from last time...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suddenly Lois felt bad at being able to alleviate Jack’s worries somewhat, while still keeping Perry and Jimmy in the worrisome dark. She looked at Jack, who seemed to feel the same way.

“This is gonna sound stupid,” Jack said. “But Lois has a connection with Clark. She can, uh, feel his life force, and while it’s not too strong right now, it’s there. I know it sounds thin, but she made me believe he’ll be okay… eventually,” he finished, looking at Lois when he was done.

She was impressed. Not only was he lying to protect Clark, but he seemed worse than Clark at it, and was throwing his cool-boy image away, because that was just corny.

“Uh, yeah,” Lois agreed, looking back at Perry and Jimmy. “I have a connection with Clark.” Well, it wasn’t a total lie, but she still felt sort of stupid saying it. “I got a feeling when something was wrong. And I don’t feel as turned inside out as I did earlier. I’m more at peace. Now, the connection is keeping me believing that everything will be okay in the end. I can say without a shadow of a doubt,” she started, looking Perry in the eyes to show she wasn’t lying, “that Clark is not dead. He’s…” she just shrugged, looking a little wistful, “just somewhere…” she trailed off, wondering again, for the millionth time that day, where Clark actually was…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN ME
PART 14


***”I’m telling you! I can fly!”

Clark, a teen just becoming a man, ran into his kitchen excitedly and flopped himself down in a chair at the kitchen table in his Smallville farmhouse, across from his father.

“Son, it’s not that we don’t believe you. You’ve never lied about being able to see through things, hear things no one else can, crush metal and steel with your bare hands, burn things by just looking at them—“

“You know I’d never hurt you, right?” Clark said, fearfully to his father, noticing the look of discomfort on Jonathan’s face while talking about all Clark’s abilities.

“Oh, honey, of course we know that. You’d never willingly hurt anyone!” Martha said, wiping her hands on a dishcloth and sitting at the table herself.

Clark, a day away from his eighteenth birthday, looked at them, relieved. “Well what’s the problem, then?”

“Clark. Everything you can do, so far, has been very discreet. You can hide your vision powers and your hearing powers. No one can tell you have them. Unless you willingly show your strength, no one can tell how strong you are. You just look strong. But not THAT strong. Not as strong as you actually are. Do you see what I’m saying, son?” Jonathan Kent said, still looking uncomfortable.

“If I fly… everyone would know about me. All our hiding would be exposed and they would…”

Clark let the rest of that sentence go unsaid. ‘Dissect you like a frog’ was like a prayer before bedtime for him… something he was hearing or saying almost daily. He knew this and his parents did too. It didn’t need to be said again, and Clark said those words as non-frequently as he could manage. He hated the sound of those words. It made him so mad, too, because he knew no one could dissect him! He didn’t get scraped if he fell, which he almost never did because of his quick reflexes. But in school, if he tripped, he had to force himself to suppress those reflexes and let himself fall so he would look normal.

Normal… something he always tried to be, but knew he never was. Everyone else knew too. They didn’t know what it was about him, sure… but they detected that he wasn’t normal. Not like them. But if anything, they just thought he was weird. But still… he was aware that he didn’t bleed and didn’t cut himself on sharp objects the way other people did. So no scientist could ever cut into him! He knew that. He wanted to tell his dad that, defiantly, in hopes of making him stop saying that annoying sentence. Family catchphrase, more like.

“Clark, if you go quickly, like you do, to a remote area, and then take off, and it’s late… and you surveyed the area and were sure no one could see you, you could fly. Just make sure to stay high—“

“Martha, I don’t like the idea of Clark doing that out in public. There could be a chance—“

“—that someone could catch HIM? He’s faster than any person or even their cars and airplanes… Jonathan you know that. He would be such a blur, no one would know who he was. You know, as well as I do, that when we realized how special Clark was, we decided that we would never… NEVER… try to hold him back and make him hide or ever feel ashamed of what he could do. We protect him and he protects himself, but he has to hide so much as it is. I don’t want to be the kind of parent that tells their kid to deny who he is and holds him back out of silly fear. If we don’t face our fears head-on, then they will win us over…. Our son can fly, Jonathan! Think of all the things that other people do that he doesn’t, that he may never do! But this… he has the power to do something that no one else in the world can do. An amazing thing!… And we are not about to hold him back!”

Jonathan looked at Martha, recognition alighting his face. Clark knew his mother had gotten through to his father. He also knew that his father only worried because he loved him so much. He loved them both overwhelmingly, he remembered, on that day.

“How does it feel?” Jonathan asked Clark, to which Martha smiled sincerely at her husband before looking at Clark, interested in his answer.

