Okay, here we go... The next to the last part.
Did I tell you all, by the way, that originally this fic was titled something else? When you read this part - look for that other title. I slipped it in there.
I'll post an author's note at the bottom with the answer and some other info.
Thanks again for reading and for all the great comments. Here we go!
Table of Contents **********
PART EIGHT
**********
Clark knew deep down that his dad was probably right. He should give Lois some time to process what had happened; time to think.
And yet he found himself sitting here on the steps, waiting outside her hotel for her.
Jacques had kindly informed him that Lois hadn’t come back to the hotel yet.
Yet... being the operative word. She would have to come back here eventually; if nothing else, to sleep. So he would wait - all night if he had to. He had to tell her; he couldn’t afford to lose his nerve. Truth be told, he was almost tempted to fly around and see if he could spot her.
Clark shook his head. That would be quite the reveal wouldn’t it? He could just hear Lois–
‘Superman, what are you doing here?’
‘I have something to show you, Lois.’
One quick spin later and he’d be-
“Clark?”
Clark jerked, startled, and quickly rose to his feet. “Lois, I’m sorry,” he spouted abruptly. “I know you said you needed to think, that you needed to leave, but I need to talk to you. I-”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay, Clark. I need to talk to you, too.”
His heart quickened in his chest. What did she want to talk about? What was she going to say?
“You first,” Clark offered, suddenly wishing he had more time to figure out what he was actually going to say and how to say it.
She frowned. “No, actually I’d like to hear what you waited out here to tell me. It must be important.”
Clark swallowed tightly. “It is. But I really don’t want to tell you out here, like this. It’s kind of... private. Can we go to your room?”
Lois raised an eyebrow at him. It was *that* private? That thought made her feel a little uncomfortable. Just what was Clark going to reveal to her? What if it was something she didn’t want to hear? She would feel trapped in her room...
“I’d rather not... thin walls.”
“Huh?”
“My room... it has thin walls,” she hastened to explain. “Why don’t we just go somewhere?”
Clark flinched. She didn’t want to feel trapped. He didn’t want her to feel trapped, either; but he also didn’t want to give her the opportunity to run. He needed her to listen.
But he also couldn’t risk being overheard.
To top it all off, he still hadn’t figured out the best way to tell her.
“Where?” he asked distractedly, his mind racing to find answers.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s too late to go to a restaurant. A bar?”
Restaurants? Bars? All places too public for what he needed to tell her.
Lois frowned at his hesitation. “It’s late. Maybe we should wait and talk about this tomorrow, when we’re both thinking more clearly.”
She moved to walk past him and Clark panicked. If he didn’t tell her this now, he might not ever get the nerve again. He couldn’t let her walk away...
If she wouldn’t let him come up to her room, maybe he should just tell her right here. At least there was no one around.
“Lois, wait.”
She hesitated before turning to look back at him, her face betraying an inner conflict of concern versus curiosity.
Clark sighed and looked up into the beautiful night sky above them. The stars were vivid in their clarity and the moon was big and full...
...like a lamp shining the way.
Tell her? Right here? Would she even believe him?
Why not show her?
It was late. The street was bathed in shadows, and they were alone. Clark glanced around one last time - stretching out with his hearing to be certain - before turning back to Lois. “Do you trust me?” he asked earnestly, his stomach tight with apprehension.
Lois was taken aback. “That’s a hard question to answer, Clark.” Hadn’t she just asked herself how she could trust a man who had lied to her?
He frowned and held out his hand to her. “It’s not that kind of trust.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “I don’t-”
“Understand?” He smiled tightly and nodded. “You will. Trust me. Just take my hand.”
Lois was seriously considering whether she should have Clark committed or just chalk this night up to one of the strangest ever and take his hand.
The latter won out. How much more bizarre could it get?
She reached out and took his hand...
...and the bizarre escalated to disbelief when Clark suddenly began to rise into the air.
“Clark?”
He pulled her up into his arms and held her tightly as he rose higher and higher into the night sky above them.
“No,” she breathed, “this can’t be happening.”
Lois shut her eyes to stabilize her vertigo. Clark could fly? That was impossible.
