On her second morning in Smallville, Lois didn’t bolt out of bed the way she had the day before. She knew she would only be in Martha’s way in the kitchen, and she knew not to expect Clark. He had told her the previous night that with Perry and Jimmy staying with him, it would be difficult for him to make scheduled trips to Kansas. He would simply have to pop in when he could, and she doubted it would be as often as she’d like.
It had been hard to watch him fly away the evening before, hard to let their interlude under the stars end when she couldn’t be sure if it was actual forward progress or simply a temporary cessation of hostilities. She hoped for the former, of course, but she also knew that Clark was…well, Clark, and that it went completely against the grain for him to be hurtful and vengeful. The fact that she had driven him to that point at all was surprising; the fact that he hadn’t been able to sustain it was much less so. Had he meant it when he’d said he missed her, or had he just been mouthing the expected platitude? She didn’t think she could bear it if he’d just been being polite. There had been too many lies between them already, and she was prepared to forgive Clark’s and even try to understand them, but she was certainly not willing to let them continue.
There was no way to find out if he’d really meant it, though. Even if they hadn’t been half a country apart, she didn’t think she’d have the nerve to broach the subject. Things whispered by starlight had a way of sounding silly when deconstructed in the stark light of day. No, couldn’t ask him, so she’d just have to be patient, to wait and see, a process she’d always found teeth-grindingly annoying.
In the meantime, she planned to devote her day to her own private investigation into Clark Kent. She showered and dressed in jeans and the sturdy boots Martha had insisted she buy and then, after helping to clean up the breakfast dishes, she ventured out onto the farm with her hostess’s blessing.
“You can’t get lost,” Martha assured her. “I’m going to be working in the garden for a while this morning if you need anything, but feel free to look around all you want.”
Lois had seen the farm before, of course, but she hadn’t paid it much attention. Her overall impression had been that it was quaint, in a country sort of way, but not particularly impressive. And it still wasn’t impressive, not really, but she realized that it was exactly the kind of place that would have seemed just this side of heaven to an active little boy. There weren’t many signs of that boy now, but she did note an old basketball goal, its net hanging in tatters, and she imagined young Clark playing there with friends. There was plenty of room for all the sports Clark loved – football, baseball, basketball - and she wondered how often he’d had friends visit the farm. She’d grown up in a gated subdivision where the kids could easily walk to one another’s houses, but being a farm kid, Clark wouldn’t have been able to do that. It occurred to her that the relative isolation of the farm might just have been an advantage to a family who had something to hide.
She walked toward the barn and was greeted by a different cat than the one she’d seen the day before. This one was a lean red tabby with huge ears, and it immediately began winding in and out of Lois’s legs.
“Well you sure are nicer than your friend,” she said, reaching down to scratch behind the cat’s ears. “He didn’t like me much.”
“Who didn’t like you much?” Jonathan said, coming out of the barn and making both Lois and the cat jump.
“Oh, your other cat. He hissed at me and wouldn’t let me near him.”
“Huh? What other cat? What’d he look like?”
“He was black, and kind of fat, with green eyes.”
“Black…and did you say fat?”
“Well, a lot bigger than this one,” Lois said, looking down at the tabby, which was now sprawled at her feet.
Jonathan looked disgusted. “I thought that cat had run off – haven’t seen it in two months. Darn that Clark!”
“Clark? What does Clark have to do with it?”
“He found it in an alley in Metropolis,” Jonathan said, shaking his head in annoyance. “Said she was starving and wanted her to live in our barns. Meanest animal I’ve ever seen. Wouldn’t let Martha or me near her, and if Clark hadn’t been invulnerable, he’d have been cut to ribbons catching her. I saw her every now and again after he dropped her off, but then she disappeared about two months ago, and I figured good riddance, to tell you the truth.”
“Well, it’s not so bad that she’s back, is it? I mean, she’s not very friendly, but she wasn’t doing anything except taking a nap behind the barn.”
“It’s not bad that she’s back, but it is bad that she’s fat,” Jonathan said dryly. “It means I’m going to be overrun with kittens soon.”
“Oh!” Lois said, and then, “But kittens are so cute!
“I’m glad you think so. I’ll plan on sending a couple home with you to Metropolis,” Jonathan said with a grin.
“You must really hate them, then. I can’t even keep a plant alive.”