“It’s the best feeling in the whole world.”***

*************
*************

Lois poured hot water from a kettle in her kitchen into two mugs that held some Oolong Tea inside. Clark had become so good at calming her nerves when he made it, that she actually bought some for herself and kept it hidden so he would not know that she paid attention to him that much. She had even forgotten she had it until she got home tonight and decided it would be great to have some of that Oolong tea Clark was always making after such a day.

Jack walked out of the bathroom, his hair wet, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. He looked at the label to the tea, whose box was resting on the countertop. “I see he caved you on his whole tea thing,” he said.

“Yeah. I’m a coffee person, but this tea really does work wonders. He’s right,” Lois said, handing Jack one of the mugs.

They sipped their tea in silence for a moment.

“If you want to just go to bed—“ Jack started.

“I’m still too wired for sleep,” Lois said. “Maybe we could talk.”

Jack walked into the living room, where Lois had put a blanket and pillow on the couch. He sat down on the couch and looked at her.

“How did you find out?” Lois asked carefully, sitting on the coffee table.

“When the Planet was held hostage. A lot of things didn’t add up that night. Or I guess, they did add up. When he came after me when I escaped the handcuffs and left the room, he was shot at by one of the guards. I saw it. It was really quick, and as fast as I saw the shooter aim, Clark had pushed me back and used himself as a shield, and then jumped the guy, knocking him out and tying him up. But I know the guy wouldn’t have missed. He hit him. Then later he broke through the handcuffs himself. Like really broke them. Those handcuffs were solid. I couldn’t get anywhere pulling on them. I know Clark is stronger than me anyway, even if he wasn’t Superman. It’s just obvious,” he started, to which Lois smirked in agreement. “You had actually already been taken as a hostage when we were being escorted down a back stairway. The lights mysteriously went out, and there were sounds of a struggle and someone let some light in and Clark was gone. He had somehow, in ten seconds barely, busted out of the handcuffs, in such a quick and careful way that I didn’t even feel a pull, and beaten up multiple guards and ‘ran’ up the stairs in record speed. I ran after him and he told me to run back inside. He ordered me. I went, like he said, but peeked out of the doorway once I was inside, in time to see him dive over the balcony. The next thing I knew, Superman had saved you and Clark wasn’t around for a little while. No one reported Superman saving Clark. It was pretty clear after that. I didn’t need a house to fall on my head. Clark was Superman. And I had only moments before accused him of being no hero.”

“Jack, do you know how many times I compared Clark to Superman? I basically called him a clumsy, fumbling, inexperienced, unwanted hack from Nowheresville. I didn’t basically call him those things, I DID call him those things. Point blank, poor guy. But, I don’t think he minded. Jack, you said that ‘we can’t all be heroes’, and Clark knew where you were coming from. We were all being held hostage by multiple maniacs with guns. Clark wanted us all to keep cool heads because of how dangerous the situation was. Things would have been worse if he HAD tried to be a hero. It was probably so hard for him to not do what he was born to do. To just save us all. He wanted to be a hero and get us out of that situation. You wanted the same thing. He knew that. That’s all there was to it… I am starting to understand, I think, one of the most important things about Clark. He is this hero and this fighter, defending everyone, but he wants his friends to treat him normally. The way we all treat each other. He doesn’t want us to filter what we say to him or hold back because of what he can do. That is what Superman is for. I would NEVER have insulted Superman in a million years. Never. I insulted Clark regularly. I never understood why he always seemed to get a kick out of it. But I knew he did. Now I know… he relished in that normal friendship we had. I screened everything I ever said to Superman. That’s why our relationship never got below the surface. I tried to pretend it did, but it didn’t. Clark… our relationship not only broke the surface, but he became my best friend. If people watched what they said to him, those friendships he loved, that he had with you, me and Jimmy and Perry—they never would exist. You never would have said what you said to Clark to Superman. Clark…”

“Clark wasn’t a hero. He was just my friend. Sort of like a big brother, trying to keep me in line and help me out.”

“How would you have reacted if Superman were trying to steer you in the right direction and help you, like Clark did?” Lois asked, realizing that the more she talked to Jack about this, the more she again learned about Clark. It was different than talking with the Kents, but therapeutic all the same. The Kents were windows into the world of Clark Kent… there with answers and reassurance. Now, she was the one giving the reassurance, because she was more understanding, just now, than Jack. But talking with Jack, encouraging him to answer her questions, she was growing to understand the man she loved that much more.

