Note: Tony is their boss at the Star. I realized I'd never mentioned his name until now
.
I'm also looking for a list of torturous deaths - things like drawn and quartering and stuff so if you have any *cough*Michael*cough*, speak up! If I end up using yours [and I'm looking for several], you get kudos in that segment a couple of segments from now [like it's really worth anything
].
Thanks to those who, over in FFR, helped me come up with an alternative to "I Believe I Can Fly".
Anna and Paul- who get the prize for having their contributions used - and Aria, CainCrazy, L, Elisabeth, LCFan4Ever, Bakasi, Gr8, and Jenn who had some great suggestions.
Thanks also, as always to Alisha and to Beth - who cranked out something like 75 pages of BR work since this weekend
. You both rock.
Carol
*****
Chapter 19
*****
They sat in the Colorado Rockies, insulated from the world around them, for a very long time.
Finally, Clark spoke. "Lois, you said that there's a lot you've never told me about what life was like growing up and I’m not asking you to tell me now, but I've known for a long time that you weren't telling me everything."
"You did?" she asked quietly. "How?"
"Little things at first. A comment Lucy would make or something Aunt Louise said or, eventually, a casual remark from Jimmy. I know Lucy's told him a lot more than you've ever told me, and I understand that. They've had time to spend together, to get to know each other and all about each other's pasts, but we haven't. Not really. And then the fairy princess stories – Lucy told me just a little about them and you flat out refused to let me read them and it seemed to be a lot more than just that you didn't think they were any good or something." He took a deep breath. "And there's the nightmares."
"You know about those." It wasn't a question.
Clark nodded against her head. "Almost every night, isn't it?"
She nodded back.
"I know you think you've got it all locked up in a little box, but I don't think you do. I think that box opens almost every night and it's going to overwhelm you before long." He gently rubbed her arm with one hand. "They've been getting worse, haven't they?"
"Yeah." They sat for another moment. "Clark, if you know about the dreams, why haven't you mentioned them?"
He sighed. "Well, we haven't been doing a lot of talking for a long time and I didn't think you'd want to know that I knew or that I..." He stopped. Would she want to know what he did when he realized that she was having those dreams?"
"You what?"
He took a deep breath. "That whenever I realized you were having one of those dreams, I'd hold you and tell you that I loved you and that I wasn't going anywhere and then it seemed like the dreams would go away and you'd settle back to sleep."
"Oh."
They sat for another long minute.
"Have you ever thought about talking to someone?" he asked tentatively.
"What do you mean?"
"Like a therapist or something. Obviously, there's a lot of unresolved... fear or disappointment or whatever you want to call it from your childhood and teen years. And now what happened tonight..."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Can't I talk to you? I don't think I want anyone else knowing about all of this."
"I'll always listen and do what I can, but this certainly isn't my area of expertise."
"I just don't know."
"Will you at least think about it?"
She nodded.
They stayed there, Clark's arms around Lois, for what seemed like forever. Neither spoke for the longest time and then, out of nowhere, a white glow enveloped them.
Jor-El and Lara stood over the ship that would soon carry the tiny baby to earth.
"I try to picture where you are now as you hear this last chapter," Jor-El said. "What do you look like? Are you alone? What have you become? Lara and I will never know. But that you should live to experience this... that is enough. We are content."
Jor-El reached to seal the door to the tiny ship. Lara, tears shining in her eyes, touched the transparent surface of the capsule inside. The tiny Kal-El smiled and reached for his mother before the door closed completely.
The most violent tremor of all began.
As Jor-El spoke again Krypton hung in space in front of them. A point of light on the surface of the planet flared. "We give you to Earth, to a realm called America, and a place called Kansas. Remember us, but do not regret our passing. All is fate."
The point of light became the tiny ship, flying directly towards them, Lois still wrapped in Clark's arms as the interplanetary life raft grew larger in their field of view. It flew in front of them and then out of sight. Krypton hung there, for only a moment more then flashed, leaving a green glow that faded into nothingness – as though it had never been.
