I've noticed that sometimes the author’s musings are attached to the final part of a story, but part 9 is big and I don’t want to push the size limits, so I’m doing it here.
Also, this is my favourite part of the entire fic – the bit I wrote first, the bit all the other bits had to fit in with.
I’d really like to thank everyone who read this fic – whether you left FDK or not (although I loved the FDK) – I really appreciate you coming along for the (somewhat bumpy) ride.
To those who did leave FDK – thanks for your honesty – for being willing to say when the story touched you emotionally. While a part of me felt sorry to have upset you, another part of me was ecstatic that something I’d written could go beyond words and touch emotions.
To my wonderful BR, Iolanthe – thank you for your unwavering encouragement and enthusiasm. I doubt I would ever have posted this story without the reassurance of knowing you had read it first.
So … onto part 8. I hope you enjoy reading this part as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Corrina.
From Part 7 ...
Sarah studied the doddering golfers. “If you love him, you should tell him how much he hurt you, then you should forgive him.”
“He knows how much he hurt me. What he doesn’t know, is that I know how much I hurt him. I said some terrible things.”
“Will he forgive you?”
Lois took a long, quivery breath. “With anyone else, I would say ‘no’. But Clark …”
“So, if you went to him,” Sarah speculated, “Any time, any place ... if you walked up to him and put your arms around his neck and sank into that broad chest of his, what’s he going to do?”
Lois tried to visualise Clark pushing her away, but the image simply wouldn’t form. She tried to feel his fury, but it just wasn't there. Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s going to cling to me like his life depends on it,” she said quietly.
“And can you think of anywhere you would rather be?”
“Nope.”
“I guess you’ve answered your own question, then.”
Lois looked regretfully to where the elderly gentlemen were still pottering around the hole.
Sarah chuckled knowingly. “We’re finished,” she declared. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Are you sure?”
Sarah stood up. “Sure I’m sure.”
“Thanks, Crawf.”
“I’ve already told you, Lane, don’t call me that.” With a big smile, she pulled off her golf glove and flung it at Lois’s head. “Not in public.”
Lois caught the glove and pushed it over the head of one of her golf clubs. The fingers sat up jauntily.
They dissolved into laughter, silly, releasing laughter, and swung towards the clubhouse.
ADRIFT
Part 8
Lois sat on the bench outside the cafe in Smallville, grappling with the indefatigable impulse to skulk back to Metropolis. Just being here was unnerving. This place was full of memories of Clark. What if he saw her? She found herself scanning every face, her heart plummeting every time a dark-haired man came into view.
On the golf course with Sarah, this had seemed straightforward. Now she was actually here, in Smallville, in *his* town, it was anything but. Her vicious response to Clark’s disclosure played and replayed through her mind, corroding her confidence and dissolving her purpose.
She couldn’t believe she had been so brutal. It had stemmed as much from her insecurities as anything Clark had done. But would he understand that? And even if he did, would it make a difference?
What if he’d accepted her rejection and moved on?
Her cell had no network. The pay phone loomed next to her, calling her, challenging her, taunting her. Finally, she stood, still battling her self-doubts, and went into the booth. She called the Kent home, conscious a significant part of her hoped no one would answer.
“Martha Kent.”
Martha’s voice thrust Lois’s escape reflex into overdrive. She really wasn’t ready to face Clark’s mother.
“Martha Kent,” she repeated.
“Ma...Martha.”
“Yes, it’s Martha. Can I help you?”
“It.. it’s L..Lois.”
“Lois!” Martha said with glad surprise. ”I’m so pleased you called. Where are you, honey?”
The warmth of Martha’s reception drove a substantial crack through the dam holding back Lois’s tears. “Outside the cafe.”
“In Smallville?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
Suddenly, Lois *had* to know. “Is...is... h.he there?”
“No, he’s away. He’ll be home this evening.”
Lois couldn’t speak as her surge of disappointment twisted with a whirlpool of relief. She longed to see him – but the thought of facing him tangled her insides.