“I would have thought he could never understand. He was a superhero. He would never understand day-to-day problems. That’s what I would have thought. I NEVER would have let him in. When I realized that Clark was Superman, that night, and we said goodbye, I remember feeling awkward—not mad really, just awkward. I made an empty promise that we’d get together again, to make up for that night. See that movie or something. But I didn’t look at him as Clark anymore. I felt resentful that he lied. I wanted to tell all Superman’s little fans and groupies that he was a liar. And I definitely didn’t want any part of it. The worst part, though, as far as I was concerned, was… I thought he was only helping me because it was his job… to help people. I wasn’t as special as I had made myself believe I was. I was just another Superman charity case. That’s how I felt. And then it was like the friendship didn’t exist… like it had all just been in my head. To him, it was part of some daily routine. Find someone in need; help them. For me it had been more and so I was mad at him. Every time he tried to connect with me for awhile after that, I avoided him.”

“So why DIDN’T you tell all Superman’s little groupies that he was a liar?”

“Please. I was mad, but not stupid. I don’t trust anyone, except Clark really, and even once I thought I didn’t trust him anymore, there was no one I COULD tell. I didn’t want word to get out. I know there are a lot of people, like Luthor, that hate him. I knew they’d ruin his life. Besides, as mad as I was, I never hated him. I knew that. I never seriously contemplated for a moment doing something that would ruin his life.”

“Yeah… I knew I never hated him,” Lois agreed. “At times I wished I could just hate him, so that I could forget and move on and not care so damn much, but of course that never happened. If anything, the more the truth sunk in, the more I understood him and the more I loved him for it all.”

Jack nodded silently.

“So, did you eventually talk to him? Work it out?” Lois asked, putting the attention back on the troubled young man before her.

“No. I kept trying to avoid him, but he’s pretty quick. And I couldn’t avoid Superman.”

“Granted,” Lois agreed.

“There was a fire a couple of weeks ago and I was nearby. I waited, wanting to see if everyone was okay; it was pretty bad. Anyway, Superman came and pulled everyone out and made sure they were okay, put the fire out, that whole thing. There was a whole crowd standing around, lots of people. But he walked over to me. He sort of pulled me aside and told me that Clark had mentioned that he could never seem to get in touch with me these days and to give him a call at the Planet. He even said ‘please’… that ‘Clark would really appreciate it,’” Jack finished, rolling his eyes, clearly amused.

“He’s good,” Lois said jokingly.

“I must have been standing with fifteen ‘charity cases’ worse than me. I was right next to a kid that must have been about thirteen, and he was smoking. Clark looked disappointed, but after the fire and everything, he knew he couldn’t stop and help them. It almost looked like he knew them, and had maybe tried to use his celebrity to help them make the right choices in the past, but it obviously hadn’t helped. After he left, looking around at those other kids, I realized that I was not a Superman job. I’m Clark’s friend. He doesn’t have time to help every single person that is heading down the wrong track. He reached out to me for whatever reason, but clearly… liked me. He really thought of us as friends. Walking home that day, I started to remember the times we’d hang out, and how much fun we’d have. Just hanging around or shooting hoops or something. If the phone rang, it was you or his parents or something, and he would light up. Especially if it was you,” Jack said with a knowing smile. “Superman has no friends. He can’t. He helps where he can and for people like me, makes PSA-type announcements when he can. But Clark, he has a small handful of friends. You, me… we’re in there. We’re two of them. We have his phone number and he looks forward to OUR calls. Suddenly I felt horrible for avoiding him for the weeks after we were held hostage. He never did anything to me, other than be my friend. And he really did help me. He knows how people would act if they knew about him, so to have a normal life, he keeps that little detail about himself a secret. And I’m positive that the only way we could ever have been friends from the start was by me not knowing the truth.”

“Exactly,” Lois agreed, glad that Jack had at least acquired the wisdom that she felt she had lacked when she herself should have had it. “So that was quite a few weeks ago. You guys had connected after that; I saw you together. Did you ever get around to telling him you knew?”

“Well, no. I mean, he didn’t seem to want people to know, and I could understand that. But then again, it wasn’t my fault that I figured it out. So I felt there was no harm in telling him that I knew and that I wouldn’t tell anyone. But I also thought he’d worry unnecessarily. I mean, it IS a big secret to know.”

Lois nodded. She understood that now, even when she hadn’t at the beginning of the week. She knew the main reason for his not telling anyone about himself was so he could be normal, but she also knew that running right alongside that reason was a pretty important one: he was protecting his friends. Like he always did. Because that secret was a dangerous secret.