“In that case, you can take the mother,” Jonathan deadpanned.
“Jonathan,” Lois protested. “You don’t mean that.”
“No, I s’pose I don’t. But the next time Superman finds a stray cat, he’d darn well better take it to his own place.”
“What made him think to bring it here, if you don’t like cats?”
“Oh, we always have a barn cat or two around. They’re not pets, though that one there is a pretty friendly fellow. But he’s here because he’s a good mouser. On a farm, every living thing has a job to do.”
“So what’s my job?” Lois asked impishly.
“Hmm. What are you good at?”
“Well, Clark would say I was good at getting into trouble.”
“With a capital T, as I understand it.” Jonathan chuckled. “Well, until we find some other way to keep you out of trouble, why don’t we say that your job is keeping me company while I work on my tractor? Darn thing always decides to act up in the middle of spring plowing.”
“I’d be glad to. Can I ask you a few questions while you work?”
Jonathan led her into the shady barn. “Depends. Are they hard questions or easy questions?”
“Um, they’re Clark questions.”
“Ah.” He reached for his toolbox, and Lois perched on a nearby bale of hay as he shifted through it, looking for what he needed. “I should warn you, if this is about your relationship, you’d do better to take your questions to my wife. She’s the one who meddles in Clark’s love life. Me, I think he’s old enough to handle all that on his own.”
“No,” Lois said, grateful that Jonathan was too busy with his tools to notice her blush. “It’s nothing like that. I just was wondering what he was like when he was little. What he liked to do – that kind of thing.”
“Oh.” Jonathan looked at her, appearing faintly surprised, and then turned away and peered at the engine of his tractor before saying, “Well, Clark was a pretty normal kid, Lois. Aside from the fact that he didn’t get sick, he was a lot like most of the other boys his age up until he turned ten or so, and then things started changing. But as a little fellow, he went through…phases, I guess you’d say. He was obsessed with dinosaurs for a while, I remember. Learned the name of every one anybody’s ever heard of. Played with plastic dinosaurs, read dinosaur books, wore this one T-rex t-shirt every day for weeks. Martha had to buy a second one just so she could take turns washing them. After that it was bugs, I think.” He looked up from his tractor and grinned. “Martha didn’t enjoy that one much. He kept bringing bugs in the house, for one thing, and one day he decided to make a bug zoo and cut air holes in the tops of all her Tupperware containers. She never spanked Clark when he was a kid, but I think she came darned close that day.”
Lois laughed. “My mom definitely would have spanked me. How old was he then?”
“Oh, about six I guess. It wasn’t too much after the bug phase that he played Little League baseball for the first time, and after that, sports became his obsession for a good long while.” He smiled. “Matter of fact, it lasted until he discovered girls, and even then it was kind of a tie.”
Lois chuckled obediently but then pursued her own line of questioning. “I was thinking the other night about Clark and sports and wondering…how could Clark play high school football? I mean, it seems like he could have hurt someone without meaning to. Didn’t he have his powers then?”
“Oh, yeah. He’d been getting stronger and stronger since he was about ten. Matter of fact, he had to give up all sports for about two years during middle school, and it just about killed him. It’s a hard time anyway for kids, and for Clark, it was just that much harder. But we just couldn’t let him play – we knew he couldn’t control his strength well enough. Another sort of boy might have turned rebellious, I guess, but Clark just made up his mind that he’d learn to control his powers if it was the last thing he did.”
“That sounds like Clark.”
“Yeah, but it changed him. He spent a lot of time by himself during those years. Built himself a tree house and spent hours there doing who knows what. Thinking, I guess, and maybe writing. He even called it his ‘Fortress of Solitude.’” Jonathan looked up from his work with a sad smile. “He probably thought that had a dramatic ring to it. Martha and I worried about him something fierce during that time, but he always said he was fine. He kept his grades up and did his chores, so there was nothing we could complain about, but still we worried. By the time he was in high school, we felt like it would be safe for him to play football as long as he promised to be careful. He played all through high school and college and never hurt a soul.”
“It seems like it would have been frustrating for him, though – always having to hide what he could do. That would drive me crazy.”
“That’s why you were a tennis player,” Jonathan said, his eyes twinkling at her.
“Huh?”