The light that surrounded them disappeared and they were left sitting on a blanket in a Colorado field.
Lois was the first to speak. "I'm still grateful to them for sending you to me. Now more than ever."
"Me too." Clark buried his head in her hair for a moment. "That was harder than I thought it would be," he finally said, his voice muffled by her hair and choked with emotion.
"What was?"
"Seeing them die. I mean I knew intellectually that they had died when the planet exploded; Mom had told me that, but seeing it..." His voice broke. "I can see from here where I listened to my adopted parents' heartbeats fade out. And now... to see the planet that had my birth parents on it explode..."
Tears he didn't know he still had flowed from his eyes.
Lois turned in his arms and wrapped her arms around him. After all the comfort he'd offered her when her dad moved out, when her parents died and after putting aside her charges of infidelity based on miscommunications and misunderstandings to comfort and reassure her in the face of a near rape, the least she could do was try to be there for him.
She was still so fragile. Her heart was still surrounded by walls, but she'd married a man who was strong enough to break them down if she'd let him or fly over them if she wouldn't. More than she'd realized, he'd been there for her, comforting her when she needed it most, knowing that there was no way she would accept his actions if she knew, reassuring her subconscious that he would never leave and beginning to prove it to her in terms she could understand.
But if she could offer this man, likely the strongest ever seen on earth, some smidgeon of comfort in this place where he'd lost both sets of parents, it was the least she could do.
He began to shake and she shifted some more, pulling his head towards her and cradling him against her.
How long he wept in her arms, she didn't know, but, if he could promise he'd never leave her and mean it, she could hold him as long as it took.
*****
Clark had never broken down like this before, not even when he'd listened to Martha and Jonathan Kent's heartbeats fade out. He hadn't known how deep his own scars went until the moment he saw Krypton, and his parents, explode before his very eyes.
He wept for his lost youth, his carefree days as a pre-teen and adolescent when the most he should have been worried about was his voice cracking or if the girl in math thought he was as cute as he thought she was or if he'd make the baseball team. Instead, he'd mourned the only parents he'd ever known and been left to cope with his emerging differences alone. He'd had friends – including Lois via mail – but no one he could confide in when he realized that not only could he hear things for miles and see through walls and start fires with his eyes – all things that were theoretically controllable – but that he would float in his sleep, something that could easily be noticed if anyone walked into his room at just the wrong moment.
There had been no one that he could turn to when fears of being dissected like a frog had permeated his dreams and, often, his waking moments. No one who would understand why he – who was never sick and never missed an assignment – was suddenly ill when it was time to do frog dissections in high school biology and refused to make up the assignment, leaving the only imperfection on his transcript.
And now... his early adulthood, should have been spent learning who he was as an adult. Learning his trade, having some fun and enjoying life in general before the true pressures of adulthood came crashing around him.
Then the first years spent with the woman he loved more than life should have been some of the happiest times of his life. Long dates learning about each other's likes and dislikes, fears and pet peeves, every aspect of their lives, the things that were never – could never – be said in letters. Learning the nuances of each others' voices, the expressions in each others' eyes, the language of each others' bodies, the feel of each others' lips. And then, when the time was right, a proposal worthy of the woman he loved; an engagement spent planning their wedding – whether a small, simple affair in Smallville or a glamorous event in a Metropolis' finest cathedral – and their lives together; ultimately culminating in a joyous occasion full of family and friends. And then learning together the ultimate expression of love.
In short, learning to love.
Instead, his early adulthood had been spent with his soulmate, but full of the pressures of adulthood and parenthood that neither of them had been equipped to deal with. A time rife with misunderstandings and miscommunication and hurt feelings and feelings of betrayal and unworthiness and uncertainty. A time when weeks would go by without having anything resembling a real conversation with the one person so essential to his well-being. A time when he often wondered if they would have survived if he *hadn't* been different. If he'd needed as much sleep as a human man, which would have cut into the number of hours a week he could work, decreasing their income. If he needed to eat a regular meals and a well balanced diet, instead of whatever was offered at one of the school lunch spots or leftovers someone brought to the break room or sharing a pizza that had been messed up with his coworkers and thereby increasing their necessary food budget exponentially. If he wasn't Kryptonian, their income would have decreased and their expenses would have increased. Could they have handled that?
