Second post of the day but last until after Christmas
.
That said, these aren't happy, Christmas posts. I didn't plan it that way but that's the way it ended. Especially the end of 135. So keep that in mind if you decide to read on. The end of 135 is *not* happy and kind of depressing given that it's Christmas Eve [okay, maybe more than kind of...].
You've been warned...
Thanks - as ever - to Alisha, Beth and Nancy.
And MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!
Last time:
Lois
I heard Clark following me. He caught up and put a hand on my arm. "Lois, what's wrong? This is good news."
"Yes, it is." I moved into the room we called our office. It was such a fancy term for a couple of desks and textbooks strewn all over the place. I needed to call Jill at the State Department. We'd been working with her since the whole thing started. Surely she could tell me if Christopher was safe now. I picked my address book and looked through it. I hadn't called her in a while and no longer remembered the number.
"Who are you calling?"
Couldn't he leave me alone? I wanted to get this call over with and grieve my marriage in peace. "Jill," I finally told him. "I have to know for sure."
Ten minutes later, she reassured me that not only was he dead, but the Latislani law – along with a number of others – had already been declared invalid by the new government. It seemed I wasn't the only one he'd done this to and a number of leaders of the opposition had found themselves in similar situations without American citizenship to help them escape.
My voice was wooden as I told Clark what she'd told me.
Tears continued to flow as he asked again. "What's wrong? And don't tell me nothing because it's something."
I shrugged. "I hope you and Lana will be able to salvage your relationship," I finally said.
*~*134*~*
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
Salvage my relationship with Lana? Lana was the absolute last person on my mind.
I moved closer to her and knelt down on the floor by the chair she was sitting in. "I wish it had happened sooner, too," I finally said. "And Lana has nothing to do with why. I’m glad it's over for you and for Christopher."
She stood abruptly. "Me, too. I'm going to go find Daddy and let him know. Do you want to call your parents or should I?"
I thought for a second about calling her on all of this. Did she really still think I thought things were going to work out with Lana? But first I needed to go see my parents. "I think I'll go see them if that's okay with you. I'd like to tell them in person."
She shrugged. "Fine by me."
"Do you want to come?"
She shook her head. "No, you go." And she turned and walked out of the room to find Sam, I thought. I watched her leave wondering what it meant for us – how exactly were we going to handle this very unexpected, very sudden change in plans?
I jogged to the wooded area not far from the barn and, once in the trees, took off as fast as I could and streaked towards Kansas, landing just as fast behind the barn. I knocked on the door as I opened it. "Mom? Dad?" I called.
"Up here, Clark," Mom called back and I heard her footsteps heading towards the stairs. "What are you doing here?"
"Where's Dad?"
"He had to run to town a little while ago, but should be home in a few minutes. Why? What's up? Is Lois okay? The boys?"
"Yeah, everyone's fine." I turned my eyes towards the road and, looking through the wall and zooming in, I saw Dad on his way home. "He'll be here in a minute," I told her.
"Well, do you want to tell me now?"
Even though I knew Dad would be here shortly, I couldn't keep it in any longer. "General Navance is dead!" I exclaimed, picking her up and swinging her around.
"What?"
"They just announced it on the AP and on ANC. He was killed by the rebels."
"And this is good right?" I could tell she didn't want to get her hopes up either.
"That's great!" I exclaimed. "He's the reason that Christopher has always been with security, why our part of the house has always been locked down. If he's dead, he has no claim on Christopher. They announced he was overthrown earlier today but dead is better for us."
"So what does Lois think?"
"She's relieved. He can't come after her son anymore."
"Her son?"
I winced and hoped Mom didn't notice. Trust Mom to catch the slip. "Yeah. Christopher."
"Clark Jerome Davis Kent, what aren't you telling us?"
I never got away with anything – even now, married with kids of my own and I didn't get away with anything. I heard the tires of the truck crunching in the gravel. "Dad's here."
"You're not getting out of it that easy."
