Chapter 17
~§~
<Would you go home if I asked you to?>
Was it really less than a week ago that he’d posed nearly the very same question? In a completely different place? In a completely different lifetime? The pure poetry of the situation staggered him.
Clark wanted to laugh. In the course of one conversation, every reason he’d had for coming back had been shot down and replaced with a million reasons why he should run screaming in the other direction. He’d come back to Metropolis intending to place the final nail in the coffin of his dead dreams. Instead he’d discovered that he’d abandoned them too soon, leaving them comatose only to return and find them alive in the form of Lois’s hopes and declarations of love.
She was asking him to stay. And if he allowed himself to believe her, it was because she loved him. Even the ‘nothing’ part. Much like he’d felt seven months earlier, when he’d stood in that very room trying not to let the sight of her in her silk negligee distract him from saying the hardest thing he’d ever had to say, he wanted desperately to believe her now. Believe that she loved the ordinary man, not just the superhero.
His face must have displayed his dismay, because her hopeful expression darkened, disappointment and a sadness filling her mocha eyes. He thought he detected the glitter of tears, but before he could say a word, she spoke.
“I see. I mean, of course things have changed,” she said knowingly, taking a step back as if it all made sense. “After all, it’s been a while. And you probably feel a lot differently about me now, after everything that’s happened. I understand why you don’t want to stay. You don’t love me anymore.”
“I’ve changed, not my feelings,” he admitted ruefully.
And that was the crux of it. He’d come back because he still loved her. So much that he couldn’t forget it or bury it or run away from it. He’d come back to face it. Surrender to it. But never had he expected to have it returned in kind.
It all started to sink in. The significance of everything she’d told him. Lois had stopped her wedding to Lex because she loved him. Not Superman, but him. For a year he’d wanted nothing more, and she was placing it all at his feet. Problem was, now he wasn’t sure what to do with such a bounty.
“What do you want, Lois? From me?” he asked. He needed to know what she expected. Never could he go back to the way things had been, nor would he settle for friendship or a working relationship. Not with her. It was far too late to cross back over that line.
“I want a chance to start all over. From the beginning.” She said, almost pleaded. “I love you, and I want a chance to see where that takes us.”
Something deep in his heart awakened and bloomed. For all the heartache Lois had caused him, she’d never lied to him. She’d always been honest about her feelings, brutally so. Or at least as far as she herself had understood them.
Now he had a choice to make. He could trust her, believe that she did love him. Or he could turn and walk out the door, never to see her again.
The heat from her body crossed the space between them and made him feel dizzy. The way he’d always felt when she was so close. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself, shaking his head. He couldn’t start from the beginning. It was too late for that, his feelings for her too strong.
“Not from the beginning,” he said.
“No, from this point on. No secrets. All of you getting to know all of me, and vice versa,” she said. “Do you think we could do that? Make this into something?”
There was a lot of risk. If he stayed, there was no guarantee that things would work out between them. He could end up no better than he’d been seven months earlier. But deep inside, he knew that that wasn’t truly the case. Like he’d told her, he was a different person now. Stronger. Capable of seeing around his love for her if necessary.
Except that now she was saying it wasn’t necessary. She was asking him to stay because she loved him.
“I don’t know. I guess it would take some time,” he said. Time for them both to start all over again, learning to trust each other.
“Does that mean you’re staying?” she asked, her voice tinged with hope. “You’ll come back to the Planet with me?”
Had Gillian known it, when she told him not to make her any promises about his return? Because in all his imaginings, the hundred or so what-ifs he’d never taken to the next level, staying in Metropolis to explore a future – a romantic future – with Lois had not seemed thinkable.
Yet here he was. On the edge of the tempest. Clouds of pain and heart break gathered in an intimidating swirl before him. Yet through their mass he could glimpse the eye of the storm, clear and so bright he nearly couldn’t look upon it. If they could do it, he and Lois, make their way beyond the gray unknown, the future broke open like a blue mid-summer’s day.
For six months he’d run away from a future without her. It was asinine to keep running now. He’d lost his excuse.