“For the most part, tennis is a sport where you succeed or fail as an individual. Football is a team sport, and that makes all the difference to Clark.”
Lois frowned thoughtfully at him. “I’m sorry – I don’t get it. There are plenty of football stars – guys who really stand out. With his abilities, Clark could have been the top player in the country.”
“He could have been, yeah.” Jonathan reached for a nearby rag and wiped his fingers. “But you’re thinking like Lois Lane and not like Clark Kent. From what Clark has told us, you’ve always been really…driven. Really wanted to succeed, and pushed like crazy to make that happen. And don’t get me wrong, that can be a great thing. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished, young as you are. But Clark’s just not wired that way. Who knows? Maybe he would have been if he’d grown up on Krypton. I think about that sometimes – about what Clark would have been like if he’d grown up with people who had the same basic abilities he does. About how things would have been for him if he hadn’t always been so different. But that’s not the way things were, and from the very beginning, Martha and I tried to teach him that he needed to try to hide his differences – that the worst thing he could do would be to stand out.” He gripped the greasy rag in his hand tighter as the sadness moved over his face like a drifting cloud. “I probably overdid that a little, to tell you the truth. We were just so darn scared of losing him, Lois. We wanted that little baby so bad, and when we got him, we loved him more than we could have believed possible. We just wanted to protect him.”
“I’m sure he knows that,” Lois said softly.
“I hope so,” Jonathan said on a sigh. “I hope so. But from the very beginning, Clark wanted to fit in. And sports…well, sports was his ticket, I suppose. He does love football. He loves most sports. But for him it’s not about winning and losing – it’s about being a part of a team that’s all working together toward the same goal. He doesn’t care about being the star. He’d rather just be one of the guys…an insider. He doesn’t get that feeling very often, and when he does, he cherishes it.”
“I saw that last night,” Lois said thoughtfully. “I mean, I guess I’ve seen it from the very beginning, but I never understood it before. But Clark’s always trying to fit in without really being noticed too much. The only thing I’ve ever seen him be competitive about is his writing, and even then he’s not crazy-competitive like…well…I guess like I can be sometimes. But he does care a lot about it, and I can tell it’s something he’s really proud of.”
“Oh, yeah. And going to the Planet was a big step for him. He’s always cared about his writing, but he was content to write for out-of-the-way papers where he was never likely to get much attention. I’m not sure what made him finally decide to interview with a big paper like the Planet. It had always been a dream of his, but he’d shied away from anything that high-profile.”
“Maybe he doesn’t mind getting noticed for his writing because it’s something he can do without his superpowers,” Lois suggested. “It’s something he’s had to work hard at, just like any other writer.”
Jonathan nodded. “I think you’ve probably got the right idea. That, and the kind of writing you kids do is the kind that makes a difference in the world, which is important to Clark whether he’s wearing a cape or not. The bigger the paper, the bigger the difference.”
Lois sighed. “And I’m just in it for the awards. That’s what Clark thinks, anyway.”
Jonathan chuckled. “I don’t believe that for a minute, Lois, and neither does Clark. No one risks her life as often as you do for an award.”
“You know, I don’t mean to have a near-death experience every other day! It just sort of happens. It’s not like I get up in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I wonder how I can put my life in jeopardy today.’ Nope, I go to work like a normal person, I eat a doughnut, have some coffee, and then next thing I know, I’m strapped to some train tracks. I don’t know why. I just have the worst luck of anyone on the planet.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jonathan mused. “I’d say your luck is pretty darn good. I mean, you’re still here, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, and now I know it’s because I’ve spent the last year with a superhero for a partner.”
“See there? More good luck.”
“I’m seeing where Clark got that whole ‘the glass is always half-full’ attitude of his,” Lois said dryly. “And for the record, it’s one of his most irritating qualities.” Jonathan laughed, and then she went on, more seriously, “But yeah, working with Clark is about the luckiest thing that ever happened to me, and I thought that even before I found out about Superman.”
“You and Clark make a good team.”
“Made,” she said sadly. “But yeah, we did.”
Jonathan shot her a sympathetic look but didn’t comment. “Lois, can you come hold this out of the way for me?” he said, gesturing down at a tangle of wires.”
“Sure,” she said, leaving her bale of hay and feeling grateful for the change of subject. “Just show me what to do.”