We went to the kitchen and I sat at the table staring at the wood grain. Mom was going to ferret the truth out. To be honest, I was surprised she hadn't caught on before this.
She set a glass of buttermilk in front of me and we waited for Dad to come in.
"Clark! What are you doing here?" He smacked me on the back.
I explained about the uprising in Latislan and he said he'd heard about the general on the top of the hour report on the radio on the way to town but the significance of the event hadn't registered.
"And now Clark's going to explain to us why he referred to Christopher as Lois' son."
"He is Lois' son," I pointed out defensively.
"And your son?" Mom asked with a raised eyebrow.
"And my son," I said, less convincingly than I would have hoped.
"Clark..." Mom's voice held the warning tone I'd known not to mess with since I was three.
I sighed and leaned back in the chair, running my hands through my hair. "We're not sure if he's my son or not," I finally said.
They were silent for a moment before Dad finally said something. "Lois never struck me as the type to sleep around." I was sure there was more he wanted to say.
"She's not. She was drugged at a Halloween party and I found her with some guy who got away before I could catch him because I was more concerned about her. We're not sure how far he got before I got there. And if he did..." I couldn't say it. "We have no idea if he used protection or not."
"But it's possible that he is your son?" Mom asked.
I nodded. "We didn't realize it until the night she got pregnant with Nate. We had no idea that we'd actually been together that night at the cabin. Neither one of us remembered it – the whole hypothermic thing – even though that's what we told everybody, we didn't know it was the truth. I thought I'd dreamed of being with Lana – she only remembered dreaming of being with me. Their faces kept getting confused in my mind when I tried to remember the dream, but... After Sam had his heart attack, Lois was in a really bad place. I mean, really bad and she'd been in some bad places before." I fingered the placemat Mom kept on the table. "I came home and she was absolutely falling apart and she kissed me and asked me to help her forget for a little while."
I couldn't look either one of them in the face. "Lois was my wife, and had been for almost two years so it wasn't like I was cheating on someone. But at the same time, afterwards, it felt like I was cheating on Lana though, even though I was married to Lois," I conceded. "I'd promised Lana that it was in name only even though we had to make it look good so that he wouldn't suspect we were only staying married to keep him away from Lois and Christopher because that if anyone realized that's what it was, he could claim Christopher under Latislani law."
I took a deep breath. "Anyway, I helped her forget about her dad for awhile and afterwards we both remembered what happened at the cabin. Before long she realized she was pregnant again. The pregnancy was similar to Christopher's. She didn't get morning sickness until about ten weeks again and it lasted until about twenty weeks, just like with Christopher. We don't *know* what that guy did to her and Christopher looks so much like me so that seems to indicate that he's my son, but..." I shrugged. "...we just don’t know. We're almost positive he is, but without a DNA test..."
I had no idea how long it was before Dad finally spoke. They were holding hands – they always did when trying to come to grips with new information. "Let me get this straight. When you told them in Latislan that Christopher was your baby, you didn't think he was?"
"Right."
"So why did you say he was?"
"I just sort of blurted it out hoping that if I claimed him, they'd let her go. It didn't work that way and we had to get married for me to claim him under Latislani law since he claimed him too. We were going to get divorced or annulled or something as soon as we got back, but when we were at the airport in Metropolis, Jill told us that he'd changed the law so that the marriage had to last five years after the baby was born and if he suspected that the marriage was just to keep his hands off the baby, he could come after the baby anyway."
"So you stayed married," Mom said slowly.
I nodded. "Sam had already asked me to consider it. Lois had been through so much already in her life and for her to end up alone and pregnant was more than he could stand. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that it wasn't going to happen and once Jill told us he'd change the law, we didn't have a choice. Or didn't feel we did anyway."
"You've always told us that no court would send him back to Latislan," Dad pointed out.