If he were to walk away, he’d have no one to blame but himself. If he didn’t enter the fray and see where it led, he’d never know what joy was hidden beyond. Would always wonder. And regret.
“Yeah,” he agreed, testing out the decision and finding that it felt solid enough for the moment. “I’ll stay.”
"Good," she said, and this time the millian watt smile was dazzling, genuine.
Having reached a fragile acceptance, they smiled at each other awkwardly, neither one of them quite sure what to do next. Finally biology kicked in, giving him something to say.
“Listen, I’m starving.” He glanced at the door, thinking. Taking the next step. “Do you want to go get something to eat? Catch me up on all the gossip at the Planet?”
“Yeah. I’d like that.” In a sudden flurry of purpose, she snatched her coat off the hook by the door, smiling warmly when he took it from her hands and held it open so that she could shoulder it on. “That’s a beautiful bracelet.”
He glanced at his wrist, the rainbow braid dangling beneath the cuff of his denim button up. He smiled softly to himself, remembering dark brown eyes and a sweet, shy face. “Thanks. Someone special gave it to me.”
“Oh. That’s nice,” she said, looking at him carefully. With a small shrug, she tossed off her curiosity. “So, what are you in the mood for? Chinese? Italian? Maybe some Mexican?”
“Pizza,” he stated firmly. “I’d really like some pizza.”
~§~
For the next few days he went about the business of re-establishing the life of Clark Kent, trying it back on to see if it still fit.
Sub-leasers occupied his apartment, and although his landlord assured him they could be out of the place by the end of the month with little inconvenience, he didn’t want to displace them. Not yet. This was a test drive, after all. He wasn’t ready to commit to the purchase.
So he set up living quarters in a hotel a far cry nicer than the one he’d first lived in, that long ago time when he’d arrived in Metropolis jobless and friendless. Even if it hadn’t been, the fact that his room had a bath with running water and more than one lamp made it seem like a palace.
He spent the first couple of nights tossing and turning on the soft mattress, the bed almost too large after months on the narrow pallet. At least that’s the excuse he gave himself for the sleeplessness that plagued him. Or perhaps it was the quiet, the steady hum of the room’s fan almost invisible compared to the sounds of insects and creatures of the Colombian forests.
Lois offered to let him stay at her place, but he declined, detecting a tinge of relief in her eyes when he did so. They needed to move slowly, and the forced intimacy of sharing her space might have caused more problems than it would have solved.
Instead he made the best of the hotel, determined that once he was back in his own apartment and in his own bed, sleep would come more easily. This was just all part of the adjustment.
Setting up his home at the new Daily Planet proved much easier.
A brand new desk set in precisely the old position created the best of both worlds, as did most of the features of the new Planet offices. Gone were the annoying idiosyncrasies inherent in older buildings, instead everything updated and offering the latest in modern technology. Yet still the place retained the ramshackle feel of the bustling newsroom that it was, avoiding the sterility of environments like LNN.
Perry kept them busy with meetings and brainstorming sessions, even going so far as to assign them a fairly hefty story. The thrill of investigative reporting trilled through his veins, and only then did he realize how much he’d missed it.
Jimmy and Jack, fully exonerated of the allegations Luthor had levied against him, welcomed their buddy back with boisterous back thumps and quickly made plans to take in a Metropolis Spurs game. To Clark’s relief, they respected his silence on where he’d been and what he’d been up to over the past seven months, filling the awkward moments with plenty of anecdotes about their own misadventures. By the end of the first day, it was as if he hadn’t been gone at all.
It felt good to see his friends. Good to be home, Clark realized with a mixture of gratification and pure terror.
He and Lois performed an odd dance, walking tenuously on egg shells with a veneer of stiff politeness giving their interactions an artificial shininess. It was as if both of them feared upsetting each other in any way, and the tension increased until Clark could almost touch it.
Finally, the pin dropped after nearly a full week, when they’d been struggling to put the final pieces together on a major exposé involving stolen paintings from the Metropolis Museum of Fine Art. They’d returned to her apartment after several dead end leads, hoping they could make sense out of the random chunks of information they’d managed to pull together.
