Shayne, this is great! What a chapter of revelations! You're all that and a bowl of Pralines and Cream ice cream!
“Live with you permanently?” Lois said. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?” Clark asked. “It would solve all our problems. Lisa would grow up with someone who understands what she’s going through. She’d be in a place that’s quiet enough that she can hear herself think, and she’d have a mother who wasn’t working herself to the bone.”
“So I’m not to work?” The idea of being a kept woman was unpalatable, and Lois knew her displeasure was creeping into her voice. She’d worked for everything in her life, and she didn’t intend to stop now.
“I didn’t say that,” Clark said quickly. “I’ve been looking over the work you’ve done for the Foundation, and I’ve been more than pleased.”
He’d been double checking her work? It should have angered Lois, but instead it pleased her. It meant that the work she’d done was valuable to him, as the Foundation itself was. She wasn’t just being given make-work to keep her satisfied while Clark got to have a relationship with his daughter.
“So I’d be living in you house, accepting your charity?”
She’d grown up around enough wealthy people to know what they called poor people who lived off the wealth of richer friends. Being thought a gold-digger would be the least of her worries, but it wasn’t a way she wanted to be viewed.
Clark shook his head. “I owe this to you. I owe you for every time you wiped her nose when I wasn’t there, for every diaper you bought with money you didn’t have. I owe you for the life you would have had…should have had. I’m not sorry about Lisa, but I’m so sorry about leaving you alone.”
Okay, obviously Lois feels something for Clark or she would not have continued to entertain his proposition. And he definitely feels something for her. Poor guy, she reads negatively into everything he says. That was reason enough for him to go running the other way and just accept seeing Lisa when he could, but he didn't run. This should be a testament to Lois.
“About that,” Lois said. “If the night was as special as what you are saying, why didn’t you try to find me?”
“I was ashamed,” Clark said slowly. “You were clearly drunk and I took advantage of you. I may have been bounced around the system for a while, but I lived with the Kents long enough to know what was right and what was wrong. What I did that night was inexcusable..”
That wasn’t how Lois remembered the night. What few memories she did have made her still want to blush with how aggressive, how wanton she’d been.
“So you thought I wouldn’t want you?”
If he’d come to her, she’d have been cautiously open. She’d thrown herself at him, after all. It would have changed everything to have had another set of hands to help with Lisa. Perhaps she could have gone back to college, finished up, had a career.
“How could you?” Clark asked. “I was some guy you’d picked up at a bar, and either you did that sort of thing all the time, in which case I was going to be nobody special…or you didn’t…which would be even worse.”
“It was my first time,” Lois said quietly.
“Me too,” Clark said somberly. “I’d planned on waiting until I found someone I could share everything with.”
She’d stolen that from him, from them both. Lois frowned.
“I’m glad I did.” He said.
Lois blinked. “What?”
“It doesn’t repel you that I’m an alien.”
Lois shook her head. How could she be repelled by him? What he was, her own daughter was.
“You were human enough to give me a child,” Lois said. “You don’t repel me.”
Clark is letting Lois see a side of him that probably no other person has. He is trusting her in the biggest way and that should be worth gold to her. The fact that he admits that he was ashamed of what he had done and that had he known that he had left her pregnant he would have helped her speaks volume as to his real character. He was also afraid that Lois would reject him...not love him as he says that all he really wanted from Lana was to love him. So as strong and powerful as he is, his heart is soft and vulnerable.
Then Clark tells Lois that that was his first time and he learns that it was hers, too. They have shared so much together that neither of them know. And the alien thing doesn't come into play with Lois which tells him that she accepts him as he is and their daughter. Then he tells her that in spite of the consequences of which things happened, he doesn't regret that things happened with her and he would not change it if he could. He's happy about Lisa...and Lois...and wants to make things up to Lois.
And Clark wanted his first time t be with someone special, that he could share everything with. Well, a little out of order, but I'd say this is everything. And he is happy that it happened which says to Lois that he sees her as special and not just his daughter's mother.
“That doesn’t mean that I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Just give it a few years,” Clark said, “I think you’ll want to stay.”
Lois suspected that she might as well.
Oh, I think Lois will want to spend the rest of her life with Clark...and have more children!
“I’m not asking you to have sex with me,” Clark said. “Just to move in with me so I can have access to my daughter. Whatever happened with us…that’d be entirely separate. Living with me doesn’t mean you want to marry me.”
Notice that Clark said,
"Living with me doesn’t mean you want to marry me.” He DID NOT say
"Living with me doesn’t mean *I* want to marry *you*.”I think that he does want to marry Lois but he's giving her time, giving himself time to win her heart.
“I’d really only accumulated the money in the first place to make her happy,” Clark admitted. “Even under the red poison I mostly just wanted her to love me.”
“And she didn’t.”
He shrugged and looked away. “Sometimes it seemed like she did.”
“She’s sick.” Clark said. “She was my wife, and I wouldn’t have left her. After she found out she couldn’t have children though…it was never the same. She became bitter and erratic, and she divorced me.”
And there Clark was again putting someone else first even if it meant hurting himself. He just wanted to make Lana happy, for her to love him. And after all that she had done, he would not have left her. And she really didn't love him. Lois could make such a difference in his life. All she really wants is to be loved unconditionally and that's all Clark really wants, too. And with Lois...well she has been an answer to his prayers.
“We can at least stay the summer,” Lois said. “Make our decisions closer to the end.”
Clark nodded, and the limo faded into silence.
I feel so sorry or both Lois and Clark. She doesn't want to seem like she is after his money and he just wants a family. She gives him just a little something to buy time to a decision. Lois needs Clark but is able to suppress her desires as she has all of Lisa's life and move on. But the strongest man in the world now has a weakness...two actually...Lois and Lisa...and he is not strong enough to move on without them this time.
Hurry back Shayne. Thank you for this wonderful surprise this morning! Bravo!
~Sheila