A time when he wondered if the life he and Lois had dreamed of in those early days would forever be out of their reach.
He didn't know how long it was before his tears were finally spent. He didn't know when or how but he found himself held by Lois, his head cradled in her arms, her hand stroking his hair gently. What had he done to deserve this woman? Out of all the women in the world, why was she the one for him? Tonight, of all nights – when she had been so violated, she had put aside years of perceived betrayal; when she had just begun to accept that perhaps this really could work, that he wouldn’t leave the minute he felt he could be free without breaking his promise to help take care of Lucy while she was in the system and get the two of them through college; when she'd only begun to come to terms with the abandonment by her parents in her early years. Tonight, she had put that aside and was comforting him instead of allowing him to comfort and care for her.
He became aware of wetness on his skin that couldn't have come from his own tears. Was it raining? No. Was she crying too? Yes. As he came back from the depths of his overwhelming emotions, he became aware of her gentle tears and her quiet voice.
"I'm here, Clark. I'm not leaving. We can do this together. We're stronger together than we are alone. I'm so sorry for ever doubting you. I'm sorry for not being there for you when you needed me. I *do* believe you; that you won't ever leave me; that you'd never cheat on me. I do believe that you love me like you've always said. I'm here, Clark..."
Over and over again.
His breathing slowly returned to normal and after long moments, he pulled back out of her embrace. "Thank you," he said quietly.
"That's what I'm here for," she responded.
He leaned on one arm and stretched his legs out then swiped at his face with his free hand. "I'm sorry, Lois. I don't know where that came from."
She reached out and touched his face. "Don't be sorry. Obviously, you've been holding in just as much as I have."
He moved his hand to cover hers, holding it in place. He closed his eyes, reveling momentarily in her gentle touch. "I don't know about that, but apparently I've had more bottled up inside than I realized." He pulled her hand from his face and – for the first time – intertwined her fingers with his own and covered it with his other hand. "I'm sorry it was tonight, though. The last thing you need is for me to break down on you."
She shook her head and shifted so that she sat closer to him in the angle created as he bent slightly at the waist, one of her thighs grazing his. She paused then rested her arm on his hip as she spoke. "No, tonight was the perfect time. I mean, I'd rather neither one of us have to deal with the things that we do, but tonight you were there for me and I was there for you. We've both bared our souls to a degree – maybe not the details, but the realities that the wounds aren't scarred, but still open in so many ways. We've both been open and vulnerable. Now we can work together to deal with everything. With the abandonment by my parents, with your loss of two sets of parents who loved you at such a young age, with the attacks on us by others. We're stronger together, remember?"
He nodded. "We are." He freed one hand and reached out to brush a stray tear from her cheek. "I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I know it's nothing I've done in this lifetime."
Lois suddenly giggled.
"What?"
She immediately looked contrite. "I'm sorry. I just had visions of Maria and Captain Von Trapp in that gazebo in 'Sound of Music'. You know 'I must have done something good' and all that."
Clark groaned; surprised, but not necessarily displeased, with the sudden change of subject – they needed a little bit of levity after the night they'd had. "Just don't ask me to sing. Please."
"Don't worry. I've heard your shower renditions of 'Believe It or Not' and 'Would You Like to Swing on a Star', remember?"
"What? You didn't like them?" he asked with mock indignation.
"Let's just say, you probably won't be up for a bathroom Grammy this year." She glanced around. "Besides this is more of a 'Hills Are Alive' setting."
He was amazed with the easy familiarity in which their linked hands were moving together, shifting from one way of intermingling their fingers to another. "I'm still not singing or holding my arms out and spinning around or anything." He reached his other hand out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "It's been entirely too long since I've heard you sing though. Not since the Blue Note."
She blushed as she ducked her head. "I'm nothing special."
