Second Choice: 10/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"Well," Clark said, "the situation isn't perfect, but I didn't ask you to marry me because I felt sorry for you. I asked you because I've been in love with you practically since the first time I saw you. Maybe that's the alien part of me showing. I don't know about that, but I knew I couldn't leave you to handle this alone when I loved you so much."
He was looking down into her face as he spoke and for all his lightning reflexes, she surprised him by reaching up to grab him by the ears and pull his face down to hers. When the kiss ended, he was smiling. "You'd better watch that, Mrs. Kent. You could start something you didn't expect."
"Oh, I expect it all right," Lois said. "If this is your baby, Mr. Kent, don't you think it would be better to -- oh, I don't know -- at least symbolically --"
"I may be practically invulnerable," he said, "but I'm not made out of stone, especially where you're concerned. Symbolically or not, if you really want me, I'm yours. You know that, don't you?"
She nodded. "Why don't you give me a few minutes to change, and then we'll see what sort of symbolism we can work out."
**********
And now, Part 10:
While Lois was changing in the master bedroom's small bathroom, Clark fished around in his dresser, looking for something appropriate to wear. What did one wear on one's wedding night when you hadn't been expecting to do more than sleep? He'd been half-convinced that, in spite of her earlier protestations, Lois only thought of him as a friend and her unexpected revelation that she wanted him as a lot more had left him somewhat disconcerted -- not unpleasantly so, but he hadn't really been prepared for it. He wasn't entirely sure of the dress code but his old striped pajamas definitely didn't seem very appropriate for the occasion -- especially since a quick peek through the bathroom door at his bride of less than ten hours showed him that she was arraying herself in the skimpiest articles of black lace and chiffon. The sight made him feel unusually warm all over and somewhat jittery as well. He didn't see how he could possibly measure up to that!
At last, despairing of finding anything appropriate, he seized his wallet and dived out the bedroom window, headed for Hawaii. Hopefully he could still find a store open there that could supply him with some sort of correct attire.
The trip to Hawaii at the top speed of which he was capable left a sonic boom rattling windows across the continent, and, had he but known it, caused the flight crew of more than one transcontinental airliner and at least one amateur astronomer ready to swear to the sighting of an unidentified flying object. As a result, however, he was back before Lois exited the bathroom, correctly attired (he hoped) in black silk boxer shorts that left his chest bare. It had been a bit of an extravagance but after all, this was his first night with Lois. The last thing he wanted was to disappoint her and to look like a hick farmboy compared to Ronnie Davis -- which he very much feared that he did.
The whole idea was slightly intimidating. Unlike his peers, the idea of "scoring" with a good-looking girl had never attracted him -- at least not to the extent that it apparently attracted the other guys in his social circle. Certainly he wasn't immune to the opposite sex but he'd found it fairly easy to hold such feelings in check -- at least until he'd met Lois. After that, she'd dominated his dreams on many nights and there had been more than a few occasions that he'd taken a quick flight to the Arctic to dive into a snow bank in an effort to distract himself from the places where such thoughts were leading him. But now that the occasion was actually at hand, it seemed suddenly as if his hands and feet were too big for him, his tongue had tied itself in knots and he had grown a second head. He wondered if it was normal to feel like this.
Quickly, he leaned forward to look into the mirror of his dresser and gave his chin a swift once-over with his heat vision. Then he ran a hand through his hair, frowning at the length of it in the back. A quick glance through the bathroom door showed him that Lois was brushing her hair. He had a few minutes.
With the skill that he had developed through necessity, he appropriated a comb and his shaving mirror and proceeded to trim his hair in the back. There. That looked less like a high school kid and more like an adult. He rapidly disposed of the strands of hair in the bedroom trashcan and turned to face the bathroom door just as it opened.
In spite of the fact that he had caught several glimpses of her through the bathroom door, she took his breath away. The black chiffon and lace were hopelessly ineffective as any sort of covering, and might as well have not been there at all. Clark had to remind himself forcefully not to drool.
"Wow," he said faintly.
Lois smiled almost timidly at him. "I wanted to look nice for you."
"You do," he said with certainty. "You look fantastic."
"So do you," she said. She cocked her head to the side, examining him. "You cut your hair," she added.
"I decided it was time to stop looking like a kid," he said. He crossed the short distance to her. "You're incredible -- and I'm a lucky guy."
She appeared to be studying his collarbone very intently. "Really?" she said.