"And I don't think they would, but the international relations and PR nightmare that would go along with it wasn't worth the risk. If he ever got his hands on Christopher and got him out of the country, we'd never see him again. As long as we stayed married, his legal claim – even under Latislani law – was invalid. And if there was a court battle, Christopher would always be branded as the kid who had no dad whose mom married some guy who left them when a foreign dictator tried to take him away. And I'd be the guy who let him try. I couldn’t let him do that. You and Chris wouldn't let that happen to me, Mom, and neither did you, Dad. How could I let that happen to Christopher?"
"And what was going to happen when five years was up?" Dad asked.
"I didn't think that far ahead. Lois read me the riot act over that one after I gave her that story to read about how we became a family. If I wanted to be the kind of dad you've been to me, how could I think about leaving after five years?"
"What was your answer to that?"
I couldn’t look at him. "I didn't have one and eventually she just dropped it."
"And now?" Mom asked quietly. "The threat is gone, but from the sound of it, the marriage is still basically in name only – except for that once."
I shrugged, having moved the place mat so I could trace the wood grain with a finger. "Yeah, pretty much."
"So are you leaving?"
I sighed. "I don't think she wants me to stay."
"What do you want?"
"I don't want to leave my sons," I answered honestly. "I don’t think I could handle being a part-time dad. I love them too much."
"And what about Lois? Could you leave her?" I think Dad wanted to yell at me because I'd bet money, that while he was proud of me for trying to help Lois and the baby who would become Christopher, he probably thought I went about it the wrong way.
"If she doesn't want me to stay, what does it matter? Maybe Sam will let me live in the apartment or something so I can be close to my boys."
"That doesn't answer the question," Dad pointed out. "With the boys out of the picture, could you leave Lois?"
I didn't answer him; I didn't know how to.
We were quiet for a long time.
"I guess that explains some things," Mom finally said.
I nodded.
"Like why you never even tried to fall in love with your wife," Dad said quietly.
"I can't *make* myself fall in love with her," I told them. "For the first... I don't know how long, I'd planned on me and Lois getting a divorce and begging Lana to take me back. I gave up on that dream a while ago, I guess. I'm not in love with Lana anymore and there's been way too much water under the bridge or something for it to work with us at this point. Besides her living here in Smallville and me in Metropolis. And for now, at least, I'd guess Lois and I are still working together and I don't think that would have gone over well with Lana if we were trying again."
"No," Mom said slowly. "You can't *make* yourself *fall* in love with her, but you can decide *to* love her. There's a big difference. Maybe you're just still too young to realize it."
"I *do* love her. She's my best friend, though we've had more than our share of rough patches the last three and a half years. I don't want anything bad to happen to her. I want her to find someone who loves her like she deserves to be loved – like you two, or you and Chris, Mom, or Sam and Ellen. Like Nana and Pop Pop. I want her to be *happy*."
"How does she feel about all this?" Dad asked.
I shrugged. "She told me on our second anniversary that she was in love with me, but not to worry about her – she'd be over it by the time Christopher's fifth birthday rolled around. I don't know if she still is or not, but I think she'd be willing to give us a real shot if she thought I was really committed to making it work, but..." I sighed. "I don't want to short-change her either. That was the big fight you heard, Mom, right before Nate's surgery. She said that we needed to end things then – because the option was to hurt all of us then or hurt us all worse in two more years. She even offered to be the one to leave. We'd always talked about me leaving, but that was before we realized that Christopher was probably my son. That time, she offered to go. But ending things between us would mean that Navance's claim on Christopher wouldn't expire on his fifth birthday. That's what I couldn’t tell you about." I sighed. "I probably still shouldn't, but I have the feeling my marriage is over, so it probably doesn't matter. We just kind of dropped it with everything with Nate."
The grip they had on each others' hand had tightened as I spoke. I was sure their heads were spinning, too.
Mine sure was.
"The plan was always for you to split up," Dad finally said. "But you also said that it's probably not what Lois really wants. What about you? You said you don't want to leave your sons. You said she offered to leave. Would she give you custody of the boys?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. But they need her. They love her and she needs them, too."
"What about you?" Mom asked. "Do you need her?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know how.
*****
TBC