________________________________________
Once Jonathan had finished the repairs to the tractor and headed out to the fields for the day, Lois interrupted her investigation into Clark’s childhood long enough to go back to the house. After first making sure that Martha was busy in the garden, she scrounged around in the kitchen cabinets until she found a can of tuna fish. She opened the can and hid the lid in the bottom of the trash, and then she took it outside to the place behind the barn where she’d seen the black cat the day before. “Here kitty,” she called softly. “Here kitty, kitty.”
She felt a little silly – the cat could be anywhere in Kansas by now, and even if she was within hearing distance, she’d probably never answered to “kitty” in her life. Lois set the can down in the grass and looked around a bit. There were paw prints in the bare patch of soft dust in which the cat had been napping the day before, and she found another set of prints near a V-shaped crack in the barn’s weathered boards that seemed to lead below the building’s foundation. On a hunch, she put the can of tuna about two feet from the crack and then backed some distance away, squatting down to watch. She’d given it more than five minutes and was just about to give up when she saw a black head pop out of the crack. She held her breath as the cat crept out and eyed the nearby human with deep mistrust. Now that she knew what to look for, Lois could tell that the cat was pregnant, her belly swinging heavily beneath her as she inched toward the smelly can of tuna. When she reached it, she attacked it with vigor, tearing at the contents as if she were starving.
“You poor thing,” Lois said softly. The cat’s ears twitched at the sound, but she didn’t stop eating. “We have a lot in common, you know. He brought me from an alley in Metropolis, too. Guess this is his solution to everything – find a city girl in trouble and take her to Kansas.
“Of course, I wasn’t in trouble like you’re in trouble – that would be a whole different kind of mess – but it was still pretty awful. And it’s not so bad here, is it? I mean, it’s not home, but Martha and Jonathan are good people, and you’ve obviously found yourself a boyfriend. I don’t mean to tell you what to do, but if I were you, I’d try to be a little nicer, a little more trusting. If Clark’s anything to go by, this is a pretty great place to raise your babies, and Jonathan says all you have to do is catch a few mice to earn your keep. That can’t be so hard. I mean, if the country cats can do it, surely a smart Metropolis girl like you can. And as long as I’m here, I’ll try to sneak you out some food now and then, OK?”
The cat ignored her totally, never lifting her head from the can of tuna, but Lois didn’t mind. She had succeeded in her mission, and it was satisfying to see the hungry animal enjoy her much-needed meal. Once the can had been licked clean, the cat removed herself some distance away and undertook a thorough self-grooming, keeping one eye trained on Lois all the while.
“Guess one can of tuna isn’t quite enough to buy your trust,” Lois commented as she picked up the can. “That’s all right. I don’t give up easily. You can ask anyone.”
_________________________________________
She just barely had time to hide the empty tuna can in the trash before Martha came in from the garden to fix lunch.
“Hi, Lois,” she said. “Did you explore the farm?”
“Well, not as much as I’d planned to,” Lois admitted. “I spent some time talking to Jonathan while he worked on his tractor.”
“Oh, that thing.” Martha rolled her eyes. “He’s needed a new one for years but he won’t replace it. Personally, I think he just likes tinkering with it. He knows if he got a new one,
he’d have to get right to work in the morning instead of fiddling around in the barn.”
Lois smiled. “Well, I enjoyed talking to him. He was telling me about Clark when he was little.”
“Really?” Martha looked pleased. “Would you like to see some pictures sometime? I might be able to find one or two around here somewhere.”
“More like one or two hundred, I’d bet,” Lois said.
“Maybe thousand,” Martha conceded, laughing. “I lost count a long time ago.”
Lois truly was intrigued by the thought of seeing Clark’s baby pictures, but perhaps more importantly, she realized that the way to Martha’s heart was by showing an interest in Clark. However much Martha might want to keep Lois at arm’s length, she was unable to resist the lure of another woman who would listen as she spilled out her memories of raising her remarkable son. “I’d love to see your pictures,” Lois said, “even if there are a million of them.”
“Well, it’s a date then. I’d do it now, but I have my art class this afternoon, so I need to clean up and eat some lunch. Maybe we can get the photo albums out tonight.”
“Let me make lunch while you clean up,” Lois offered. “I can usually manage sandwiches without poisoning anyone.”