“See you soon,” Martha said.
Lois replaced the phone and collapsed against the cold glass of the booth. Her tears streamed down her cheeks.
So many times, she had wondered if Martha hated her. Had wondered if Martha would want revenge on her son’s behalf.
But despite everything Lois had done, the damage and the pain she had inflicted, Martha hadn’t turned away. She still cared. Mothers were like that.
But Lois didn’t have a mother.
She’d never had a Martha-Kent-type mother.
An acute, powerful yearning for her own mother erupted in Lois. For what they’d had, for what they should have had. The dam ruptured.
When Martha arrived ten minutes later, Lois was still crumpled in the phone booth, clutching a fistful of soaking tissues.
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Martha ushered Lois into the car and said very little as she drove them to the farmhouse. Lois searched for censure in Martha’s silence, but found not even a hint of reproach.
When they arrived at the farmhouse, Lois sat while Martha made a pot of tea and placed a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies on the table.
Martha sat next to her and poured the tea. “It can hit you from nowhere, can’t it?” she said.
Lois had dried her eyes, though she knew they would still be blotchy red. She cradled the cup of hot tea and welcomed its steadying warmth. “I’m sorry for being such a mess,” she murmured.
Martha’s hand rested on her arm.
“I miss my mom,” Lois said, her voice barely audible.
“Of course you do, honey.”
“Sometimes it is overwhelming. I just ... *want* her so much.”
Martha squeezed her arm.
“Then, at other times, I just want my dad.” Lois took a tissue from the box Martha had placed next to her. She dried her eyes again and took a gulp of her tea. “Where’s Clark?” she asked, trying to keep her nervousness from showing in her tone.
“Honduras,” Martha replied. “He’s helping rebuild the orphanage.”
That surprised Lois. “As Superman? There’s been nothing in the Metropolis papers about it.”
“As Superman,” Martha confirmed. “And I think he’s glad it hasn’t been in the papers.”
Was there an underlying message in her words? A warning not to publicise Superman’s whereabouts? “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me,” Lois said.
“Lois, do you remember what I said after you gave Clark the ID papers?"
Lois nodded, staring at the table.
“Lois, that day ... when you put the photo of Clark on this table and told us it would be in the paper that he was the alien ... that was our nightmare come true.”
Martha took a tissue and dabbed her eyes.
“But you found a way to give Clark what we had never been able to give him – legitimacy in this world, a legal identity.” Martha’s flooded eyes sought Lois’s, and she smiled. “You may never understand how much that meant to us ... but we will never forget.”
“Don’t you hate me now?” Lois asked.
“Of course not.” Martha didn’t hesitate. “I feel so sorry that you had to go through what you did – your parents’ deaths and everything before that and then finding out about Clark.”
“But I hurt Clark so much.”
“You did,” said Martha, without a trace of reproof. “I’ve always seen the paradox that Clark, so strong and so unable to be hurt physically, is so vulnerable emotionally.”
“That’s because he trusts so willingly and loves so completely.”
“Yes.” Martha sighed. “And I wish there had been a way through this without him getting so hurt, but ...”
“But?”
“But there wasn’t, so now we have to deal with it.”
“Do you blame me that I couldn’t find a way?”
“It wasn’t just you, Lois,” Martha reminded her gently. “Clark made choices too – choices he now regrets.” She sipped her tea. “And he isn’t the only one suffering.”
“I guess you were hoping he would fall in love with a stable, uncomplicated, low-maintenance woman,” Lois said dolefully. Like you, she thought.
“I was hoping he’d fall in love with someone who’d make him feel he belonged,” Martha said with deep sincerity. “Someone who’d make him feel his differences didn’t matter.”
“Do you think *I’m* that woman?” Lois asked, incredulously.
“What I think isn’t important.”
“I c.c.can’t be you,” Lois said.
Martha smiled. “Lois, honey,” she said. “What makes you think *anyone* wants you to be me?”
Lois felt herself blush. “You’re so ... perfect.”
“So are you, Lois.”
