Ah gaaaah, Shayne, that was pretty evil!

I always hate it when Clark is keeping his double identity a secret from Lois. But now that he enlists Lisa's help in keeping Lois in the dark, I like it even less! And for what?

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Clark had thought Lana was a good person too. In high school, she'd been a little overbearing, but he'd thought she'd cared about him. It had been more than he'd had with anyone else. After he'd made his first million, she'd gotten a lot friendlier.

It had hurt when he'd realized that she liked who he was while under the influence of the red poison a lot more than she'd liked the person he really was.

When he'd realized what she'd been doing, it had felt like something inside him had died.
So now he thinks that everyone is like Lana?

Come on! Clark, you tried to buy Lois off, so that she would give up her search for Lisa's father altogether. But even though Lois is dirt poor - you know that she is - she refused to let herself be bought off. And you think she is like Lana?

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“She might not mean to,” Clark said, “But sometimes we hurt people without even knowing what we are doing.”
Like Sheila already pointed out... exactly, Clark.

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Lisa just stared at him, and Clark looked away. For some reason, he felt as though his throat was closing up a little.

It shouldn't be this difficult.

“I'm not Superman,” he said. “I don't want her thinking I am.”

“So you aren't my father,” Lisa said skeptically. Given her senses she knew better. “You can't fly and lift things and…”

“That's not what I meant.” Clark stared out over the lake. “Superman is good. He's heroic, trustworthy, kind. Me…I'm not even a nice person really.”

It was a hard thing to say, especially to someone who should have looked up to him. Admitting that he wasn't the person he ought to be, that he was damaged was more than he had wanted to do. Yet it was important that Lisa believe him, and part of that was to tell at least part of the truth.
This was very intense, Shayne. You made me feel Clark's pain. But I wonder what part of the truth Clark wasn't telling Lisa.

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Lisa stared at him, and Clark cleared his throat. “If your mother knew…she'd have certain expectations. She'd think I was one kind of person when I really am not. In the end…she'd be disappointed.”

“So you want her to know the real you,” Lisa said quietly.

Clark nodded.

“Ok.” She said simply.
This sounds just too much the excuses Clark used to justify his lies to Lois in the show. He couldn't tell her, because then she would have gotten the wrong idea of who he really was. frown

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It felt strange. It was important that Lois not know who he was, and Clark had set out with the intention of telling Lisa a lie. She wasn't old enough to handle the truth.
There is definitely something he is keeping from Lisa, too.

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Yet as he was telling it to her, Clark had realized that it wasn't a lie at all. There was a reason for his gut reaction at the thought of Lois finding out who he was.

For some reason it mattered what Lois Lane thought of him.

He'd enjoyed his time with her as Kal El. She'd looked at him differently than she did when he was Clark Kent. As Clark Kent all he got from her was thinly veiled contempt. That he hadn't done much to earn anything else didn't change the fact that this was the response he'd come to expect from almost everyone.

He'd gotten that from Lana in spades.

Yet as Kal El, she looked at him differently. She treated him as a different person, and as much as she tried to hide it, there was respect in her eyes.

He'd hate to lose that.
Clark couldn't tell Lois because she would be disappointed... he couldn't tell her because she would be angry... ah gaaaah, I hate this, and it is so typical of lunkheaded Clark!!

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Lisa felt elated. Her father wanted to get to know her mother better, and he wanted her to know him. It reminded her of Beauty and the Beast; on the outside her father wasn't a nice person. He wasn't friendly or even very kind. Yet the face he showed the world was that of a man who was everything he claimed not to be.
I love the Beauty and the Beast reference. How perfectly appropriate this is for a twelve-year-old girl, who has finally met her rather strange father, whom she needs to be good. Whom she would love to save.

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After she'd begun to believe she was schizophrenic, Lisa had become interested in psychology. She'd borrowed books from her grandfather's library when she wasn't looking, and she'd tried to read as much as she could. Most of it had been over her head but some things stuck.

One thing was that people tended to become who they were treated as. If everyone treated someone as though they were a bad person, eventually they would come to believe it. If everyone treated someone as a good person…

People loved Superman, and wherever he went people showered him with love and affection for what he did. Even if her father really was a beast, that sort of thing couldn't help but change him.

All his mother would have to do was to love him.
Small nitpick - I think you mean that "all her mother would have to do was to love him". Anyway, I love the childish pop psychology of Lisa's reasoning. (I even agree that there may be some merit to it! laugh Although I don't believe that the best way to make Lois love Clark is to lie to her about who Clark really is.... grumble )

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Lisa suspected that if she knew the truth, she never would. Her mother resented Kal El for the hardships they'd had to go through for her entire life. It didn't matter that he hadn't known about Lisa; he should have found her mother again.

Clark Kent however hadn't done anything but behaved like an *** . From what Lisa understood, her mother encountered a lot of people like that at work every day. He'd done a good thing by giving her mother a job. If he spent much time with her, he'd surely show her that he wasn't as bad as he pretended to be.

Lisa could have a normal family, the kind of family that she'd dreamed of as a child, but better.
There wasn't any way her father was as bad as he pretended to be.
Again, I love how you use Lisa's unfulfilled childhood wishes to make us understand why she would go along with Clark's wishes and lie to her mother.

I've got to quote this bit of Lisa wisdom, too:

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Lisa had known better than to even fantasize about her mother becoming involved with Kal El. Superman was an alien who flew around and helped people. He didn't have a job, likely couldn't help pay rent and he wouldn't be able to provide anything like a stable life for either Lisa or her mother.

Worse, it would mean that for the rest of her life everyone would look at Lisa as though she was a freak, even if they never admitted she was actually her father's daughter.

But Lois Lane and Clark Kent….that was a different story. A millionaire getting married wasn't bug news at all, and having someone like him for a father would only make Lisa the envy of her class. They could be together forever and be happy, and Lisa would have a full time dad instead of one who just dropped by for occasional visits.
The Gospel and Tao according to Lisa...

[Linked Image] + [Linked Image] as the theory of relativity and happiness according to Lisa...

Getting parents back together as the cure for the world's pain according to Lisa...

The President of the United States of America according to Lisa...

[Linked Image]

(Sorry, got a little carried away there...)

The last part of this chapter was a shocker. Of course, me the life-long non-smoker couldn't help giggling at how cigarette smoke has come to signal evil and depravity:

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A single point of light flickered in the darkness, and the smell of cigarette smoke filled the air. The single shaft of light from the doorway illuminated the ashtray, filled with dozens of stubbed out butts.
The rest of it was just shocking. Lana Luthor???? How and in what capacity is Luthor involved with this? Has Lana got green K? What is she going to do with it? (Uhh.. kill Clark? And Lisa?) Why is she so hung up on Lisa? Did something happen to her so that she herself couldn't have Clark's child? (I seem to remember that you hinted something...) Why does she need one of Clark's employees as a spy? And who is this hapless fellow anyway?

So many questions! Please be back with more of this amazing fic soon, Shayne!

Ann