Staring at her father, Lisa shook her head slightly. He wanted her to lie to her mother, and that wasn’t something she was ready to do. Her mother had been there for her for her entire life, while her father was still an enigma. All she knew about him really was how she felt when she was around him and that he could fly.
She frowned as she realized that it wasn’t entirely true. Her father was also the man who’d insulted her mother when they’d first met, the man she’d felt angry with and wanted to hit in the stomach.
It was confusing. Who was her father? Was he the gentle man she’d flown with, or was he the emotionally distant man in the business suit?
After a moment, she nodded slightly. She’d talk to him and make her own decisions. She couldn’t see any good reason to keep the secret from her mother, but then, she didn’t always see what motivated adults. The world they lived in seemed unnecessarily complicated to her. They seemed to worry incessantly about things that seemed to be clear to her.
Her mother was good. To Lisa, it seemed as though that ought to be enough for her father to share his secret with her.
If he shared his secret, then maybe good things could happen.
Maybe they’d like each other.
Lisa had known better than to even fantasize about her mother becoming involved with Kal El. Superman was an alien who flew around and helped people. He didn’t have a job, likely couldn’t help pay rent and he wouldn’t be able to provide anything like a stable life for either Lisa or her mother.
Worse, it would mean that for the rest of her life everyone would look at Lisa as though she was a freak, even if they never admitted she was actually her father’s daughter.
But Lois Lane and Clark Kent….that was a different story. A millionaire getting married wasn’t bug news at all, and having someone like him for a father would only make Lisa the envy of her class. They could be together forever and be happy, and Lisa would have a full time dad instead of one who just dropped by for occasional visits.
Telling her mother the secret would solve everything, Lisa was sure.
Her father had better have a very good argument as to why she shouldn’t.
**************
Clark could hear Joshua going over the basics of the search for the poisoned jewelry down below. It was a concession to her pride that he was even involving her at all; his people were quite competent. That they hadn’t been completely successful over the years was a sign of just how enthusiastic Joshua had been about making the things, and about the dimming effect of time.
Too many people weren’t sure what had happened to the bracelets. They’d lost them or thrown them away, had them stolen or just lent them to people who never gave them back. It was a convoluted maze of a problem, and it was costing much more than it should have cost.
He heard Lisa step into the room behind him.
“Why?” she asked.
It was a complex question, and Clark considered his answer carefully.
“I want to get to know your mother better,” he said finally. He stared out the window out over the lake. The moonlight lit everything in high relief. He wondered how it would look to a normal person’s eyes.
“Before you tell her?”
Lisa approached, and Clark stepped to the side so she could look out over the lake.
“The last time I told someone my secret, it didn’t work out very well,” Clark said. It was an understatement.
“My mother wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” Lisa said. “She’s a good person.”
Clark had thought Lana was a good person too. In high school, she’d been a little overbearing, but he’d thought she’d cared about him. It had been more than he’d had with anyone else. After he’d made his first million, she’d gotten a lot friendlier.
It had hurt when he’d realized that she liked who he was while under the influence of the red poison a lot more than she’d liked the person he really was.
When he’d realized what she’d been doing, it had felt like something inside him had died.
“She might not mean to,” Clark said, “But sometimes we hurt people without even knowing what we are doing.”
Lisa just stared at him, and Clark looked away. For some reason, he felt as though his throat was closing up a little.
It shouldn’t be this difficult.
“I’m not Superman,” he said. “I don’t want her thinking I am.”
“So you aren’t my father,” Lisa said skeptically. Given her senses she knew better. “You can’t fly and lift things and…”
“That’s not what I meant.” Clark stared out over the lake. “Superman is good. He’s heroic, trustworthy, kind. Me…I’m not even a nice person really.”
It was a hard thing to say, especially to someone who should have looked up to him. Admitting that he wasn’t the person he ought to be, that he was damaged was more than he had wanted to do. Yet it was important that Lisa believe him, and part of that was to tell at least part of the truth.
“So it’s all a lie.” Lisa said. Her voice was neutral, and her expression was carefully blank.
Shaking his head, Clark said, “Superman is who I always wished I could be. I think I might have been like him if my parents had lived, or if some of the bad things that happened to me hadn’t happened.”
Lisa stared at him, and Clark cleared his throat. “If your mother knew…she’d have certain expectations. She’d think I was one kind of person when I really am not. In the end…she’d be disappointed.”
“So you want her to know the real you,” Lisa said quietly.