Superman could fly.
But this wasn’t Superman, this was...
...No! It couldn’t be.
A hundred different memories suddenly went sweeping through her brain making connections and enlightening perceptions, revealing things she hadn’t noticed before. Too many similarities... too many coincidences...
No!
Their kiss earlier – the feelings it evoked and the... *familiarity* of it...
Her eyes flew open wide. “*This* is what you wanted to tell me?” she demanded, torn between amazement, surprise, confusion... and something else.
Clark didn’t say anything, just kept ascending into the twinkling starlit sky above them.
Her previous undefined emotion culminated into pinpoint crystal-clear irritation... or perhaps something more like outrage...
“Put me down!”
“I don’t think you really want me to do that.”
“Don’t be coy with me, Kent. Take me back down, right now.”
“Can’t.”
“What?” she cried irately.
“I need you to listen to me,” he implored her, slowing their ascent until they were hovering effortlessly above a thin, wispy layer of clouds.
The silvery moonlight reflected off the surface of the clouds, creating an ethereal ambiance that almost lent to it a dream-like quality.
But this was no dream.
Lois closed her eyes and took a deep breath; when she opened them, she fixed Clark with her most piercing stare. “If you ever want me to speak to you again, I suggest you take me back down, right now.”
Clark shook his head, seeming more confident and determined than she remembered seeing him – not looking so much like the Clark Kent she knew but more like...
...Superman.
It was more than a little disconcerting.
“No. I won’t let you run again.”
“Excuse me?” Lois exclaimed indignantly, wishing she could shove him away but realizing that wouldn’t do any good – not only would he not feel it but she didn’t relish the thought of plummeting several dozen feet until he caught her.
“You never listen to Clark...” he continued, “What about Superman?”
Lois narrowed her eyes, feeling an infuriated rush of blood flush her cheeks. “I don’t know, what about Superman?” she ground out. “Where was he when Clark tried to tell me that Luthor was a deceitful, treacherous-”
“That’s not fair,” Clark protested.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why is it not fair? If you had come to me that night as Superman and told me not to marry Luthor, I would have listened to you!”
All the references to Clark in the third tense were starting to make her head hurt.
“How could I? Lois, you broke my heart that night,” he said miserably. “I had warned you repeatedly about Luthor, and when I poured out my feelings, you rebuffed me. Then you asked me to fetch Superman for you-”
“I did not ask you to *fetch*-”
“And when I came to you as Superman, you asked me to believe that you would love me without any powers, if I were just a normal man.” His voice was pained and his eyes were accusing. “How could I possibly believe you when you had just rejected that man?”
“Because I didn’t know!”
“You claimed you would!”
“No, I-”
“By saying that you would love me even if I were just a normal man, without any powers, you insinuated that you would still *know* me,” he persisted. “But you didn’t. You couldn’t see past the flashy suit and the power it represented.”
Lois was silent a moment, feeling the tension between them almost like it was a palpable substance.
“So why didn’t you tell me this *then*?” she asked curiously, forcing her other, more volatile, emotions into momentary submission. “Why didn’t you call me out on it, right there and then?”
Clark let out a breath and hung his head. “I almost did. I wanted to so badly. I thought it might even prevent you from marrying Luthor, but I couldn’t risk it.”
“Couldn’t risk it?” she asked, furrowing her eyebrows, feeling the heat returning to her face.
“Because of Luthor,” he said simply.
Lois didn’t like where this was headed. “What do you mean?” she asked guardedly.
“I couldn’t risk that Luthor might have found out that I’m Superman.”
Her eyes went wide and she felt like she had been punched in the stomach. She suddenly wished, not for the first time, that she could fly. “How could you say that? How could you think that?” She shook her head in disbelief. “What did you think I would do? Go running to Lex to tell him that I knew who Superman was? Write up a page one exclusive in the Planet? Oh, my god, Clark. Do you really think so little of me?”
Clark was appalled. “No! Of course not! That’s not what I-”
“It must be if you thought Lex would find-”
“No, that’s not it,” he assured her earnestly. “You didn’t know Luthor the way I did – you still don’t. Not the way I did.” He closed his eyes and paused for a second. How much should he tell her? “Luthor had ways of finding things out. He had spies everywhere and he knew things that...” He broke off and sighed quietly. “Lois, he was a villain through and through. He wasn’t just dishonest and corrupt. He was evil.”
