from Part Six:
“So, Lois Lane, would you like to go out for a drink sometime?”
Daniel smiled at me and I could see a little fear in his eyes. He was actually worried that I might say no. It was fair enough, his chat-up technique hadn’t been the best I’d ever come across, however he did seem nice, good-looking and it wasn’t as if I had any better plans. Daniel might prove to be really good for me. And I was in serious need of something good to happening to me.
“Sure.”
*.*.*.
Part Seven
*.*.*.
Daniel was nice. And handsome. And good company. I enjoyed our date, honestly I did. I mean, there was nothing to not like. OK, so it was a little annoying when he refused to answer questions about his job, but that was fine. Clark used to do things that I found annoying too. His unrelenting need to be good and right all the time was frustrating. Even flying off to be Superman could be annoying at certain times. Acceptable, completely understandable, but pure tear-your-hair-out irritating.
Of course, I realised early on into our date what the problem was. Dan wasn’t Clark. Maybe Clark hadn’t shown me his most personable side recently, but I could still remember it, possibly through rose-tinted glasses, and I had seen rare glimpses in the aftermath of our lovemaking. I kept mentally comparing Dan to Clark throughout the whole evening and he never quite matched up. Of course, Clark was Superman and any man would fail in comparison. It was sad, but it was what every man I ever dated would have to contend with now. It was a good job that I didn’t deserve to have someone to love me, because I was never going to find anyone good enough.
It took me a couple of glasses of wine to realise that the reason I was comparing Dan to Clark was because I’d fallen in love with him. Clark, that was, not Dan. Which was the problem. If I had fallen for Dan it would have been easy, he liked me. But instead I was in love with a man who hated me, who couldn’t be in my presence because I was a horrible woman who had ruined his life. How sick was I?
Still, Dan was nice and I did enjoy being around him. I knew that it might not turn out to be the romance of the century but it was nice enough and better than I could ever really hope for.
Our second date went just as well as the first. I didn’t feel pressured into rushing into anything with him, he seemed happy just to be around me. Completely different than Clark, who’d only ever bothered with me when he wanted sex. Dan didn’t even expect a goodnight kiss on the cheek.
The third date, however, had a rocky start and as normal, it was all my fault.
I was on my way to the restaurant to meet Dan - he had offered to pick me up but I felt that I could make my own way there, I liked my independence too much to be ferried around by a man - when I heard the sound of a gun being fired. Normal people hearing a sound like that would run away as fast as they could in the opposite direction. It’s the best plan, really, getting away from a situation that was potentially dangerous. Unfortunately, it was me and I rushed over there, hoping for a scoop. Perry’s warning about my work had really got to me and I was determined to start being the best reporter I could be. My safety had never been anything close to a priority.
I turned a corner and heard a scuffle in the alley I found myself in. Walking lightly so as not to be heard, I crept along the dimly lit wall until I could see what was going on. At the end of the alley, Superman was disarming and lecturing a gang of youths. I felt my insides melt at the sight of him. Why did I have to realise that I loved him? It was so much easier to deal with seeing him when my conscious mind had decided that I didn’t need to know that. Unfortunately, it was all I could do not to rush over there and jump him, but as it turned out it was a very good thing I didn’t.
Someone tried to grab me, so I whirled round and punched them in the face, sending them falling to the ground.
I relaxed my defensive posture when I realised who it was that I was towering over, menacingly. “Dan!”
“Lois!” he complained, as he rose to his feet, rubbing his sore jaw. I just knew that he was going to get a bruise there. “What are you doing, attacking me like that?”
“I saw Cl-- Superman talking to that gang and I thought you might be another member. Why were you sneaking up on me?”
He gave a small laugh. “I thought you might be another gang member. At least you can’t say we don’t think alike!”
“No,” I agreed, my voice small as I realised Clark’s lecture had stopped and he was listening to us. He stalked over to us and I could sense the anger in his long strides.
“Superman,” Dan smiled at him, completely oblivious. “This is my date that I was supposed to be meeting, Lois Lane. Have you two met?”
I was glad the question wasn’t aimed at me and I wondered how Clark would answer it. Of course we’d met, but Clark had wanted to start our relationship afresh. Would he pretend we hadn’t met properly in order to restart our relationship?
“Yes, briefly,” he responded coldly. He really wasn’t happy at seeing me there, he sounded as dark as he used to when he’d arrive in my apartment to sleep with me.
Dan looked surprised at how unfriendly the superhero had become. “I met Superman when I was working on Mayson Drake’s murder,” he informed me, although I could have guessed that. I was slightly annoyed with myself that I hadn’t considered that before I agreed to go on a date with him.
“Old friends then,” I joked feebly, knowing that Dan wouldn’t see it as a joke and there was no way Clark would laugh at it, but I felt it was a joke I had to make in the circumstances.
I tried to make eye contact with Clark but he refused to co-operate. “I’m sorry about Mayson’s death. It must be hard to cope with. You must wish you could have been there to save her.”