“My mother wasn’t,” Lois said, torn between speaking the truth and the hot flush of disloyalty caused by the truth.
“You are not your parents’ failings,” Martha said, firmly.
Lois contemplated her doubtfully. “If I was to leave now, leave and promise never to come back. If you never told Clark I’d been here ... would he heal?”
“Oh, he’d heal,” Martha said with quiet conviction. “But he’d never be whole.”
Lois felt her tears rise again, even as the heavy burden of condemnation rolled away from her heart. She smiled tremulously at Martha. “What do you want me to do?”
Martha’s answering smile laid the foundation for their future friendship. “I want you to go to Clark’s room and unpack your bags,” she said. “When he comes in, I’ll send him to you.”
“You know I’m going to tell him I love him?” Lois warned.
Martha’s smile widened and tears pooled again in her eyes. She stood and dropped a maternal kiss on Lois’s forehead, then began clearing away their plates and cups.
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Clark Kent, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, landed in his parents’ yard and ambled into the kitchen. His mother was at the sink, looking out of the window. “Hi, Mom,” he said, careful to infuse a light-heartedness into his greeting.
She turned and he saw she’d been crying. He was beside her instantly, his hands on her shoulders. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
“You have company,” she informed him.
He heard the tremor in her words and his grip tightened as apprehension coursed through him. “Who?”
“Waiting in your room. You need to go there now.”
“My room?” He leant forward. “Who is it, Mom?” he said anxiously. “I can see you’ve been cry –“
“Just go to your room,” she said, in a tone he’d learnt to obey a long time ago.
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Clark hesitated outside his own bedroom door. Who was here? Franklin Hodge with something about the Sewells’ spaceship? A government agent with a string of questions? Bill Henderson? Perry White?
Lo –
He couldn’t even allow her name to form in his mind. If he did, if he gave himself permission to even consider that possibility, he would be devastated when it wasn’t her.
But what if it *was* Lo-?
Clark darted to the bathroom, showered, shaved, dressed in clean clothes and dabbed his Gear pomade to the short hair on his neck. He was back at his bedroom door in less than five seconds.
He took a deep breath, fighting a Goliath of a temptation to look through the door. He raised his hand and tapped lightly.
He heard footsteps. Featherweight footsteps.
Lo –
Don’t go there, Kent. Do *not* go there.
The door opened.
Clark stared, his mind scrambled.
His breath jammed somewhere in his throat.
His heart thumped to a rhythm centred on her and her alone.
He knew he was staring. Knew he should say something.
But once he spoke, she would say whatever she’d come to say, and she’d walk away, leaving him destitute again.
So he said nothing.
Just looked at Lois looking at him.
She was incredibly beautiful.
She’d lost a little weight. Her eyes were awash with unshed tears ... which didn’t surprise him. She was grieving … would still be grieving for a long time. She’d had so much pain – the tragic death of both her parents.
And the betrayal of a friend she had trusted.
She was staring at him, her face devoid of expression. She was just staring at him. What was she thinking?
Maybe she was thinking revenge. Maybe she thought he didn’t know how much he had hurt her. Maybe she’d come with questions about the whole Superman fiasco. Maybe she needed a story and an alien living on earth was the best lead she had.
“Clark,” she said.
His name on her voice sounded like heaven. He thought he’d remembered every tiny detail of being with her, but he’d forgotten the exact intonation of how she said his name. Sometimes, it had been like a caress. Now, he wasn’t sure. She didn’t *seem* angry. But that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
“Lois,” he said.
It felt so good to say her name. He hadn’t allowed himself to think it, let alone say it.
“Lois,” he said again, because whatever the outcome of this, right now she was with him and he could say her name and watch her.
“Would you like to come in?” she said. There was the merest hint of a smile in her voice. Like she understood the irony of her inviting him into his bedroom. Like she wanted to share the irony with him, but didn’t know how to.
He stepped forward, not into the room exactly, but into the doorway. He saw her bag on his bed. And a bigger bag. Had she come to stay? For how long? Why?