Lois sat at the kitchen table, rapping her pencil against its surface impatiently while Clark read through the first draft.
“Lois, you can’t write this,” he argued, shaking his head as he shifted to the second hand-written page of notes.
“Yes, I can,” she retorted. “I have three sources that confirm the guy accepted over a half million dollars to smuggle those paintings out of the country.”
He shook his head angrily, tossing his own pencil on the table. “And another three people who swear that those paintings were purchased legally by Delarue’s father. He just might have been sending them to his family’s ancestral estate like he claims.”
“Likely story,” she snorted. “It’s this guy’s word against the MMFA’s director and art historian, and the customs agent who saw the crates being loaded on that boat in the middle of the night.”
“Three people of whom two had a beef with Delarue when he pulled his healthy contribution to the museum after they wouldn’t give him rightful ownership of the paintings,” he said pointedly. “Their motives are a bit suspect. They stood to get a pretty fat insurance check if those paintings were stolen.”
“So you’re saying he was framed?”
“I’m saying it’s possible. At this point, we don’t know if these sources are on the level.”
“You are still so naïve,” she said, shaking her head as she stacked her notes purposefully.
“And you are still impossible to work with!” he blurted, surprised by the hot flush of anger that swept through him.
His intense reaction didn’t make much sense. They’d argued over story issues before, but this was different and he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. It was as if something had simmered deep inside of him ever since he’d agreed to stay, and with her stubbornness, she’d just cranked the burner up to high.
“You know, Clark,” she said heatedly, “I do have a little bit more experience than you. And if I say that these sources are reliable, I think you’d do fine to believe me.”
“That’s your problem, Lois. You think you know everything.” The papers he’d crumpled slightly with the force of his irritation followed the pencil to land on the table, one of them wafting to the floor.
“Oh yeah?” She stood, shoving her chair away from the table. “Well maybe I do! Did you ever stop to think about that?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he adopted a suspiciously Superman-like pose. “Just like you knew everything about Luthor? Look where that got you.”
“What, it took you a whole week to bring that up? I’m impressed,” she snorted. “Just go ahead and say it, Clark. You’ve been itching since you got back here to tell me that you were right and I was wrong.”
He felt a bit guilty because at one point he had wanted to gloat a bit. But he didn’t apologize, instead recognizing his anger for what it was. Residual frustration with her for being so stubborn even in the face of her own possible ruination. For nearly going through with a marriage that would have destroyed her all because she was too hard-headed for her own good. And it seemed that even after all that had happened, she hadn’t changed a bit.
But he had changed, and this time he wouldn’t back down.
“I’m not saying anything about who was wrong or right,” he offered in way of small appeasement. “I’m just saying that maybe sometimes you need to listen to other people. Especially when they know what they’re talking about.”
Her eyes snapped. “Well who’s to blame for that? You know, you could have come to me and told me that the reason you knew Luthor was a crook was because you were Superman.”
“And why would Superman’s word have held more power than mine?” he countered. “You would have trusted him but not me? Your best friend and the man who’d told you that he loved you? Sorry, I didn’t see any point in it. You seemed pretty determined to have Luthor one way or the other, even if it meant ignoring the truth.”
“Yeah, well maybe I didn’t want to trust you,” she said.
“What?” he asked, not anticipating her statement. He’d expected more in the way of further admonishment for not taking that one step in trying to convince her not to marry Luthor. He’d long added it to his list of regrets for how he’d handled the entire situation, wondering if he shouldn’t have used Superman’s sway over her.
Lois took a deep breath, then after a moment, let everything out in a rush. “If I trusted you, then I would have had to admit that Lex was a scumbag and the only reason I even agreed to marry him was – ”
When she stopped cold, he prodded. “Was why, Lois?”
She licked her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. “Was because I was afraid.”
All of his anger was replaced with curiosity mixed with disbelief. What in the world could possibly scare Lois Lane? “Afraid of what?”
“Of my feelings for you,” she said. “I was so confused. And scared to death because the last time I felt like this about someone, I ended up alone and heart broken. And what I felt then was only a tiny crumb compared to the way I feel about you now.”