Martha laughed. “It can’t be as bad as all that, Lois, but thank you. I appreciate your offer. I’ll just go hop in the shower, then. There are plenty of sandwich makings in the fridge.”
“Should I make one for Jonathan?”
“Yes, just wrap it up and put it in the refrigerator. I never know when he’ll decide to take a break, so I try to leave something waiting for him.”
Lois was fairly proud of her sandwich efforts, and she and Martha enjoyed a pleasant lunch together. As they were cleaning up, Martha said, “I’m planning to stop by the store on the way home. Is there anything in particular you’d like?”
“Um…” Lois debated whether she should make her request, but then decided it would be better than continuing to steal food from her hostess. “Would you mind picking up some cat food? I promise I’ll pay you back.”
“Cat food?” Martha repeated incredulously.
“Yeah. It’s, um, for the cat that Clark brought from Metropolis. I saw her for the first time yesterday. She’s living under the barn, I think, and she’s pregnant and…I gave her some of your tuna. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh, good grief!” Martha exclaimed, sounding as annoyed as Jonathan had. “I thought we’d seen the last of that awful creature. Of course I don’t mind about the tuna, Lois, but if she’s pregnant, she should be eating kitten food. I’ll pick some up, but I’ll let you be the one to feed her.”
“I’ll be glad to,” Lois said, pleased. She had no idea why, but she kind of liked the thoroughly unlikable cat. And besides, now she had her very own job on the farm. “Thanks, Martha.”
__________________________________________
Once Martha had left for her art class and shopping, Lois set out with one goal in mind: She was going to find Clark’s tree house.
She had a pretty good idea of which way to go – the only significant stand of trees on the farm seemed to be at the back of the property, just beyond Martha’s vegetable garden. She skirted the garden carefully and ventured into the small wood, checking back now and again to make sure she could still see the farmhouse. She tramped through rough brush, blessing Martha for insisting that she buy the heavy boots, until finally, she came to an area that looked like it had once been a trail. She only had to follow it a few yards before she found what she was looking for.
It was a snug little nest perched high in a sturdy tree, and it boasted a weathered sign lettered in Clark’s childish hand: The Fortress of Solitude. Just the sight of that little sign nearly broke her heart as she imagined the loneliness and isolation of the boy who had made it. Based on what Jonathan had told her, young Clark hadn’t retreated to this fortress because he craved solitude but because he’d thought he didn’t belong anywhere else. And even though he no longer hid himself away in the top of a tree, she suspected that some of that doubt remained.
Her eyes slid down the trunk of the tree, and it was then that she realized that there was no ladder – no way, apparently, to reach the tree house from the ground. Whatever method Clark had used as a boy had probably long since been taken down or rotted away, and if he ever had the occasional nostalgic urge to visit, he could now fly straight through the door. It posed a problem for nosy, Earthbound reporters, however, and she felt like kicking something as she realized that just seeing the tree house from the ground wasn’t going to be enough for her. Somehow or another, she had to find a way up there.
__________________________________________
As she glanced over her shoulder and slipped into the barn, she had the grace to feel a little guilty about her behavior as a houseguest. That morning, she’d been pilfering tuna from the pantry, and now the afternoon found her creeping into Jonathan’s storeroom to steal a ladder. However, the only one she could find was about a mile long and made of sturdy wood – no lightweight aluminum for Jonathan Kent, apparently. She thought of how far she had to drag it and growled in frustration, no longer troubling herself with guilt. It was pretty darn thoughtless of the Kents, actually, not to leave a more conveniently-sized ladder in a place where it would be available to nosy guests. A thorough inspection didn’t reveal any such thing, though, and she was too impatient to spend time looking in the other buildings. She took a deep breath and lugged the ladder out of the cool barn and into the sunshine. The muscles in her arms were twitching before she’d made it as far as the farmhouse, and she vowed that she was buying Jonathan a smaller ladder for Christmas.