He used a finger to lift her chin, looking straight in her eyes. "Lois Lane-Kent, there is no one in this world more special than you."
Tears glistened in her eyes momentarily. "Thank you," she said softly. "I meant my singing, but thank you."
He moved his arm to rest along hers, still resting on his hip and grinned at her. "Hey, the whole club thought you were great, not just me."
"They were just being polite."
"You're not going to believe me no matter how much I say it, are you?" Clark smiled at her so she'd know he wasn't completely serious or remotely hurt by it.
"Probably not. Not about that anyway." She took a deep breath and returned to an earlier topic. "I do believe you about Mayson though."
His expression turned abruptly serious to match hers. "There was never anything there, Lois. She was a friend, nothing more and probably a lot less, to be honest." He rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand. "The only time we ever really talked about anything more serious than a class or the weather was when she called before we left for Texas. She asked about Aunt Louise and I told her a little bit, but that's the most personal conversation we ever had."
Lois studied their hands, still connected, for a long minute. "Can I ask you something then?"
"Of course."
"How come you remember all of that? If she really meant nothing to you, how do you remember those conversations?"
He sighed. "Well, when she asked me to a movie that day and I told her I was married, I wondered if she'd really gotten the message that there could never be anything between us, but I made it as clear as I could. She never said anything to indicate that she still held out hope that something could – I would have noticed and remembered and nipped it in the bud. She's mentioned dating several guys – including Dan Scardino – but nothing serious as far as I know. That day when she asked me out, I determined that I would never talk to her about us. Oh, I talked about you and Lucy both, but never anything about us or our relationship or anything like that. Things like school and work or the weather – how I didn't like that you had to drive in the ice or something like that. I made sure that we never had any sort of serious personal conversation. But I also have that eidetic memory, remember?"
She nodded.
"I remember nearly everything so I can remember every conversation you and I have ever had, every word of every letter you sent me, everything Lucy said to Jimmy when she was talking on the phone a little too loud. But after Aunt Louise died, I realized that just never being alone in private with her probably wasn't enough, that being alone with her, even in the biggest crowd, on any kind of regular basis was too much. Most of the time someone from one of my classes or someone I knew from another semester or something was with us, but still I saw her more than you – she was the constant – if you weren't there, she was. But, that next week – the day I walked you to class – I had lunch with Joe and Les and told her before class that I was having lunch with some old friends and left it at that. I was surprised when she showed up. She was almost completely left out of the conversation. I did my best to make sure that there was always someone *you* knew with us after that – either Joe and Les or Jimmy this past year or whatever but she always came with us. I never invited her to join us on Mondays and I never asked her to help with your Physics group, even though I think she did pretty well, and she never indicated that she wanted to."
"So basically, you're too polite for your own good?" Lois didn't look at him as she said it.
He sighed. "Probably. Jimmy said something along those lines too. I kept hoping she'd get the hint, because she's not into sports and stuff and that's what me and the guys usually end up talking about and Jimmy and I talk about all kinds of things that she seems to have little or no interest in – photography or Perry and Alice or the Planet or Lucy and you or sports or whatever. Whether or not she hopes that you and I are going to split up someday, she's a nice person and I didn't want to be rude and just come out and tell her to get lost. I should have, but I didn't and I'm sorry for that." He looked her straight in the eyes. "You have no idea how sorry I am for that."
Lois took a deep breath before saying anything. "To be perfectly honest, if you had stopped having lunch with her or whatever, I probably would have thought that you'd taken it more underground or that you'd broken up and either there was someone else or you were looking for someone else. I'm sorry for not trusting you more and I'm sorry for not talking to you. Aunt Louise told me I should. I never told her anything but she was always sensing that something was wrong and told me that you and I needed to have a long talk or two if I wanted us to work. Alice said the same thing more than once, but I didn't listen to either one of them. I figured that they didn't know what was going on and that talking about it would only end things sooner and I couldn't support me and Lucy by myself."
"I'm so sorry."
"I know and so am I, but..." she took a deep breath. "...I think we need to move past that if we can and quit apologizing to each other – know that we're both sorry, we're both forgiven and move on."
