?” she asked, surprised.
“I guess, I do,” Clark replied with a shrug and pulled out the chair opposite to hers. He eased down, giving her time to take another sip of her coffee, before he continued. “Lois, I think we should talk,” he said with an expression on his face that reminded Lois of someone who was about to rip a band-aid off. Whatever he was about to say, he wanted to get it off his chest as soon as possible, before he even had a chance to reconsider.
“We already talked yesterday,” Lois pointed out, mischievously, deriving some perverse pleasure from teasing him for reasons she could not even name.
“Yes, we did,” Clark squirmed and raked his hand through his hair, a gesture, Lois had learned, that meant he was nervous. “Well, actually, this morning Mom made me realize something,” he stalled, looking at her with puppy dog eyes, as if he wanted her to guess what he was about to say. Clark was such a pitiful sight, that Lois instantly forgot about teasing him some more. Instead, she looked at him expectantly. “Taking you here yesterday was a spur of the moment decision. And though you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want to, I kind of forgot that you won’t be staying here forever. I mean, I guess you wouldn’t want to, plus it wouldn’t solve the problem with Luthor.”
“You still think he’s going to come after me?” Lois asked.
Clark nodded. “It’s only logical. He must know by now that he was onto something all along – with the bomb in the Space Shuttle failing to go off and the tale his goon is going to tell him.”
“Assuming that he planted the bomb and sent the goon...” Lois took another sip of coffee, looking straight at her former partner.
A frown creased his forehead. “You still don’t believe me,” he concluded. “I told you, I heard him order the break-in. How else could I have been there in time?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you were watching over me, like you did for the past couple of days,” Lois said, reading on his face that her notion was spot-on. “Don’t you dare deny it - I saw you in front of the bar in Washington.” His silence, complete with the blushing of his cheeks was answer enough. “Relax, Clark. I do believe you. But we’re a long way from being able to prove anything.”
“That we are,” he agreed with a sigh. “Did you get anywhere following up on the helicopter explosion?”
Lois lowered her gaze, giving him a short shake of her head. “I’m still waiting to hear from Paul, a guy I know at the NTBS. It looks like the final report was faked and he wanted to see if he could get the author to talk to me,” she explained. “But I don’t think that he will.” Lois told Clark what she had learned in Washington and what Jimmy had found out later.
“I see,” Clark said, as she was finished. “So unless either Jimmy or your source come up with anything, you’ve hit a dead end.”
“It certainly looks that way,” Lois conceded quietly. “I could ask Bobby if he knows anything about the thug who broke into my apartment, but beyond that I’m running out of ideas.”
Clark merely nodded, resigned. It was obvious he was not particularly surprised at her lack of success. After all, he had spent years on this futile hunt and had not expected quick results. Still, it stung. Lois had never been good at admitting defeat – a trait that had contributed a lot to making her the reporter she was. She refused to take no for an answer, and she certainly was not going to accept it this time.
“I just wish I had not dragged you into this,” Clark muttered unhappily.
“Rubbish,” Lois disagreed. “You dragged me into nothing. I have run into it myself. Do you really think I wouldn’t have tried to get onto that Shuttle to interview the Colonists, despite Perry saying I couldn’t? I would have died there, if it hadn’t been for you, Clark.” She looked straight at him, ensuring that he heard every word that she said. “I’m not going to go into hiding now, Clark, and neither should you. If Luthor really poses a threat, he needs to be brought down. I’m not going to sit by idly and watch him commit crimes. You should be helping me instead of sticking your head in the sand.”
“This is not what I’m doing!” Clark protested heatedly. “Can you imagine what will happen when Luthor has his suspicions about me confirmed? He will stop at nothing to get me. You still have no idea what kind of a man he is. He will threaten the people around me to use my powers for his own benefit.”
“Then it’s all the more important that we put a stop to this!” Lois insisted. “You have the bomb he planted, that’s a start. Maybe we could prove that the bomb in the helicopter and the one in the shuttle were built by the same person.”
“One of those bombs went off, Lois. I doubt there is much left that would help us to prove anything at all,” Clark argued. “And I couldn’t risk leaving any evidence of my powers for Luthor to find. I threw the remains of the bomb into the sun.”
“You did what?” Lois asked, incredulously. She was not sure whether she was more shocked by the fact that Clark had destroyed their one piece of evidence or by the way he had disposed of it. A flying man who could throw things into the sun – that simply was too much to wrap her mind around.
“You experienced first-hand what happens when Luthor feels threatened,” Clark reminded her softly. “It’s too dangerous to try and get any closer to him, Lois,” he said, conflicted.
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Clark?” Lois replied warningly. “Don’t you dare patronize me! I can take care of myself.” Memories of the previous night returned involuntarily, making Lois feel a lot less self-confident than she wanted to let on. But she was not going to give Clark the satisfaction of winning this argument.
He chose to let the matter drop and pushed his chair back, before he got up. “I’m going to see if I can find out what Luthor is up to – how much he already knows,” he said instead.
“You can’t just run off and leave me here,” Lois protested. “I’m very well capable of going back by plane.”
“I’m sure that you are,” Clark replied, already half on his way out of the farmhouse. “I won’t be long.”
Seemingly ignorant of, or maybe in his case, invulnerable to the look she threw him, he left the house. Lois remained alone in the kitchen, fuming, her only company a half-emptied mug of coffee.
“Clark!” she yelled angrily. “Get back here now! I’m warning you!”
Lois grabbed her cup more firmly, ready to throw it against the door that had been bold enough to let him pass through. However, she managed to catch herself in time, remembering that she was not at home. So she allowed herself no more than a frustrated growl, vowing that she would be gone before he could return, no matter how quick he was. Lois was almost half out of the door, when she realized that she was not even wearing shoes, much less have any idea where on earth she was exactly. It could take her month to get to the nearest airport, for all she knew. Almost at the verge of tears, though she was never going to admit to that, she dragged herself back to the chair, drained of all energy.
It was right at that moment that the door of the old farm house was opened once again and a smiling Martha Kent entered the kitchen, carrying a bunch of vegetables in a wooden basket.
to be continued...
Last edited by bakasi; 05/18/16 09:03 AM.