She was panting and exhausted by the time she finally propped the ladder against the tree, and she stopped a moment to rest, wondering at her own foolishness - at the lengths to which she would go to satisfy her curiosity. She knew that all she was likely to find at the top of the ridiculously heavy ladder was a dusty tree house long since abandoned by the boy who had owned it. It would have been considerate of Clark to leave behind a journal in which he’d poured out his pubescent angst, but if such a thing had ever existed, she knew Clark was too smart and too cautious to have left it lying around. Since Jonathan had told her the history of the tree house, she’d come to think of it as a cocoon of sorts in which an amazing metamorphosis had taken place. She knew the idea was completely fanciful, but she had a mental image of a scrawny boy going in - scared, frustrated, and confused - and, several years later, a young superhero emerging. Probably no one would ever know what had gone through Clark’s mind during the lonely hours he’d spent in his tree house trying to accept the miraculous, though surely disconcerting, changes he was going through. Whatever he’d gone through during the years he’d hidden himself away in this “Fortress of Solitude” would probably be as much of a mystery to her after she’d seen it as it was before, but still, something spurred her on, and she took a deep breath and began to climb the ladder.
“Don’t you dare fall, you stupid heavy ladder,” she muttered as it wobbled a bit from side to side. It steadied as she climbed, however, and she made it to the top without incident.
The “Fortress of Solitude” was much as she’d pictured it – a cozy wooden haven just right for an eleven or twelve-year-old boy. Dust motes danced and sparkled in a shaft of sunlight that shot through the one window, but the rest of the little room was in shadow, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. When they did, they swept over the expected clutter only to snap back to an item that had consumed her considerable curiosity ever since she’d first heard of it.
Superman’s globe. It was here, sitting unguarded in a tree house in Kansas! And if she’d known, she’d cheerfully have hauled that ladder twice as far – no three times – without a word of complaint. She’d have dragged that stupid, heavy wooden ladder for miles for the chance to take the globe in her shaking hands, to feel its weight and its unexpected warmth, to caress the familiar arrangement of the continents…
She jumped and nearly dropped it when the globe began to glow and the continents shifted and turned red, rearranging themselves in what must have been the configuration of Clark’s home planet. She tightened her grip on the globe and her nerves, however, and it was a good thing, because the man she’d seen once in a wrinkled Polaroid photograph suddenly tested both by joining her in the tree house and soberly introducing himself to his son.
“Omigosh,” Lois breathed, her heart hammering in her chest. She’d thought she was being silly when she’d imagined that the tree house held the ghosts of Clark’s past, but this was beyond her wildest imaginings. Jor-El, the man had said. Clark’s father was named Jor-El…
“…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…”
Her attention was so captivated by the hologram that she didn’t even notice when the light in the tree house changed, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the sound of a throat being cleared just over her right shoulder. Her head whipped around and the globe fell from her hands, silencing Jor-El as it hit the floor of the tree house with a thud and rattled into a dusty corner.
“Superman!” she exclaimed, the name springing automatically to her lips as she was confronted with the glowering, spandex-clad superhero who was floating just outside the doorway. She winced, feeling immediately foolish. “Clark,” she corrected, and then she began gaining steam. “You scared me half to death! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
“Don’t sneak! Lois, if anyone is a sneak here, it’s you! Did it ever once occur to you that maybe this place was private?”
It had, actually, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “Your old tree house,” she said scornfully. “I was supposed to know that your old tree house was off limits. Right, Clark.”
“You had to drag a ladder a half a mile to get up here. To anyone else, that would have been a pretty big clue, but no, not to Lois Lane.”
“That’s right!” she exclaimed. If he wanted a fight, he was darn well going to get one. She jabbed a finger right in the middle of his “S” and he bobbed backwards a little in midair. “You knew who I was when you brought me here. You knew I was nosy and pushy and that I would have about a million questions about you, and then you left me in the one place where I might actually get some of those questions answered. You should have known I’d be investigating you.”
“Investigating…” He went white to the lips before her very eyes. She’d heard of that reaction but had never quite believed it was possible, and she’d certainly never imagined a look of such abject terror on Superman’s face. “I trusted you…” he whispered.
Suddenly, she realized what she’d said, and how he’d taken it, and she was immediately filled with remorse. “No, Clark! Not like that. I just meant…I want to understand you. Not to print it…no…no, I never would. Not if it won me a thousand awards, I swear. I would never, never…”
He closed his eyes in relief as her gabbled assurances washed over him, and some of the color returned to his face. “Then why?” he asked quietly. “What does all this matter?”