“Besides, after that whole ‘please… Clark would really appreciate it’ thing, I realized it could be fun knowing this without him knowing I know. For the last two weeks I have observed him—his excuses, his looks when he must hear a call for help. Just his life. It really started to fascinate me. I would see when someone would put him down in some way at work or something or imply that he doesn’t know something, and I would just think, ‘oh, if they only knew’. But Clark would just smile innocently at people who said things like that to him and be nice to them or at most, roll his eyes a little when his back was turned. That really got me. And I really wanted to tell him that I knew. I felt bad not telling him. But then everything happened and I was in juvy-hall, waiting to get out. When I was in there, I had heard a lot of things about a man that I assumed was Luthor. And there was talk about him obtaining this substance that he said was a lethal weapon for his enemy. I knew that Superman and Luthor were enemies. I thought it couldn’t be a weapon for him. Nothing can hurt him. But still, it didn’t sit right with me, what that kid had said. And then I thought about it. Why would a weapon be specifically for Luthor’s enemy if it WASN’T Superman? Guns, bombs, knives… normal weapons can hurt anyone. But if those weapons don’t work on your enemy, then you need something that could. THAT would be a weapon specifically for that enemy.”

“I see what you mean,” Lois said, feeling a chill at knowing that as Lex was planning a slow death for the man she loved, she was still stubbornly ignoring that man. His time… their time… was running out, and neither of them knew it. It all made sense now, when it was too late to change the horrible events from occurring.

“I wanted more than ever to bring Luthor down at that point, and I thought we could. I thought with your wedding coming up, he couldn’t do anything to anyone, especially not Superman. I thought, if we could just work together and put that man away, he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. And when it all blew over, and things weren’t such a mess, then it would be a good time to sit down with Clark and let him know that I knew. All day today… after Perry and Jimmy said that Superman… that he was dead,” Jack said, spitting out the last word with what seemed like anger, hatred and disgust, “I just wished I had warned him. I really just didn’t think that anything could hurt him…”

“I think we’ve all grown to take Superman’s invulnerability for granted,” Lois said, although whether she was saying it to Jack or herself was unknown, even to her. She looked at Jack, meeting his gaze. “When I was mad at him for keeping that secret from me—I too learned his secret by accident; he never knew I knew—when I was mad though, I put off listening to him, letting myself forgive him. I just knew he wasn’t going anywhere. He was Superman! If it were anything else that Clark and I were fighting over, just his vulnerability and mortality and mine too, would have probably led me to get over my stubbornness sooner. But Superman doesn’t get hurt and die. You can stay mad at him for a long time and he’ll just hang around, perfectly fine, and you just know… he’s not going anywhere. Time doesn’t run out with him!”

“I guess,” Jack agreed, now looking at Lois sympathetically. “Well at least you didn’t have any hand in what happened to him. I could have prevented it, if I just—“

“No hand in it?” Lois said incredulously. “Jack, if I had heard him out, we would have worked out our problems, and he never would have gone to that cellar to see what Lex wanted! Lex used me as bait to get him there, as well! If I had listened to him, or if he hadn’t loved me…” her voice dropped to a sad whisper… “if he hadn’t loved me as much as I now know he loved me, then he wouldn’t have gone at all.”

Jack looked distant. “He really did love you. It was so obvious.” He looked at her, smiling, seeming to remember. “You never saw someone’s eyes light up the way his did just hearing your name. I mean, that was another reason it was never a good time to tell him I knew the secret. We had a deadline. Your wedding. We were all fully concentrating on THAT. There wasn’t time for anything else. Not until we met that deadline and won.”

“Well you guys did. If I hadn’t stopped the wedding myself, your news about Lex surely would have.”

“You stopped the wedding?”

“Yeah. I knew. I had to. I realized that I wasn’t myself. Lois Lane does not marry someone when A. she knows she doesn’t love him at ALL, B. she is only in denial because C. she knows she loves someone else…. It just took me a little while to remember Lois Lane. It was like I had amnesia. The Planet was gone, my friends were all gone. Jack, I used to identify myself by two things. My work and my friends. Before Clark came into my life, it was in that order, too. Now it’s my friends first and then my work, and the two are completely tied up with each other as well. So when those things were gone, it was like my identity was too. I wasn’t sure who I could be, when I felt that alone. I did something I thought would at least give me stability in my life again. But before it was too late, I remembered myself. I know I love the Planet, but I also know that Lois Lane CAN exist without it. I think I learned that from Clark. To love your work and do the best you can, but to always allow some time to live life. I realized that it’s okay to love work and have it be a huge thing in my life, but not to NEED it. I need my friends, though. My family was never exactly the Brady’s. And Clark… as much as I wanted to not want and need him… and to not love him… I was continuously realizing that the only reason I was so mad and angry and being SO stubborn was because I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone before. The really annoying thing was that every day, as I was trying to hate him, I was just loving him more. It’s hard to be mad at someone who does that to you, let me just tell you that!”