“Clark, will you do something for me, please?”
“Lo-is,” he said, loaded with meaning.
She got the wrong meaning. Her face closed a little. She thought he’d meant ‘why would I do anything for you?’
He hurried to dispel her misunderstanding. “The ability to refuse you anything is one of the few powers I don’t have,” he said, pragmatically.
She almost smiled! He saw it, recognised it and it sent a crashing wave of joyful memories through him.
“What would you like me to do?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Take me somewhere special.”
His heart exploded. He stepped further into the room, so he could gesture for her to go out first. “Go to the porch,” he directed.
He lingered in his doorway, just long enough to give her some distance, so that he could watch her as she walked. The swing of her hips, the bob of her hair. Memories, such compelling memories. When his eyes had feasted, he wanted to hurry forward, so he could put his hand on her back. Touch her. But he wasn’t sure she would welcome that, or even tolerate it. So he kept his distance and just appreciated the totally unexpected opportunity to again, trail a step behind Lois Lane.
Once on the porch, she turned to him. “Here?” she said. “Or were you thinking of somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else. Would you like to go by car?” He hesitated, taking refuge in a sudden interest in the distant fields. “Or some other way?”
Please say fly, he begged silently, please fly with me, one last time.
Please accept me. With all my strange differences, please accept me.
When she didn’t answer, he had to face her. She was watching him, waiting, he realised, for him to stop cowering behind his interest in the fields.
“I’d like to fly,” Lois said simply.
Exquisite sensation surged through him, leaving tracks of fire. He was going to hold her again. Suddenly awkward, he stepped closer and reached for her.
Then … she was in his arms. Her side angled across his chest, sending a streak of heat from his upper ribs, straight through his heart and along his lower ribs on the other side.
Clark glanced around. His dad appeared out of the barn.
Lois shifted slightly in his arms. “Clark?” she said. “Could you let me down, please?”
His disappointment burned. He placed her on the porch and watched anxiously as she ran to his dad. They spoke and Clark consciously kept his superhearing off. His jaw dropped when Lois threw her arms around his father’s neck and they embraced. She kissed his cheek and he smiled.
But there was no time for Clark to unravel his confusion, because Lois was running back to him – just like the dream he’d had a thousand times. She leapt into his arms and he laughed, no longer able to contain his joy at being with her again.
He lifted off the ground, then shot straight up, high enough to take them out of sight of anyone who happened to look up.
When they levelled out, he glanced at Lois. Her head was thrown back, her eyes were closed, her expression was one of ... peace. Like she had relaxed for the first time in a very long time. Like she ...
He strangled that thought. Lois would never trust him again.
But she was flying with him.
She knew he would never let anything hurt her.
Not physically anyway.
But emotionally?
That was real trust.
That’s what he would never get back.
He flew the most indirect way he could, hoping her unreliable sense of direction would give him the freedom to detour. Eventually he knew he had pushed it as far as he possibly could.
He landed them on the shores of Smallville Lake – where they had come fishing the day he’d met her. Would she remember? With the utmost reluctance, he released her.
Lois looked around. “Did you bring the rods?” she asked.
He battled to suppress the grin which craved expression. She’d given him no hint why she was here. If he started grinning now, this was going to begin to feel so good. Which meant it would be so devastating when she walked out of his life again. “Not today,” he said quietly.
Clark found a soft patch of green grass on the slope overlooking the lake. He motioned her to it. “Would you like to sit here?” he asked. He suddenly wished he had done some pre-planning. “Or would you like me get you a seat?”
She sat down. She pulled up her knees and hugged them against her body. Sitting like that, she looked so young, so vulnerable. Again, he was tormented by how much he had hurt her.
He sat on the grass in front of her, ensuring he was far enough away that she wouldn’t feel crowded by him, wishing he dared to go close enough that incidental contact was a possibility.
Lois looked at the lake, but didn’t speak. The suspense inside him built to unbearable levels. He so badly needed to know why she was here. He thought it most likely that she wanted to clear the air, toss around an apology or two, so they could both put this behind them and get on with their lives.