“What does it matter?” she repeated incredulously. “How could it not matter? This…” she indicated the tree house, “it’s you, Clark. All the things I’ve never really understood about you…all the things that didn’t make sense. They’re here, on this farm and in your parents’ memories and in this tree house and in that globe. It’s all you, and it’s stuff you’ve never let me see before.”
“You never cared,” he said coldly. “You never showed the slightest interest in where I came from, how I grew up. But now that you know I’m Superman, suddenly I’m worthy of being investigated by the great Lois Lane. Well, forgive me if I’m not flattered by the attention.”
“You really think that’s all it is? You really think I dragged that ladder half-way across Kansas because of Superman?”
“Why else?”
“It’s not just because of Superman,” she said, frustrated at trying to explain something she hardly understood herself. “It’s because you’re Superman. You, Clark Kent. And I need to make sense of that so that I can understand you…so that I can understand how I feel about you. Because it’s confusing, Clark, and you’re…you’re complicated…so much more complicated than I ever knew, and I…” She broke off, feeling her throat tighten with emotions she didn’t dare voice.
“You what?” he prodded. Much of the fight had gone out of him, and he was looking at her curiously, as if he’d never seen her before.
“I’m afraid I’m going to lose you,” she whispered. It was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.
“Would that be so bad?” he asked, sounding so lost in the asking that she ached to put her arms around him.
“Yeah,” she said, taking a ragged breath. “It would be bad. I think…it might just be the worst thing that could happen to me.”
“But why, Lois? A week ago…” He broke off and simply asked again: “Why?”
“It just would be, OK?” she fired back at him. “And I’m not saying anything else. Because I’m not ready to say anything, and I don’t think you’re ready to hear the thing that I’m not saying, and if I did say it, which I positively am not going to do, I’d probably mess it up, because let’s face it, we haven’t exactly been communicating all that well lately, and I’ve already told you I’m confused…and…and…are you going to let me see the globe or aren’t you?” She folded her arms across her chest and looked at him defiantly.
He gave her a long, considering look, and then his mouth turned up slightly at the corners and he raised his right hand. She watched in awe as the globe rose gracefully from the ground and drifted into his open palm. In seconds, Jor-El was standing before them again repeating the first of his messages. Later, she would have sworn that she’d held her breath the entire time Jor-El was speaking. His presence filled Clark’s tiny fortress, and tears rolled down her cheeks as she saw the dignity with which he and his wife had faced their own imminent deaths and the selflessness with which they’d worked to ensure their infant son’s survival. Somehow, her hand found its way into Clark’s, and she laced their fingers together, though whether she was offering comfort or receiving it she wasn’t quite sure.
“Oh, Clark,” she whispered, when the final hologram faded away. “They loved you so much. They must have, to have done what they did.”
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, returning the globe to the table but keeping hold of her hand. “That was the best thing I learned when I found the globe. It was good to know where I came from, but I think it was even better to learn that I hadn’t been thrown away or…used as an experiment.” There was a haunted look in his eyes as he said this last, and Lois squeezed his hand.
“That will never happen, Clark. Never.”
He smiled down at her. “You don’t know that…but thank you anyway.”
“Anyone who tries it is going to have me to deal with,” she said fiercely, “and your mom, too, I’d guess. And we may not have superpowers, but I have a feeling that if we worked together we could be pretty formidable.”
He chuckled. “I’m terrified just thinking about it.”
“Good. You should be,” she said smartly, and then she turned serious. “But Clark, you told me you found the globe when we investigated Bureau 39. That was less than a year ago! Have you really gone your whole life not knowing any of this?”
“Pretty much.” He nodded. “C’mere. Let’s sit a minute.” He released her hand and stepped past her, seating himself on the floor of the tree house and pulling his knees to his chest while she sat cross-legged beside him.
“I knew from the time I was five or six that I was adopted, and later, after my powers really started to develop, my parents told me that I was a foundling, and that there had been some sort of spaceship, but the ship didn’t tell them anything, really. There were some markings on the side, but it wasn’t any language they could read, and at the time, they were a lot more concerned with the legalities of adopting a baby they’d found in a field than they were with worrying about where he’d come from. They just figured that anyone who’d send a baby up in a spaceship probably didn’t deserve to have one, and I guess I always pretty much felt the same way. That’s why it was so amazing to find out that my biological parents actually had a reason for doing what they did. I’ve felt kind of guilty ever since, though.”