"Definitely. And I wish I hadn't given you the impression that I wasn't interested in you," he added. "I might not be human but I guess I'm close enough because you're the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen."
"I wish I'd known how you felt." Tentatively, she reached up to caress his newly shaven chin. "So, do you think you could -- well, really be my husband? I want to be the wife you wanted."
"You *are* the wife I wanted," Clark said softly. He exerted all his courage and rested his hands on her shoulders. "Do you think I asked you to marry me out of pity? I've wanted you since the first time I saw you -- not just for one night, but for the rest of my life. I've been alone since my parents died, but the minute I saw you, I knew that things could be different if I had you in my life. Even if it was just as a friend -- but I wanted it to be a lot more. I didn't think it could happen like that -- in a split second -- but it did." Slowly, he began to lower his head toward hers. Lois lifted her face and closed her eyes.
The kiss was gentle at first but grew in intensity so quickly that when it ended they were both gasping. Clark reached out blindly and hit the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. He could still see, although it was obvious that Lois couldn't. He reached down to scoop her up into his arms.
**********
The grey light of dawn was creeping through the un-shaded window when Clark woke in response to an unfamiliar humming noise.
Lois was curled tightly against him, still asleep with a slight smile on her lips. It had been something like four in the morning when they had finally fallen asleep. She had been everything that he could have imagined and more, and he'd gone to sleep holding her in his arms with the feeling that he had finally, after a long absence, really come home.
But the humming sound wouldn't go away, and he turned his head, searching for the source.
It was originating from his footlocker, and through the keyhole and around the tiny crack where the lid met the body, he could see traces of a brilliant light coming from within.
"What is it?" Lois's drowsy voice asked.
"I'm not sure." Clark slipped out of bed and went to take the key from his dresser. As he bent to undo the lock and lift the lid, Lois sat up, holding the sheet to her chest.
The lid came open and the glow brightened to an almost blinding intensity, radiating from the depths of the chest. Then a ball of molten luminescence appeared, floating upward onto a level with his eyes as he straightened up. Clark swallowed convulsively. It was the mysterious globe, blazing with a dazzling white brilliance of its own.
Almost instinctively, he reached out to grasp it and under his touch the faint brown and green outline of the Earth's continents changed. Ruby red, the single continent of Krypton shone at him like a patch of blood against the white background. And then ...
It had to be some kind of hologram, he thought. A man was suddenly standing there, dressed in some sort of white robe, and on his chest gleamed the stylized S-emblem that had graced the nose of his ship, as well as the decal that Clark had found inside the tiny vessel.
"What's happening?" Lois's voice whispered. She had moved up beside him and now he put his arm around her.
"I don't know," he said. "Wait."
The man was probably in his early forties, with dark hair and blunt, stern features. The eyes seemed to lock on him. And he spoke.
"I am Jor-El. And you are Kal-El, my son. The object you hold has been attuned to you. That you now hear these words is proof that you survived the journey in space and have reached your full maturity. Now it is time for you to learn our heritage. To that end, I will appear to you five times. Watch for the light, listen, and learn."
Suddenly he was no longer in his bedroom at home. He floated, insubstantial, in what must be a laboratory, watching Jor-El standing before an oddly shaped console and staring into a viewscreen. Colors swirled in its depths. To one side, on a kind of stand, lay a capsule constructed of some transparent material.
"Time grows short," Jor-El's voice said, "and we continue to search. The immensity of space is both a blessing and a curse. In that near infinite variety there must be some place suitable. Hope and desperation drive us in equal measure."
Motion at the edge of his vision. A tall, beautiful woman entered the scene, looking questioningly at Jor-El. He shook his head. Both turned to look at the capsule.
"Lara works by my side," the deep voice said. "She is tireless and endlessly patient. Considering what is to come, this is my greatest consolation: that we are together."
The room began to vibrate. Jor-El clasped Lara in his arms until the shaking stopped. Then, without comment, he turned back to his console.
The globe's light faded, leaving Clark with the vision of Jor-El and Lara standing before the console, and a sense of the desperation that motivated these two persons -- apparently his Kryptonian father and mother.
The globe hadn't returned to its former Earthlike appearance. The red outline of Krypton's continent pulsed faintly at them.
"Wow!" Lois whispered.
Slowly, Clark moved to set the globe down onto the foot of the bed.
"Kal-El," he whispered. "My name was Kal-El."
**********
It wasn't quite six o'clock in the morning but after such an event Clark felt it hard to relax. Still, his bride had had less than two hours sleep. He returned the now-inert globe to his footlocker, got slowly back into bed next to Lois and pulled her close to his side. Lois snuggled up to him, resting her head on his chest.