“I know that now,” she insisted.
“No. You only know what you heard, what you saw. I... I lived it.”
She looked like she was at a loss. “You lived it? How...”
He had said too much. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But-”
“No, Lois. I didn’t bring you up here for that.”
Lois eyed him pointedly. “No, you brought me up here so I couldn’t run away when you told me that you were Superman.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that I could’ve gotten very far,” she mumbled under her breath.
“That’s not the only reason I brought you up here,” he stalled, ignoring the dig and grasping for another plausible reason that he would have brought her several hundred feet up in the air. “I wanted to share this with you. I wanted you to...” He paused briefly before continuing, “You showed me around Paris today, but I wanted you to see it from a different perspective... from my perspective. I’ve always wanted to-”
“Don’t try to change the subject!” Lois protested hotly.
“Please, just look,” he implored her, glancing down towards the ground below them.
Lois’ eyes reluctantly followed...
...He was right. It was breathtaking.
But it was too much. It was all too much.
“I can’t do this,” she demurred quietly, turning away from the vista below them. “Please... take me down.”
“Lois-”
“Please, Clark, if you care for me at all, take me down...”
Clark shut his eyes briefly before beginning their descent... knowing that she was going to run.
And there was nothing he could do to stop her.
Their feet touched down on the pavement in a secluded alley near her hotel just moments later, and Clark didn’t try to stop Lois when she pulled away from him and took a few steps back.
“Lois, please, don’t leave,” he implored her. “Talk to me. At least tell me what you wanted to say to me when you found me waiting here for you.”
She was shaking her head. “I wanted to ask you how I was supposed to trust you... this merely proves my point.”
“What?” he exclaimed in shock. “Why do you think I shared this with you?”
“To flash Superman in front of me and make me forget that you had lied to me!” she quipped, tension building in her voice. “Only what you obviously didn’t think about is that Superman is just another lie!”
His face darkened. “You’re wrong, Lois. I did think of that. I knew that’s what you would think, but I never lied to you. I may have hidden some things about my personality-”
Lois snorted but Clark continued, “But I never *lied* to you. Tell me, when did you ever ask me if I was Superman? When did you ever even hint to that effect?”
“I didn’t but-”
“Then how can you say I lied? You never asked!” he clarified adamantly. “In your eyes, Clark Kent was about as far from Superman as a person could get. Would you have even believed me if I *had* told you? I wasn’t sure you’d believe me tonight unless I showed you.”
Lois wanted to argue, but the problem was... he was right... about one thing. He was wrong when he said that he hadn’t lied. Deception was a lie; there was no way around that one. But... he was right in saying that she had viewed Clark Kent and Superman in completely differently ways.
He was right - she probably still wouldn’t believe... except that she had seen it with her own eyes...
But that wasn’t her fault, was it? No. That’s what he had been going for, right? The whole point of the ‘secret identity’ thing?
Yes. Not her fault... and deception was a whale of a lie.
“You still lied,” she pressed on adamantly. “All the times you rushed off with some lame excuse, pretended that you were going somewhere else... doing something else.” She folded her arms. “What were those? Harmless little white lies?” She shook her head. “Those were all little lies protecting an even greater lie. Deception is a lie, Clark. There’s no way around it.”
“I know...” Clark sighed, slumping his shoulders.
His mother had made the argument that he hadn’t flat out lied to Lois. And maybe he hadn’t... in that sense. He knew his mother loved him, but he was sure that when it came right down to it, inside she felt the same way he did...
All the rationalization in the world couldn’t hide the fact that Clark had purposefully deceived Lois... and that deception was a lie.
“I knew this was the way you’d feel...” he admitted softly, “but can’t you imagine how I feel, too? How hard this is for me? How hard it’s always been?” he asked earnestly. “I revealed this to you now, tonight, so you could see that I trust you and that I don’t want to lie to you... hide from you... not my feelings and not who I am.”