“So you agreed to marry Luthor just because you were afraid of being in love with me?”
“It’s a lot easier to run away from someone if you have someone else to run to,” she said with a shrug, and he felt dizzy with understanding. He’d noticed the exact same thing seven months earlier, during his flight from Metropolis.
She went on. “I tried to run to Superman, but he turned me down flat. Lex wanted me. And even if I did suspect that maybe something wasn’t quite right, he seemed to...love me. In his way.”
“Geez, Lois,” he said, uncertain what to think. Her admission did much to humble him. She’d been so afraid of her own feelings she’d been willing to marry probably the most dangerous man around simply to avoid them.
He felt an overwhelming need to protect her, suddenly seeing her as far more fragile than he’d ever imagined. Underneath her tough exterior and bravado existed a woman who held a lot of self doubts and more than a little uncertainty about her own worth. That she’d been so wounded in the past nearly broke his heart, and the tenderness he felt towards her multiplied exponentially. She was exposing that woman he’d first glimpsed so long ago, that very first week they’d worked together. The one who’d instantly captivated him. The woman he’d fallen in love with.
But Lois didn’t seem to expect pity or comfort. She stood before him admitting to her weaknesses and owning them outright. Maybe she had changed after all.
“I know, Clark. Don’t you think I know I made a mistake?” she said, then rolled her eyes. “OK, a lot of mistakes. Believe me, I had plenty of time to make lists while you were gone.”
“I’m sorry,” he said and truly meant it. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I admit I was pretty angry that you ignored my warnings. But I never wanted things to end up like they did.”
“You know the worst part about it? Besides Lex jumping off that balcony and learning that I’d been engaged to a murdering megalomaniac? It was that you were gone.” She sniffed, swiping a hand over her cheek as she tried to still her trembling lip. “I didn’t even have my best friend around to talk to.”
At that, he couldn’t resist the urge to comfort her, closing the distance between them and drawing her tight against his chest. It felt so good, holding her close and smelling her familiar scent. His hand moved to cup the back of her head and stroke her hair.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I wasn’t a good friend. I can only tell you that it wasn’t the friend part of me that was thinking back then. It was my heart, and it had been pretty much shattered into about a million pieces.”
“I know, and I’m sorry I did that to you,” she mumbled, her words muffled against his shirt. “But did you have to disappear for so long? I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
He paused, trying to find words to explain the myriad emotions that had driven him to cut himself off from everything and everyone associated with her and the overwhelming pain he’d felt at the time. “Yeah, I had to go. I needed time. Some space away from Metropolis and all of the memories here.”
“Away from me?” she said, the question asked into his shoulder.
He nodded, his cheek rubbing against her silky brown head. “I thought I’d lost you forever, and I didn’t know how to deal with that reality. I had to find a way to go on. A reason to wake up every morning all while knowing I wouldn’t see you. I meant it when I said that I could lose everything except for you. So when I thought you’d married Luthor, nothing seemed to have any purpose any more. Especially me.”
She pulled back, and he felt the pang of disappointment, the chill against his chest where her warm body had been more than just the coolness of the air between them. It was as if in moving that single step away, she’d taken a part of him with her, and he missed it already.
“But what if you get angry at me again? Or if we have a big fight or you stop loving me?” she asked, and he was touched by the fear in her eyes. “I’m afraid you’ll just take off again, and I won’t know where to find you.”
“I promise. I won’t ever leave again unless you know why I’m leaving,” he vowed.
And with a hard swallow, he added the words that sealed not only his fate but that of another.
“And I’ll always come back. Because I love you.”
She nodded, accepting his promise. Placing her hands on his chest, she smiled. “I love you, too.”
The air was heavy with the weight of new promise, and their fresh beginning started at that very moment.
But something still troubled her, and he thought he knew what it might be. When she started, “It just seems like since you’ve been back – ”
“– we’ve been tiptoeing around each other,” he finished easily.
“Yeah. I’m not used to worrying about if I might make you mad or not.” She grinned. “It’s not in my nature to be this nice to you all the time.”