My voice had been soft and sympathetic, sincere, but I was deeply shocked by the look I got back from him. He might have well had *said* that it was all my fault he wasn’t there.
I closed my eyes. <It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault,> I repeated the words in my head like a mantra, <not my fault, it was hours after Clark had broken up, broken OFF with me.>
“Yeah, but we got them in the end,” Dan tried his hardest to lighten the atmosphere. Poor guy, he didn’t have the slightest idea what he was in the middle of. That just made me feel even more guilty and I was surprised that it was even possible that I could.
“Why don’t you two just go on your date,” Clark’s voice was harsh and he practically spat the word ‘date’. What was his problem? Didn’t he think I was good enough for Dan? I knew I wasn’t, but it wasn’t nice of him to point it out so vehemently. “I’ll wait for the police to get here.”
“If you’re sure? We don’t mind waiting, do we Lois?”
No, I didn’t mind at all, except that he would. Of course I couldn’t let Superman look like the bad guy, so I’d have to be rude and drag Dan away. “No, but he doesn’t really need our help. He’d feel bad if we missed our dinner reservation just to be polite. If Superman’s sure that he doesn’t want us to stay, we’d be silly to go against his wishes.” If Clark was still going to avoid talking directly to me, I was going to do the same. I’d be damned if I’d start fawning over him like some moony-eyed cheerleader just because I realised that I was in love with him. That was a piece of information I was happily going to keep to myself for the rest of my life.
“I’m sure.” Clark looked like he’d push us out of the alley if he could do it without touching me. “Go.” It was a command, not a request. Dan shot him a puzzled look, but we left him to get on with his job alone.
*.*.*.
Dan sighed as he finished his meal and placed his knife and fork down on the empty plate. We hadn’t spoken much and we certainly hadn’t discussed Clark’s hostile attitude but I could tell that it was bothering him. That, or something else. Maybe he’d begun to realise just what a horrible person I was and he wanted to break up with me but didn’t know how to say it. I suddenly had an urgent need to know what he was thinking.
“Spit it out,” I told him.
“Huh?” Dan looked at me, confused.
I smiled at him, hoping to put him at ease, putting a brave face on so that he wouldn’t feel bad about hurting me. It was what I did best, I wore a brave face. “Your mind hasn’t been here the whole evening. What’s bothering you?”
He pushed his plate away from him and folded his hands on the table, thoughtfully. I wondered if he sat in a similar position when conducting interviews, it seemed so natural and professional. “Superman. He was... well, rude. He seemed so nice when I met him before; I was just wondering what was wrong with him. I’m a bit concerned.”
“Ah,” was my only reply.
“What?”
I narrowed my eyes as I scrutinised him. It really was Superman and not our impending break up that had been plaguing his thoughts. “Do you know who I am?” I asked.
Dan laughed at my question. “You’re not famous, are you?”
“No,” I took in a breath. Oh, God, he honestly didn’t know who I was and what I had done, and I was going to have to confess my biggest sin to him in the middle of a crowded restaurant. He definitely wasn’t going to want to see me any more after this. Two birds, one stone. “I was the reporter who discovered Superman’s real identity.”
“Oh,” Dan sat back in his seat as he digested this information. “Wait a minute, weren’t you his work partner?”
“Sort of.”
“And you went behind his back and plastered his biggest secret across the front page of the newspaper.”
“Yeah. Which is why he wasn’t quite as affable as usual in the alley.”
Dan thought it through for a few more minutes, then shook his head. “That’s bad and I’d understand him being upset with you, although you were only doing your job, but I don’t think that’s what it was all about. It was *me* Superman was being rude to, not you.”
“He couldn’t be rude to me, he doesn’t speak to me. He actively ignores me, that’s why I’m never sent out to cover Superman stories.”
There was something in Dan’s eyes that made me think that he still didn’t believe me, but he let it drop. “Did you know Mayson was in love with him? Is that why you turned down the story?”
I nodded and looked down at the table. “He had to be hurting enough without having *me* on the case.”
“Sounds like you’re a lot more considerate than he is. Does he know what you’ve been sacrificing on his behalf?”
“Dan, it’s not like that. I should pay for the pain I caused him. If I had stopped to think for just one second, I probably wouldn’t have written that article. Or at least I wouldn’t have submitted it for printing, I would have kept it locked away in my apartment somewhere or burnt it or something. It’s my fault he doesn’t have a private life anymore.”
He looked at me with sympathetic eyes. “Maybe you’ve paid enough. Come on, I’ll take you home. I think our meeting with the local superhero has killed off any change of romance tonight.”
“He’s not much for romance,” I muttered as I let Dan help me into my jacket and out of the restaurant into the cold night air.
*.*.*.
I had the next day off work. Not that I’d been the happiest of people in the last year or so but after my run-in with Clark the night before I’d been feeling particularly melancholy, so it was just as well. I certainly wouldn’t have been a ray of sunshine in the newsroom. Dan had to leave Metropolis for a couple of weeks on some job, but he promised to keep in touch and that he’d be back as soon as possible. I felt bad because I had the awful feeling that he’d be missing me much more than I was missing him.