Except without her, he had no life.
If she didn’t say something soon, he was going to have to speak or burst. But if he spoke, he could only think of one thing to say - I’m sorry. And he’d said that many times before. And she’d already told him it meant nothing.
“Clark?” she said. “Do you believe in time travel?”
This time his grin nearly won. She had always been able surprise him. That hadn’t changed. He couldn’t hope to follow the machinations of Lois’s mind. But that was part of the fun. Part of why he loved her so much. Part of why he loved being with her.
“I’m not in a position to be sceptical about anything,” he noted wryly.
She almost smiled – he could see the amusement glisten in her beautiful eyes.
“What time were you thinking of travelling to?” he asked.
“The time when you told me you are Superman,” she said.
His insides clenched. “Oh.”
“Could we go back to the moment you said ‘I’m Superman, Lois. I left you because there was a fire in an orphanage in Honduras and I was the only one who could save those children’?”
There was no superpower in this world or any other that could stop the hope from beginning to bud inside him. He tried to smother it, knowing that if it took root now, its future demise would probably kill him.
He forced himself to respond. Surprisingly, it was almost as difficult as the first time. “I’m Superman, Lois,” he said, his words not quite steady. “I left you because there was a fire in an orphanage in Honduras and I was the only one who could save those children.”
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Lois had thought about this exact moment more times than she could count. She’d agonised over how she’d responded the first time. She’d envisaged how she would respond if she was ever granted a second chance.
But now her chance had come, all the smooth words, all the easy communication, had drained away.
Clark watched her, his apprehension as pronounced as it had been the first time. Except then, she had been too distraught to perceive anything beyond her own heartache. “I wish you’d say something,” he said ingenuously.
The candour was quintessential Clark. He didn’t play games, didn’t pretend he was impervious - even when it opened him wide enough for her to drive a truck through his heart.
“This was a lot easier when you weren’t there,” she said, sure he wouldn’t understand.
“It usually is,” he said.
She met his eyes, and silent rapport flowed between them. “Do you talk to me when I’m not there?”
“All the time.”
He was so honest ... yet he’d deliberately concealed a major component of his life. He hadn’t trusted her until he’d been forced into it by circumstances. Yet he *had* trusted her. He had told Metropolis’s most mulish and story-driven reporter the biggest secret in the history of the city. Probably in the history of the world. And at a time when he knew she was hurting way beyond any semblance of rationality. “I haven’t told anyone,” Lois assured him. “And I never will.”
She saw a hint of his smile. “Thank you.”
“But you knew that.”
“I hoped.”
“Who else knows?”
“Mom. Dad. Me. You.”
“That’s all?’
“That’s all.”
“You’ve *never* told anyone?”
“No.”
Lois studied him. He looked so utterly ... lost. Adrift. Like the world was a jigsaw of infinite pieces, yet however hard he searched, he just couldn’t find his place.
But she knew his place.
It was right next to her. Forever.
“Clark?” she said.
His shoulders straightened as his anxiety kindled. “Yes,” he rasped.
“Would you marry me?”
His mouth dropped open, smacked shut as he swallowed roughly, then gaped again. His eyes probed hers, desperately searching for clarification, as if convinced he had somehow misunderstood. She could see she had blown his thought processes to tiny pieces and his reconstruction efforts were proving futile.
Lois smiled at him, giving unrestrained expression to her joy at being with him again. She knew Clark Kent would not be able to resist responding. Their relationship had been ravaged. But twenty minutes with him, and she’d discovered the foundations had survived the storm. Would survive any storm.
She was right.
He smiled for her. It began in his wonderfully expressive eyes. It spread to the rest of his face, calling in the dimple in his left cheek, and bringing completion with the curve of his perfect mouth. His lips parted, as the fullness of his smile billowed.
“Lo –.“ His voice cracked. He glanced down, summoning his composure. “Lois. You told me to leave you.”
“I don’t remember saying that,” she said, her eyes imploring him to go along with her charade.