He laughed, reveling in the familiar teasing that used to come so naturally and now seemed to have returned. “You don’t have to worry about it, Lois. It’s pretty much guaranteed that it’s going to happen sooner or later.”
“So this is all part of the starting over. Our first fight?”
“I guess so. We did it. We got mad, hollered a bit, and forgave each other.”
Her dark eyes locked with his, her meaning clear when she asked, “Have you? Forgiven me, I mean?”
He realized then that he had. Forgiven her. For breaking his heart. For making mistakes. The very fact that he’d agreed to stay in Metropolis in the first place, wanted to stay, showed him how much easier it had been than he’d thought it would be. How right it had been for him to come back.
“Yeah,” he said, then needed to know the same of her. She hadn’t been the only one who’d made mistakes. “How about you?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
After a long, magic moment, Lois cleared her throat. Turning to the table, she picked up the pages he’d tossed down. “But I still plan to go with what I have here. These three sources are irrefutable.”
“Don't even start!” he warned with a laugh and joined her at the table.
~§~
After that afternoon, every minute he didn’t spend at the Planet he spent with Lois, getting to know each other all over again. They had dinner together almost every night, often taking home a video or bent over their work as they sat at her kitchen table. They’d crossed the bridge and found that it supported their weight.
With frightening ease, they slipped back into their partnership. They started finishing each other’s sentences again. Drawing knowing smirks from Perry and Jimmy, they lapsed into the odd habit of anticipating the other’s thoughts and reactions with eerie accuracy. Lane and Kent were back on the beat, stronger than ever.
But there were changes. Significant ones. Touches were no longer platonic, held a second or two longer than would have been appropriate between mere business partners or even good friends. He felt her watching him, and when he turned to meet her stare, she blushed yet held his gaze steadily. While she’d always had the power to make his heart race, now, being near her, he felt surrounded in electricity, the current between them so strong he wondered it didn’t appear in neon blue lightning bolts, a mad scientist’s experiment gone right.
The feelings no longer flowed in only one direction, and that knowledge filled him with a heady joy.
In truth, the hardest thing about rejoining the bustling society of Metropolis was becoming a superhero again. Off the cuff excuses for sudden disappearances once again became a part of his life. His demeanor as Superman regained its formality, its somewhat detached confidence. He’d had to put the glasses back on.
In this world, there wasn’t a way for him to be just Clark Kent if he wanted to continue to help people. His dual identity and the secrets it involved were necessary for reasons both practical and personal. Yet having tasted the sweetness of pure freedom, of being all of who he was twenty four hours a day, returning to the suit held little appeal.
Except now he shared the burden with someone. Lois had joined the small club of those who knew the whole of Clark Kent. And in her knowing, he was no longer alone in his hiding. He’d be able to make the split, to re-divide the two parts of himself into the necessary components, because where it really mattered, in her heart, he was one man.
~§~
As the details of his life fell neatly back into place, Clark turned to look inside himself. He’d settled his score with the future, no longer fearing it. No longer avoiding it. With or without Lois, he would be able to handle what it held for him. She had the power to break his heart, but unlike a time not so long ago, she no longer had the power to break him. No one did.
But there was a piece of his life that lingered still in timelessness, not a part of the future and not yet relegated to the past. As the days became weeks, he finally had to admit that his sleeplessness could not be blamed on mattresses or white noise but on the gnawing ache in his heart. A mixture of guilt and sorrow and longing, it dimmed everything in his world.
Even if he hadn’t, Gillian had known when she’d sent him home that he’d have to make a choice. But where she'd had had the courage to face the pain such a choice might inflict on her, he’d pushed his own deep down inside, choosing to ignore it in light of the newfound happiness he and Lois shared.
But he knew that such happiness could not come without sacrifice and pain, both his own and that of a woman who deserved nothing more than his love. Unlike his own anguish seven months earlier, he couldn’t run from it this time because it was not his alone. He’d owed it to himself to find his own road into the future, and now he owed it to her to set her free to find her way as well.