“Guilty?”
“Yeah.” He fiddled with his cape, pleating it between his fingers. “Partly because I’d grown up resenting them for not wanting me. I think all adopted kids probably go through that, no matter what the circumstances, but in my case…well…I think the whole spaceship thing made it worse. And then, once I finally learned the truth, learned that my parents hadn’t thrown me away but had saved me, I felt guilty because I realized that if someone came to Earth tomorrow and told me that it was all a big mistake, that Krypton was fine and hadn’t exploded and my parents were back there waiting on me…”
“You wouldn’t want to go,” Lois finished softly.
“No,” he admitted. “I know a lot of people here think of me as an alien… but I feel like I belong here, Lois. Earth is my home. Mom and Dad are my parents.”
“People think of Superman as an alien because you’ve gone out of your way to let them know he is one,” she said firmly. “But no one who knows Clark Kent would doubt for a minute that he belongs here. Of course this is your home! You’ve been here since you were a tiny baby. You have a family…friends…a career. You’d be lost on Krypton. You don’t even speak…Krypish? Kryptonese?”
Clark’s eyes twinkled at her. “Kryptonian, Jor-El said. But you’re right. I don’t know a word of it. And I wouldn’t know my way around…”
“Exactly! You’d never be able to find a dark alley when you needed one. And you probably couldn’t even make a living…because I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Clark, but some of what Jor-El was doing looked pretty complicated. I don’t think they taught that stuff at Midwest U.”
“Definitely not at the journalism school,” he agreed.
“Who knows if they even had journalists on Krypton? You’d be homeless and probably starving,” she said decisively. “And speaking of starving, I bet you’d hate the food. Who wants to live someplace where you’d have to go a bazillion miles through space for decent Chinese takeout?”
He burst out laughing and snaked an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “All right! All right! You’ve convinced me.”
“Of course I did,” she said, leaning into him. “Seriously, Clark, the people who recorded those messages for you wanted you to be happy here. They spent their last hours trying desperately to give you a home and a chance at life that you wouldn’t have had on Krypton. The last thing Jor-El told you was not to grieve for them…all is fate, he said. I believe that. I’m not even sure why, but I really believe that you’re meant to be here on Earth, meant to be both Clark Kent and Superman. I think that Jor-El and Lara would be so proud of you. I know Martha and Jonathan are.”
“Thank you,” he said softly, resting his head on top of hers.
“For what? Barging into your tree house and going through your things without permission?”
He laughed softly, his breath stirring her hair. “Yeah. Thanks for that.”
“Anytime. Barging and snooping is what I do best.” She looked up at him and batted her eyes. “But if you really want to thank me…”
“What?” he asked, immediately suspicious.
“You’ll take that stupid ladder back to the barn for me! That thing weighs a ton.”
Clark grinned at her. “My pleasure, Miss Lane.”
They had done it again – gone from fighting to laughing, from hurt to friendship. She looked up at him, warmed clear through by the smile that lit up his face, and her breath caught as their eyes locked and the air between them suddenly seemed to fizz like champagne. She felt as though she were perched at the top of a cliff, feeling the edge with her toes, her head swimming with vertigo as she contemplated a thrilling, terrifying leap. “Clark?” she whispered.
“Yeah?” His voice was husky, and she knew that he’d felt something, too.
“That thing that I’m not saying…I think I might be ready to say it soon.”
He took a shuddering breath and pulled her close. “If I were you, Lois…”
“Yeah?”
“If I were you, I’d wait,” he said softly. “I don’t think I’m quite ready to believe it yet.”
And she deserved that, she knew, but it didn’t keep it from hurting worse than anything he’d ever said to her.
“Do you think you ever will be?” she asked, drawing back to look into his eyes once again.
“I want to. God help me…but I want to.”
__________________________________________
A/N: The idea of Clark taking a cat to Kansas, and that cat gifting the Kents with an unwanted litter of kittens, was inspired by C.C. Aiken’s “Something the Cat Dragged In,” which is probably my favorite one-off I’ve ever read in any fandom. I think this cranky Metropolitan cat has been residing in my subconscious ever since I read C.C.’s story the first time, and now she insisted on slinking into this story and being given her due.
Again, I thank those who are following this story and reviewing so faithfully. Your comments are truly appreciated.