Clark nodded.
“Ok.” She said simply.
They stared out at the landscape together.
It felt strange. It was important that Lois not know who he was, and Clark had set out with the intention of telling Lisa a lie. She wasn’t old enough to handle the truth.
Yet as he was telling it to her, Clark had realized that it wasn’t a lie at all. There was a reason for his gut reaction at the thought of Lois finding out who he was.
For some reason it mattered what Lois Lane thought of him.
He’d enjoyed his time with her as Kal El. She’d looked at him differently than she did when he was Clark Kent. As Clark Kent all he got from her was thinly veiled contempt. That he hadn’t done much to earn anything else didn’t change the fact that this was the response he’d come to expect from almost everyone.
He’d gotten that from Lana in spades.
Yet as Kal El, she looked at him differently. She treated him as a different person, and as much as she tried to hide it, there was respect in her eyes.
He’d hate to lose that.
****************
Lisa felt elated. Her father wanted to get to know her mother better, and he wanted her to know him. It reminded her of Beauty and the Beast; on the outside her father wasn’t a nice person. He wasn’t friendly or even very kind. Yet the face he showed the world was that of a man who was everything he claimed not to be.
After she’d begun to believe she was schizophrenic, Lisa had become interested in psychology. She’d borrowed books from her grandfather’s library when she wasn’t looking, and she’d tried to read as much as she could. Most of it had been over her head but some things stuck.
One thing was that people tended to become who they were treated as. If everyone treated someone as though they were a bad person, eventually they would come to believe it. If everyone treated someone as a good person…
People loved Superman, and wherever he went people showered him with love and affection for what he did. Even if her father really was a beast, that sort of thing couldn’t help but change him.
All his mother would have to do was to love him.
Lisa suspected that if she knew the truth, she never would. Her mother resented Kal El for the hardships they’d had to go through for her entire life. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known about Lisa; he should have found her mother again.
Clark Kent however hadn’t done anything but behaved like an *** . From what Lisa understood, her mother encountered a lot of people like that at work every day. He’d done a good thing by giving her mother a job. If he spent much time with her, he’d surely show her that he wasn’t as bad as he pretended to be.
Lisa could have a normal family, the kind of family that she’d dreamed of as a child, but better.
There wasn’t any way her father was as bad as he pretended to be.
*****************
A single point of light flickered in the darkness, and the smell of cigarette smoke filled the air. The single shaft of light from the doorway illuminated the ashtray, filled with dozens of stubbed out butts.
The man blinked into the darkness. He knew better than to reach for the light. When she was in this sort of mood it wasn’t worth it.
“I trust you have a report for me?” The southern accent was marred by the roughed sound of a smoker’s voice.
“She’s moved in with him,” he said. “Her and the kid.”
The single point of light snapped out viciously, landing in the ashtray. “Damn him.”
“They’re in separate wings of the house,” he said. It had seemed important, considering how she had taken the news of his trips to Metropolis.
“Like that matters. Where did he put the brat?”
He coughed, suddenly uncomfortable. “In the nursery.”
The ashtray coming out of the darkness almost caught him by surprise, but he’d been waiting for something like it. He flinched out of the way and it shattered on the doorframe beside him. He felt a trickle of liquid against his ear and realized he was bleeding.
“After everything we went through, he puts the brat in the nursery?” The muted sound of rage in her voice worried him. She wasn’t stable at the best of times and now he didn’t know what she was going to do.
“Keep an eye on them. Find out why he’s brought them to the house.” The voice was suddenly curt.
Relieved that he’d gotten away so lightly, he backed out of the door, never letting his eyes stray from the spot he thought she was in. He’d learned never to turn his back on her.
As he shut the door, he was startled to see a greenish light burst forth in the room, illuminating a bracelet and the hand that wore it.
If the money wasn’t so good, or if Clark Kent had been something more than a crabby recluse, he might have reconsidered what he was doing. As long as Kent had spent his life hiding, it hadn’t seemed like such a bad job.
Spying on someone who never did anything was easy money.
Now…he was beginning to regret the deal. Deep in his gut he knew that something bad was going to happen. For all that they’d once been married, she’d been content as long as he’d been as miserable as she was.
Now that Lois Lane and the kid had entered the picture, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen. He didn’t dare turn against her now, though.
Lana Luthor was crazier than a March hare, and if she thought he’d betrayed her, she’d kill him. Worse though was what she would do to him before he died.