"I can do that if you can."
"I can."
"I'm glad."
After a moment, she asked quietly, "Where do we go from here, Clark?"
"What do you mean?"
"Us. Where do we go from here?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I know I'm not going anywhere."
"I know, but over the last 3 years or so, since that night, we've become nothing more than roommates, maybe even less than that in many ways. If we want this to work, long term, we can't keep going the way we have been."
"One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results," he said quietly. "If we do want things to change, we have to do things differently."
"How?"
"We talk to each other for starters. Even if it's just for a few minutes a day. Something about ourselves – not classes or the budget or work. Something that happened to us that day or a memory or a dream we have. We start to build a relationship the way we would have if we were just moving back towards each other after we'd been writing for years; like we would have if I'd just moved to Metropolis to interview at the Planet to impress you or something. Date. Talk. Learn about each other. In some ways, we're ahead of the game there. I know you like to sleep in flannel pajamas and you sleep better when it's cold. You can't stand having the toothpaste squeezed in the middle and were secretly relieved when you found out I preferred blue toothpaste instead of the green stuff you do so you wouldn't have to deal with me squeezing it wrong. You like chicken better than steak and cream soda is your favorite. You don't like 7Up but love Sprite. Stuff like that, but..." He shook his head sadly. "...things like hopes and dreams, beyond working at the Planet and winning all kinds of awards, not really. What happened in your past to make you, you. I want to know those things. I don't *want* to know them, but I want to know them if that makes sense."
She nodded and stared at the blanket between them. "I don't know if I can do that."
He waited patiently for her to continue.
"I mean, I want all of those things too, but the dating thing... I don't know if I can do that. I want to know more about you and all of that, but I just don't know if I can do the romantic relationship part of this whole thing yet. Even before tonight, I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I have a lot of things I need to work through before I can get to that point."
"I know." He was silent for a minute. "Can I ask you something without you thinking I mean to hurt you?"
She took a deep breath. "Okay."
"Why do you think Lucy and Jimmy can be in that kind of relationship when you're not ready?" He hurried on. "I don't mean anything bad by that or anything, I'm just curious. They're obviously very much in love and I know part of that is because neither one of them is in the position we have been – teenagers trying to do the jobs of adults – but why do you think that Lucy can give herself emotionally into that kind of relationship when you aren't ready to?"
Lois thought about that. "Maybe because she's the younger sister. I tried to shield her from as much as I could. She wasn't the one who Mom yelled at for spilling milk all over the kitchen or who cleaned up after Mom threw up all over the place or helped Mom get into bed. She wasn't the one who saw Dad kiss girlfriends goodbye from time to time or those kinds of things. And she's got a different personality too. I think she doesn't feel things quite as deeply maybe or has an ability to let things roll off her easier. I do know that she told Jimmy some of this before we ever met him – that no matter what eventually happened between them, she needed him to promise he'd never just leave without talking to her because she has abandonment issues. She's told him most of it I think and I think that honesty is part of it. And time together, too. They've had time, mostly free of the pressures of adulthood and work and college and stuff. We haven't. *I* haven't."
"And she had you, too."
Lois looked at him puzzled.
"Both of your parents left you, repeatedly. I've gathered that much, so nothing in your past showed you that someone could stay. But Lucy... Lucy had you. You promised her you'd never be separated and you did whatever it took, including marrying me, to make sure that didn't happen. *You* never left her."
Lois thought about that for a minute. "Yeah, I guess that's possible."
He smiled warmly at her. "I know it is." He gently rubbed her arm. "As for us... we spend time getting to know each other. I can do that." He reached out again to tuck the strand of hair that had escaped back behind her ear. When he spoke, his voice was husky. "It's been way too long since I told you how beautiful you are."
She looked at the ground and blushed again.
He rested his hand along the side of her face, his fingers tangled in her hair, his thumb rubbing her cheekbone. "There's nothing I'd like more than to kiss you right now..."
She jerked back, her eyes wide as he continued.