Jack laughed. His first real laugh since Lois had seen him.

“Jack, all this your fault, my fault, our fault business… it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change what Lex did to Clark. It doesn’t change the fact that Clark is in a coma right now. I really don’t think, though, that Clark would want us sitting around blaming ourselves for something that Lex Luthor did to him,” Lois said, and then gasped in surprise. As much as the logical part of her mind was trying to tell her that she was not to blame for what Lex did to Clark, she had felt deep down that she WAS to blame. This was the first time she had admitted and believed that no one, except Lex Luthor, was responsible for putting Clark in the condition he was in. Something about talking to Jack, who was wrongfully blaming himself, was therapeutic to Lois. In just that one way, he was a mirror image of herself. And seeing that reflection made her realize the truth.

“I’m glad I wasn’t there today, in that cellar,” Jack said after a long silence. “If I had seen Clark lying there… dead… no one would have been able to pry me off Luthor. Clark… he’s just a really good guy and such a great friend. To see him like that… well, I’m just glad I didn’t. As it is, I can’t get the image of what it must have been like out of my head.”

“Yeah, it was…” Lois said sadly, remembering. “…the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” She shivered at the thought she had successfully pushed far out of her mind for a couple of hours. Seeing him… Clark Kent, the greatest man she had ever known, not moving, not breathing. Pale. Limp. “It…” she gulped, feeling her insides clench at the memory, “felt like my own life was draining from me looking at him, like that.”

Jack took a deep breath, looking troubled.

“It was a much better picture at the end of the day, leaving the hospital,” Lois said reassuringly, to which Jack looked up, eager to hear this part. She focused hard on remembering how he looked when she left him a little while ago. Surprisingly, she didn’t find it too hard to focus on that memory. “He was breathing and you could hear his heart beat on the monitor. I’ve never found that beeping sound in a hospital room LESS annoying.”

Jack smiled.

“Listen, I’m gonna turn in,” Lois said, realizing how heavy her eyes felt. She knew it was most likely from all the crying throughout the day. She had never cried so much in her life, she knew.

“Yeah, I’m drained,” Jack admitted. “I didn’t really sleep too well last night. It was weird when Clark didn’t come back. He said he would. I just knew that something was up, but I had no idea what. Now I wish I had investigated that feeling.” He shook his head.

“You and me both,” Lois said. “But remember…”

“Luthor did this,” he said knowingly.

“Exactly. All we can do now is be good friends and be there for him. We can’t change the past but we can certainly learn lessons from it and make the most of the present. And hopefully by doing that, the future will be better too.”

“Spoken like a true Hallmark card,” Jack quipped, to which Lois shot him a look. “Good night, Lois.”

She smiled at Jack, glad they had had that talk. “You too.” She turned and went into her room.

Lois shut the light off in her room and climbed into bed, not wanting to take off her comfortable sweatshirt and sweatpants. She pulled the covers over her tightly and let out a long breath. She shut her eyes and was surprised by the images that filled her mind. For the first time all day, she was able to see Clark…

….smiling… happy…

Clark…

****************
****************

*** “I’m telling you, we kissed. Don’t make me repeat it again, mom!”

“You kissed Lois? The same Lois you’ve been going on and on about for days?” his mother said.

“I have not been going on and on about her! But we work together so naturally I would talk about her a little…”

“Sure, son,” his father said, humor in his voice.

“I mean, we didn’t kiss because we wanted to or anything… it was a pretense. A ruse. For the story,” he explained.

“Uh huh,” his mother said, as if taking this in, very seriously.

“Now Martha, if that is all Clark says it was, then I am sure that is all it was,” Jonathan said, although Clark was not sure his father was being entirely genuine.

“Bye guys,” Clark said, laughing at his parents now.

“How was it?” his mother asked, coyly.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Clark,” his mother said, urging him to give her SOMETHING.

“It was good, okay? Now, I’m going,” he said, shaking his head, but not able to stop smirking himself.

“Bye Clark,” his mother barely got out, she was laughing so hard.

“Bye son,” his dad said, sounding close to the same state as his mother was in.

“Bye,” Clark said, hanging up, shaking his head again.

“It was good?” he said to himself. He knew THAT was a lie. It was unbelievable. Up there in the plane, his lips touching hers for the first time, it was…

…better than flying…***