Some part of what he was saying was trying to make sense to the logical side of her brain, but she couldn’t come to terms with it over all the emotions swirling around inside of her. This night had been information overload and she just wanted some time to process everything.
Was that too much to ask?
At that moment, two French police cars went speeding by, outside the alley, with their lights flashing and sirens blaring.
Before she hardly had a chance to wonder what was going on, two more police vehicles and an ambulance went racing by.
Lois glanced back at Clark. He had a far-off look on his face, like he was hearing something that she couldn’t, and then his eyebrows furrowed into a concerned frown. The expression was completely Superman. It was so obvious and clear to her now – how could she have not seen it before?
Clark was Superman. But without his suit or his cape on, it just didn’t feel real.
Clumsy, backward, Smallville Clark...
Her well-mannered partner, her over-protective friend...
The man who had professed his love for her...
Her mind reeled. Oh, my god, Superman was in love with her.
But...
It was Clark...
So much had been a lie. What was real?
She suddenly felt like she didn’t really know Clark Kent at all.
“There’s someone waving a gun around outside the Eiffel Tower,” Clark explained, interrupting her thoughts. “He’s threatening to shoot himself.”
When Clark didn’t make a move to do anything, Lois frowned. “Well, aren’t you gonna... you know... go stop him, or something?”
He frowned in return. “Are you going to be here when I get back?”
So much had been a lie...
No more lies.
“No, Clark,” she admitted bluntly. “We’re done talking and you need to go help.”
“So that’s it?” he protested, starting to walk towards her but then stopping short. “You’re mad at me and won’t talk to me... Where does that leave us? Where do we go from here?”
Lois smiled sadly. “We’ll always have Paris,” she said, quoting the cliché movie line. She really didn’t feel that flippantly about it - it was a defense mechanism, a way of emotionally disconnecting herself.
She would probably regret it later.
Clark flinched visibly. He hurt more now than he had ever hurt before, even when he had been exposed to Kryptonite. He had opened himself up to her, shared everything with her, and she was rejecting him... again.
Unable to find any words, he simply stepped further back into the shadows and spun into his suit. Lois’ eyes widened but she didn’t say anything.
Clark lifted into the air. Say something, he silently pleaded with her.
But she didn’t.
Lois watched him rise into the air, but then she looked away so he wouldn’t see the tears that were forming in her eyes. She wanted to say something... but the words wouldn’t come.
Clark Kent.
Superman.
Who was he really?
She felt like she had just lost her best friend and her hero, all in one fell swoop.
Lois tightened her jaw and narrowed her eyes. She had come here to prove something... to take control of her life... and, so far, it had been one disaster after another. Everything had seemed out of her control.
That was going to change starting now. She had come here to prove that she still had what it takes to be a good reporter, and she was about to prove that to herself and to Claude. He didn’t think she could be anything more than a research analyst working for him?
She’d show him. She’d show them all.
Lois ran out of the alley into the street and flung her hand up into the air. “Taxi!”
**********
To be concluded...
Bottom Dwellers Note:
Yeah, I know what you're thinking - DJ is going to wrap this up in just one more part?!? Let me explain... oh, but first things first... Did you figure out the original title? It was going to be "We'll Always Have Paris" - but then, through the course of writing, I changed it. That one was a little wordy and just didn't match up as well as "Forget Paris" finally did in the end.
Okay, now to answer the other part. One final part? Yep. Is it going to feel rushed? Perhaps. Several of you have commented or asked if I could extend it... make it longer. And the answer is, I probably could. But I think then that it would feel "forced". When I write a story, I come up with an idea... a place to start... and where I want to end up. And I also sketch out just briefly where I plan on going to get there...
But darn those characters, they don't always cooperate.
Part of my process of writing is to always allow the characters to go where they want to go. To me, that makes it feel more real, less forced. I always try to listen to them and let them go where they may. And in this particular story, with these particular circumstances, this is what they chose to do and where they chose to go.
So, there you go. One part left.
I hope you've enjoyed the story and are satisfied with where it ends up. Thanks for reading and for all the comments and I'll stop babbling here and leave the rest for the end of the story. LOL.
-- DJ