"Wow," she said again. "That was amazing."
"Yeah," he said.
"That was your real father and mother," she said. "What did he call himself?"
"Jor-El," Clark said. "And she was Lara."
"That's a pretty name," Lois said thoughtfully. "And you're Kal-El. You don't look like a Cal. I can't see you as anyone but a Clark." She raised a hand to cup his jaw. "It looks like you're going to find out about yourself," she said. "It must have been awful, not knowing where you came from or why -- but from what I can see, you weren't just abandoned. They seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to tell you where you're from."
"Yeah," he said. "In a way that's kind of scary, too, but now at least I'll *know*. I'm glad you were here when it came alive like that. You deserve to know, too, whatever it's going to tell us." He shifted position a little and tilted his head so that his cheek rested on her hair.
She ran a hand over his bare chest. "You know," she said, "it feels almost disrespectful but it's still early. Mother usually sleeps until eight and Lucy'd sleep until noon if I'd let her. Maybe you could -- I don't know -- like to help me get back to sleep."
"Aren't you tired?"
"A little, but I don't think I'll be able to go back to sleep right now without some help."
He felt himself beginning to grin. "You know, I like the way you think."
**********
It was closer to eight when he woke again. Lois was still sleeping soundly and Clark slipped out of the bed, careful not to wake her. A glance at the footlocker showed him that the globe was still inert. Recharging, maybe? His robe lay on the floor at the foot of the bed and he appropriated it. From the near silence in the house, Ellen Lane was still sleeping and so was Lucy so he should have the time for a quick shower.
In actuality, he had showered, shaved and dressed, and was warming up a skillet on the stove when he heard the first sounds of stirring upstairs. Moving quickly, he plugged in the electric griddle, mixed up the pancake batter, defrosted the bacon and set it to frying next to the first pancake. Scrambled eggs seemed like a good bet, and he broke three eggs into the skillet, added the other ingredients and was stirring them gently when Ellen Lane walked into the kitchen. She eyed him thoughtfully. "Where's Lois?" she asked.
"Still asleep," Clark said. "She needs her rest."
"If she takes my advice, it won't matter," Ellen said shortly. "Is the phone connected? I need to make a long distance call."
"Of course," Clark said, well aware that Ellen intended to call her ex-husband in the attempt to enlist his support. "It's in the living room. Breakfast will be ready when you finish."
Ellen nodded briefly and vanished into the living room. Clark continued to scramble eggs and tried not to listen in but, in very short order, the murmur of Ellen's voice escalated sharply to a level that was difficult for him to ignore.
"What do you mean Lois already talked to you? She called you behind my back?" A moment of silence. "They couldn't possibly have been there last night! He's here right now, cooking breakfast in the kitchen!" Another, longer silence. "Sam Lane, how dare you speak to me that way! No, I haven't been drinking! There isn't any liquor in this entire, antiquated building!" From there the conversation degenerated rapidly until he heard the receiver on the phone slammed down with a sharp "bang!"
Clark was careful to seem unconscious of the events in the other room when Ellen stomped back into the kitchen. He placed two pancakes onto a plate, added a serving of scrambled eggs and two slices of bacon. "Would you like coffee or juice with your breakfast?" he inquired blandly.
**********
Ellen didn't speak, but he noted that she ate a substantial breakfast. Clark was content to leave the morning conversation to languish while he ate his own breakfast and then collected the plates and utensils in silence. "I'm just going to cover the pan and the griddle," he told Ellen as she got up to leave. "Lois will want something when she wakes up.
"Did you call Lois's father last night?" Ellen inquired suddenly.
"No," Clark said.
"Did Lois?"
"No," Clark said.
Silence. Ellen regarded him with a puzzled air. "What's the nearest airport around here?" she asked suddenly.
"There's a private airfield in Rattlesnake Bend," Clark said, "about thirty miles from here. It's where the local crop dusters house their planes. The closest commercial airport is about fifty or sixty miles away, near Jefferson City."
"Oh," Ellen said. Abruptly, she left the kitchen. A moment later, Clark saw her in the bare area between the house and the barn, regarding the small blue car with a slight frown on her face. Clark went quietly about his kitchen duties. The only tire tracks in the dust were clear evidence that the vehicle hadn't been moved since the day before, and Clark had no intention of enlightening Ellen as to the true circumstances of last night's events.