Before he could reclaim the here and now, he had to face the hurt and let it go. He had to return to Colombia.
~§~
The night before he left, he and Lois took in a movie and dinner. When they reached her apartment, he was reluctant to leave, feeling the need to impress upon himself all of the feelings she stirred within him so he would be able to keep his resolve. He was about to break a woman’s heart and big part of his own as well, and he needed to know without a doubt why he was doing it.
Finally, he could linger no longer without explanation. She walked him to the door, and he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. Stroking her cheek with his thumb, he studied her face carefully, committing every cell to memory so that he could call it up when he needed to. And he was going to need to.
“What’s that look for?” she asked, her brows raised in concern. “You look like you’re about to face your execution.”
He shook his head and gave her a small smile. “Listen, I have to leave tomorrow morning. Will you meet me in Smallville for Thanksgiving?”
Her smooth forehead wrinkled with a frown. “You’ll be gone that long?”
“It’s only a couple of days,” he said, offering her only the barest explanation. “I have some loose ends I need to take care of.”
She nodded slowly, searching his face for a long moment before looking down at her hands, clasped in front of her. “Are you going to tell me where you’re going?” she asked softly, almost a whisper.
“No.” There was no point in telling her. She’d start asking questions he had no intention of answering. At least not yet.
“Does one of those loose ends have to do with the person who gave you that bracelet?”
“What?”
“Your bracelet.” She pointed to his left wrist, and he instantly began to finger the thick braid that still hung there. A constant reminder of the journey he’d traveled. “You mentioned that someone pretty special gave it to you.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, amused by her hinted jealousy, so refreshing for a change since it came from her instead of him. “She was. Beautiful dark eyes. Long, raven black hair. Smile that just melted my heart.”
“Oh,” she said to her feet. “I see. I mean, it’s OK. I understand. You were gone for a long time. And you thought I’d married Lex, so it’s only natural that maybe you’d meet someone else.”
Instantly he felt contrite, not wanting to make her worry, especially about Eva. “Lois, the girl who gave me this bracelet was all of six years old.”
“Clark, we’ve made a clean start,” she said, lifting her face to reveal eyes that contained a plea. “I don’t want any secrets. If there was someone else, I’d want to know.”
He wanted to reassure her. It wasn’t a secret, not in the sense that it was something he was trying to hide or felt guilty about. But he struggled to find the words to explain and realized that, at least for now, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t let his relationship with Gillian be reduced to something Lois might construe as a fling he’d had on the rebound. Gillian had meant far too much to occupy such a trivial position in his history. Would always mean too much.
His time out of time was still too personal, his pain too imminent.
“What happened to me...and who I met...none of it is a secret,” he said, doing the best he could to explain something he still held so closely to his heart. “But it’s mine. Something that I’m not ready to share yet. What really matters is that I came back to you. And I’ll come back again. Can you trust me?”
She nodded, not insisting for more although her eyes held a vulnerability that he’d never seen in them before. “And when you come back, what happens then?”
If he’d learned nothing in his months in San Pablo, it was that the future was a mystery. You never knew what would come in the next month or week, or even day. Never look past the next batch of cured adobe bricks when you’re rebuilding your life.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, giving her a warm smile to soften his honesty. “I guess we see where this goes.”
She bit her lip, then nodded. But he could see her lip tremble slightly. Drawing her into his arms, he held her tightly against his chest, letting their heartbeats synchronize into one rhythm.
When he felt her relaxing, the confidence in his embrace seeping through to assure her of his unwavering feelings for her, he pulled back enough to look down into her face. Her beautiful, heart stopping face.
His breath hitched tight in his chest, and the moment he’d waited so long to reach finally arrived. Lowering his head just enough to meet hers already rising in anticipation, he kissed her then. Long and slow, sweet and tender. All of him in one person, the man she loved.
The warmth reached in and filled his entire body. And as her lips responded, moving surely against his own, it infused him with courage. It made him see for certain that as hard as it was going to be, he was doing what he had to do.
Gillian had worked her way into his heart. But Lois had already staked a claim on his soul.
to be continued...