I’d decided to spend my free day wallowing in my own misery. I had a whole pile of movies to watch with a big bowl of popcorn and at least a dozen Double Fudge Crunch Bars to eat. I was just about to load the first film into my VCR when I heard someone knock on my door. Stifling a groan, I answered it.
A petite blonde woman was on the other side, probably in her mid fifties. She smiled at me and I immediately liked her, even though I had no idea who she was or why she was knocking on my door, there was just something about her that oozed comfort and likeability. “Lois Lane?” she asked.
“Yes. Who are you?”
She looked shiftily at the empty corridor. “Can I come in?”
“As soon as I know who you are and why you’re here. As long as the reason you’re here isn’t to hurt me at all, anyway,” I amended and she chuckled, making me like her even more.
“Please, Miss Lane. I have no intention of hurting you; I’d just feel happier talking to you with the door closed so no-one can hear us.” Sensing I wasn’t going to back down, she continued trying to persuade me, speaking in a voice that was almost a whisper. “I’m your ex-boyfriend’s mother.”
Ex-boyfriend? Somehow I doubted it. “I don’t think so.”
She sighed. “Maybe boyfriend isn’t quite the right word. Would ex-lover be closer?”
Oh my God.
No way.
Please tell me Clark’s mother didn’t know about us and wasn’t here to talk to me!
I didn’t say anything to her, but I opened the door for her to come in. If I was right, there was a good reason for her to be careful about revealing her identity, and the following conversation wasn’t anything I wanted my neighbours to overhear anymore than she would.
“I’m Martha Kent,” she confirmed as soon as I’d shut the door.
“He *told* you?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice, and to be honest I don’t think I tried.
Mrs. Kent looked a little uncomfortable, not that I could blame her. “Shall we sit?” she asked, moving to my couch.
“Sure, sorry, I’m being rude. I’m just surprised that you know, and that you came here.”
She didn’t respond to my comment, just looked at me as I squirmed under her all-seeing gaze. “You’re pretty,” she said after a while.
“Mrs. Kent, can I please apologise to you?” I decided to ignore her comment about me being pretty, not quite sure what to make of it. “I should never have written that article on Clark, I wasn’t thinking. If I had realised what am impact it would have on his life, on your lives, I would never have done it.”
She watched me for a few more seconds, then smiled at me with honest friendliness. “We all make mistakes, Miss Lane. Some are bigger than others, it’s true. Ever since we found Clark, we’ve been waiting for someone to expose him. Expose us. Even after he came up with the Superman disguise, we knew that people would still want to know who he really was. In some ways it’s a relief, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“But you’ve all had to disappear; you can’t really have much of a life now.”
“Oh, that’s not true. Jonathan and I would have been perfectly happy to carry on as normal, it was Clark’s idea for us to give up the farm and live in seclusion. He was worried that people would use us to get to him, so we moved to Metropolis to be near him, to live under his protection. We miss Smallville, of course, but we carry on as normal. No-one here knows who we are so we can walk around Metropolis without a single person connecting us to our son.”
I relaxed a little bit; Mrs. Kent didn’t seem to be holding a grudge against me. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to meet you,” Mrs. Kent replied honestly. “I guess I was just curious. You’ve had such a great impact on my son’s life and I wanted to put a face to the name. I wanted to see what the attraction was.”
“Attraction?! Mrs. Kent, your son is *not* attracted to me! He hates me!”
Her face became unreadable. “I don’t think he hates *you*, Lois. He certainly hates what you did, I can’t deny that. And you’re right; he never told me that he’d been seeing you. He didn’t need to, he’s my son. I can read him like a book.”
I let out a deep breath, not quite sure what it was the woman wanted from me. “So, you’ve met me. What now?”
“I want to get to know you.”
“Mrs. Kent--”
“Please, call me Martha,” she interrupted.
I looked her in the eye. “Martha. *Why* do you want to know me?”
She smiled and there was a twinkle in her eye that I wasn’t sure I liked. “I just do. Did you know that you were all Clark talked about when he started at the Planet?”
“No, I--”
Mrs. Kent interrupted me. “He’d never been so taken with a girl he’d met since he was in high school. Sometimes he sounded like he was sixteen again, complaining about you and praising you in the same breath. Do you have any plans for the day?”
I could barely keep up with Mrs. Kent... or Martha as I was supposed to call her. There was something about her that reminded me of myself, or at least my old self, except that unlike me she didn’t seem to hold a grudge and seemed like a really nice person, but there was still something there.
“Just lazing around my apartment watching movies,” I gestured to my preparations.
“That’s good then, we can spend the day together. How about a bit of retail therapy, you look like you could do with cheering up.”
Before I knew what was happening, I was visiting the mall with Martha happily chatting away to me, mostly about her son. She was very careful to not call him by name; he was always referred to as ‘her son’. I actually had a pleasant afternoon with her and was quite grateful for her dragging me out to accompany her. It was better than moping about in my apartment like I had planned to do.
To Be Continued...