He pretended to consider, his eyes shining. “Then neither do I.”
She ached to hold him close, but he wasn’t within touching distance. She wanted to begin to heal what she had damaged. To communicate her remorse for their past and her certainty about their future. “But ... even though neither of us remembers it ... when I said some really, really stupid things ... some thoughtless and selfish things ... some things which I know cut you deeply ... I want you to know I’m so sorry.”
As she stared at him, a tear escaped from his right eye and shimmered down the curve of his cheek towards the precipice of his jaw. He backhanded it, turning the trail into a smudge.
Lois swung forward onto her knees and balanced herself with her hands on his chiselled shoulders. It was so good to touch him again. She couldn’t resist kneading through his shirt as she gazed into his damp eyes. “I love you, Clark,” she said.
A second tear emerged from behind his glasses and tracked its predecessor. She leant forward and kissed it.
“Lois,” he whispered hoarsely. He moved too quickly for her to see, but suddenly she was being crushed against him as they knelt together.
Her tears, so common these days, swelled again. But this time they were not tears of grief. Nor of pain. Nor of loss.
They were tears of hope. And restoration. Tears at finally being home again after a long, exhausting emotional journey.
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This isn’t a dream.
The words reverberated through Clark’s mind, extinguishing the spot fires of doubt with ruthless efficiency.
It couldn’t be a dream.
The innumerable times past, it had been a dream. But *this* wasn’t.
He knew because of his tears. Their presence, the dampness he could still feel in their wake, assured him. This wasn’t a dream.
Lois’s small body fitted perfectly in his arms, clamped against his chest. He felt as if the severed fragment of him had returned. He welcomed it and reconnected to it, as it infused life through his dormant spirit. “Lois.” He squeezed her name through the confines of his rigid throat. “I love you.”
She leant away and he wanted to snatch her back. Her cheeks were drenched and her eyes swimming, but her happiness leached through the cloak of sorrow she’d carried since that awful night. “You never stopped, did you?” she said.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”
She caressed his face with her hand.
“Lois, I’m so sorry,” he said. “For everything.”
She silenced him with her forefinger against his mouth. “Enough,” she said. “You’ve said it enough. I know. I understand. It’s done with.”
Clark enclosed her hand in his and corralled it next to his heart. “But I deceived you, I hid the truth about me ... and then it all blew up in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.” He inhaled raggedly. “When you needed me most ... I walked away.”
“When you needed me most ... I wasn’t there for you either.”
“When did -?”
“The first time you said ‘I’m Superman’. The first time you said it to me, the first time you’d said it to anyone.” Lois curled her free hand around his neck and burrowed her fingers into his hair. “I’m so sorry about the way I responded. I was shocked, I was grieving for my parents, I was angry and confused ... but I said some unforgivable things.”
Her understanding was like a salve to his wounded heart. “Not unforgivable,” he soothed.
“Only someone with a heart like yours would be able to forgive.”
Clark opened his fist. Her hand rested in his, profound in symbolism. She was with him and her happiness lay exposed in his hands. In a silent vow of dedication, he lifted her hand to his lips and tenderly kissed her palm.
He found her eyes again and knew she had understood the essence of his gesture. They shared a smile. “Have you forgotten where else I like to be kissed?” she teased gently.
Her transparent invitation triggered a flurry of blazing darts inside him. He was going to kiss Lois again. He stared at her mouth, mesmerised. He had thought he would have only memories to sustain him, but they were going to make new memories. He lingered, relishing the anticipation, the sure knowledge of what was to come. Then, his restraint buckled.
Clark lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, testing, tasting, re-acquainting. Lois met him, matched him, restored him, revived him. Her tongue sought his, causing a wellspring of euphoria to ripple through his veins. Finally, they parted and Lois giggled delightedly.
“What?” he gasped, breathless.
“Look down.”
He looked. They were floating a foot off the ground.
“Did *you* do that?” she asked, her eyes sparkling.
“No,” he said honestly. “You did.”