"...but I know that you're not ready for that, not after what happened tonight and there's still no way I would ever push you for more than you're ready for."
She relaxed visibly. "I know and I'm sorry I pulled away like that."
"Nothing to apologize for. I know that what happened tonight will affect you, probably in unexpected ways, for who knows how long."
Tears welled up in her eyes one more time. "I hate that. I wish that I was ready for you to kiss me tonight. For a second there, I hoped you would, but..."
"I know. It's okay."
Her eyes flashed suddenly. "I want to take him down, Clark. Not only did he attack me, but now he's taken this from us too."
Clark contemplated mentioning that they wouldn't be here like this if it hadn't been for the slimeball, but couldn’t bring himself to even suggest there was a remote possibility that they should be anything resembling grateful. "I know. What do you think?"
Lois let go of his hand and stood, wrapping the robe back around her to combat the overnight chill. "Well, we need to talk to Perry. I don't think the Star would publish this, not with the relationship between Paul and Tony."
"We can't publish anywhere else while we work there though."
"I know, but we only have a couple weeks there until our contracts are up. We made sure they were up the same week, remember?"
He nodded. "But anything we're working on while we're there is Star property."
She sighed. "I know. Can we work on it secretly?"
"Perry might assign someone to it."
"No. This story is mine." She ran her hands through her hair. "We just won't tell anyone yet. Maybe Perry but that's it."
"Lucy knows what happened," he said quietly.
She stopped and stared at him. "I forgot that."
"She loves you, honey, and she won't tell anyone."
"I know."
"So what's the first step then?"
"I guess I probably need to file a formal complaint. It's probably too late to go to the police and there's probably not any evidence because he didn’t succeed."
"We could still go to the police anyway so it's on the record. I'll tell what I saw and you tell what happened and let them investigate if they think there's enough evidence or whatever, but at least you've put it on the record so it's not just a verbal thing, you know? If you report a crime that wasn't actually committed, that's a crime in and of itself so it should lend at least some credibility to the claim. And we'll fly over and I'll at least glance in the newsroom to see if he's still there. If he is, we can call the police. If he's not then we know he left on his own, but we didn't *just* leave; we came back."
"Okay, so our first stop when we get home is the police substation on campus."
Clark shook his head. "I think we go to Bill Henderson. I've worked with him a couple of times and he's a stand up guy. There's too big a chance that the campus cops could be pressured by the University."
She nodded. "That makes sense. I've talked to him a couple of times and I know Jimmy's worked with him too. Perry speaks highly of him. So our first stop is Inspector Henderson's office."
"And I happen to know that he's working early mornings right now so we won't have to wait till later."
"Okay, then what?"
"You'll have to file a complaint with Dr. Snodgrass."
"Have I ever mentioned that I don't like him? I've interviewed him a couple of times for different things and he creeps me out."
"Do you think he'll sweep it under the rug?"
She thought about that for a minute as she continued to pace around the blanket. "I think it's highly possible, maybe even probable, that they'll ignore it or claim I'm making it up or something."
"Paul will deny it, of course."
"Or he'll try to turn it onto me." Lois wrapped her arms around herself. "He'll try to make it look like it was something I wanted and that you attacked him for something I wanted."
"It's possible."
She took a deep breath. "So we go see Henderson when we leave here and then, first thing in the morning, I go see Dr. Snodgrass."
"I'll go with you."
She shook her head. "No. This is something I have to do myself."
He frowned. "I don't like that idea."
"I'll tape it. I'll tape the conversation with Dr. Snodgrass and if he tries to cover it up, we have it on tape."
"It may not hold up in court."
"I know, but it would work for an article or even to get Henderson more involved, but I don't want to tell him that I'm doing it or that we think he'll cover it up. *I* want to do this and if the cops are involved, Dr. Snodgrass will give him a slap on the wrist or something just to make it look good and that's not going to cut it. He'll do it again."
Clark stood up and walked to where she was standing. He moved behind her and slowly, wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back to his chest. "We'll get him. I promise you, we'll get him."
*****
TBC