It was nearly eleven when Lois came down the steps. Clark had been replacing a rusty hinge on the coat closet door and listening to the radio for the weather report, which predicted a forty-percent chance of thunderstorms by this evening. There were also the weather forecaster's amused, off-the-cuff comments regarding the UFO reported by a number of persons in California and out over the Pacific. There hadn't been any radar sightings, either civilian or military, the man had said, and the opinions of various sources were that what people had seen had been an electrical display in the area, due to freak atmospheric conditions. No vessel on Earth could possibly move with the kind of speed that would have been necessary to completely evade the military's radar, official sources had stated, and various opinions advanced by local meteorological scientists supported the theory of an electrical phenomenon. But, the weatherman observed, with obvious amusement, if anyone should happen to see any little green men, he advised them to cut back on whatever they were smoking. After all, the reports *had* come from California...
"Good morning," Clark said. "How are you this morning?" He frowned at the faint pallor of her cheeks. "Are you all right?"
She nodded. "Pretty much," she said. "I still feel a little queasy in the morning but it's not nearly as bad as it was a couple of weeks ago."
"Would you like some tea and maybe some toast or crackers?" he asked, instantly concerned.
"That would be good," Lois said.
"You go on in and sit down," he said quickly. "I'll have it ready for you in a few minutes."
"Where's Mother?" Lois asked.
"She went outside a while ago," Clark said. "Maybe she's exploring the property." He ushered Lois into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her. "Just give me a minute and I'll have your tea ready." He filled the kettle and warmed the water with his heat vision, while locating cup, saucer, teaspoon and tea for his wife. A moment later, he was pouring a cup of tea for her. "Will Oolong do, or would you prefer something else?"
"Is there more than one kind?" Lois asked.
"Well, yeah -- but never mind." He set out a saucer full of soda crackers. "Let me know if you need anything else."
"Clark, it's just a little morning sickness," Lois said, sounding slightly amused. "I'll be fine." She took a cautious sip of the tea. "Did Mother call Daddy this morning?"
He nodded, glancing at the front door for signs of Ellen Lane. "Apparently your father thinks she may have been drinking."
"Oh? Why?"
"Well, I didn't hear his half of the conversation but apparently he didn't believe her when she told him I was here in the kitchen, cooking breakfast."
"Oh," Lois said. She selected a cracker and bit experimentally into it. "Lucy's up," she added.
"I know," Clark said. "I'll get her some breakfast and then you can tell me if you need anything re-arranged in the living room. And didn't you say something about going into town around one? I have to be at Maisie's at one-thirty, so --"
"I have class this evening, too," Lois told him, "so I can pick you up after work."
"Good," Clark said. "I've left a casserole in the freezer for dinner. I guess you can heat it up in the oven, can't you?"
"If you'll tell me how long," Lois said. "I've heated up frozen dinners before, you know."
"I'll leave the instructions stuck to the refrigerator," Clark said. He frowned, glancing around the property. "I don't see your mom anywhere," he added. "You don't suppose she started off for town on foot, do you?"
"If she did, there's nothing we can do about it," Lois said. "I'd think a ten-mile walk might be a bit much for her, though."
"I'll take a look around for her in a while," Clark said, "assuming that she doesn't show up first."
But by the time Lois and Clark were ready to leave for town, leaving Lucy to her own devices for an hour or so, Ellen Lane hadn't reappeared, nor did they encounter her on the highway. However, when they arrived in town, Clark located Lois's mother at once. She was seated at the counter in Maisie's Diner, drinking coffee, and on the floor beside her was a large grocery bag, containing a 1.75 Liter of generic vodka, a Liter of Scotch whiskey and another of brandy. However Ellen had made it to town, she obviously had made the most of her time.
He reported the fact to Lois, who met his eyes with a look of resignation. "I hope Daddy has something in mind," she said. "This isn't going to be easy."
It emerged, later that evening when Lois picked him up after her evening class, that Ellen had thumbed a ride out on the highway. Some obliging citizen of Smallville had given her a lift to town.
She had spent the afternoon harping on Lois's stubbornness and ingratitude and nearly driving her daughter to the screaming point. Clark could see that the situation couldn't remain as it was. Ellen had made no move to find new lodgings in town, and Lois had begun to suspect that that part, at least, had been an empty threat but upon their arriving home, Lucy informed them, with a certain relish, that Mother was passed out on the couch. Clark and Lois looked at each other and Lois sighed.
"I think," Clark said, "that we have a problem."
**********
tbc
