He wanted to come home.
He yearned to be here. To work the farm in memory of his father. To look after his mother. To try to make up for all the pain and heartache he had caused her.
But he couldn't.
Just as he had been locked in, now he was locked out. The place he ached to be was the one place that was barred to him.
Clark pulled his eyes away and slowly flew back to Lois.
Part 8
Lois lay in her dad's sleeping bag on the double bed, waiting for Clark to finish in the bathroom. Her mind flitted through the events of the day, and she couldn't help but enjoy the feeling of satisfaction brought by her musings. It had been an afternoon packed with little steps forward.
Clark had driven the Buick for a while. Lois had settled into the passenger seat and pretended to doze. In truth, she had been mesmerised by Clark's shapely hands as he had skilfully plied the steering wheel.
As they had passed through a town, Lois had glanced down a street and noticed the familiar sign of Baskin-Robbins. The temptation to reintroduce Clark to ice cream had been too overwhelming to resist.
Lois would never forget his wonder-draped expression as he had walked into the store and slowly scanned the array of flavours. She had speculated over which he would choose and whether it would take him a long time to decide.
It hadn't. After surveying the expanse of choices, he had returned to the strawberry cheesecake and chosen that. Lois had added a chocolate chip waffle cone to their order, and a few minutes later, they had walked out of the store, grinning like a pair of schoolkids at the start of summer break.
They had strolled along the quiet street, eating ice cream and making occasional light-hearted comments. Chocolate chip had been Lois's favourite for as long as she could remember, but it couldn't compete with her joy that Clark hadn't even seemed to hesitate at the prospect of being out in public.
It had been a long time since Lois had felt so carefree.
And it must have been even longer for Clark.
They had returned to the Buick and continued travelling northwest. As they had driven, Clark had 'disappeared' twice to check on what was happening in Florida. On both occasions, the report had been the same - as far as all of his superpowers could detect, no one in Florida was interested in two people who had withdrawn money from an ATM earlier that day.
It seemed to Lois that the turning point in their day had been when Clark had taken her flying.
Perhaps it had been the freedom of the skies. Perhaps it had been the closeness of their contact. Perhaps it had been the lack of reaction in Florida. Lois didn't know, but flying had worked something in Clark, and this afternoon, more than any time since leaving Metropolis, she had been able to glimpse the man she had come to know in the cell.
Except ... it had been even better.
This Clark was free. And beginning to take tentative steps back to life.
Now, it was evening, and they had chosen another motel, given another story, and settled into another room.
The bathroom door opened, and Clark walked out, wearing his black tee shirt and dark sweatpants.
Lois lifted her eyes to his face, although she was sorely tempted to linger on the tantalising bulges that peeked out from under the sleeves of his shirt. He looked up at her, and his smile came readily. "Are you tired?" he asked.
"I'm not too sleepy," Lois said. She patted his Winnie the Pooh sleeping bag. "Do you want to come over here and talk?"
Clark placed his sneakers neatly under the table. "OK," he said. He climbed into the sleeping bag and lay on his side, facing her. "Is there anything specific you would like to talk about?"
Lois pumped up her pillow. "Nothing specific," she said. "We should probably try to decide where we might stay for a few days."
"Would you like me to get the map?"
Lois shook her head. "No," she said. "My brain doesn't want to think about that now."
"OK," Clark agreed easily. "What would you like to talk about?"
"I really enjoyed our discussion at lunch today."
"Thanks for telling me about Linda."
"Thanks for listening," Lois said.
Sympathy had intensified the luscious brown of Clark's eyes. "Have you had someone you can talk to about it?" he asked.
"I had counselling," she said lightly. "And debriefing."
"But?"
Lois felt her mouth twitch to a smile. Conversing with Clark was unlike conversing with anyone else. He picked up nuances that no one else ever had - even Linda. It was as if he saw her meaning as well as hearing her words. "But that was just playing another role."
"Were you playing a role today?"
"No," she said. "Today, I was just being Lois."
"You looked happy."
"I was. Am." A question erupted in her brain. A question that took her breath away. If she asked it ... if Clark answered it ...
It would irrevocably affect their relationship.
For better? Or worse?
Should she? Was Clark ready?
"Go on," he said softly.
When she looked up, his partly formed smile simmered with encouragement. "It's uncanny how you do that," she said.
"That isn't what you were about to say."
Lois chuckled. "Is reading my mind a superpower?"
His eyes crinkled with amusement. "What were you going to say?"
"I have a question that I would love to ask you," Lois said.
"OK."
"But if you were to ask me the same question, I'm not sure that I'd be willing to give you the truth. Not yet."
His smile tempered, but his eyes lost none of their warmth. "How about you tell me the question, and then I'll think about whether I'll answer it?"
"You don't have to answer any questions," she said. "We established that a long time ago."
"What is this question? I'm intrigued now."
"What is your greatest fear?"
"Whoa," Clark said. "You weren't joking about going for the jugular." He offered her a little smile that sweetened his words.
"You know you don't have to answer."
"Why that question in particular?"
Lois felt her cheeks warm.
"You don't have to answer either," Clark said quickly.
"Because I feel this unexplainable and probably quite impractical need to ..."
"To what?"
Lois gulped. "To protect you."
Clark's jaw dropped. "I feel that about you ... but ..."
"It doesn't mean I see you as less than masculine, in fact ... well, we probably don't need to go there," Lois said quickly. "But I certainly don't think of you as a child or a project or anything like that." She ventured into his eyes, looking for clues as to whether she could continue. "... but you've been hurt so much ..."
He looked down at the valley of bed between them. "Lois," he said in a voice raw with feeling. "No one in the world has ever made me feel the way you do. You constantly surprise me."
Lois smiled, hoping he would look up and see it. "Is that a good thing?"
He did look up. "Being constantly surprised by you takes some getting used to, but ... yeah, it's a good thing."
Something in his tone told her that his assessment was deliberately understated. Lois smiled. "I think I know the answer to my question. I think your greatest fear would be recapture. Or perhaps what your capture would mean to your mom. Or to me."
Clark nodded thoughtfully. "Those possibilities scare me," he admitted. "But they are not my greatest fear."
"They're not?"
"No."
"Then what is?" Lois asked hesitantly.
Clark didn't reply for a long moment. He stared at his hand, and flecks of muscle twitched along the smoothness of his cheek. Eventually, he looked up, his eyes grave. "My greatest fear is that I can't be what you need me to be."
"Clark! You're -" She stopped as her brain caught up with her mouth. "Now you've surprised me," she said lamely.
"I don't know what you need," Clark said quietly. "And even if I did, I'm not sure I can be it. I'm not sure that I could have been it before I was captured - and now I have seven years of ... abnormality to try to overcome."
"I want you to overcome that," Lois said earnestly. "I want you to heal - but I don't want it for me, I want it for you."
"The possibility of recapture - that scares me," Clark said. "But they won't catch me unaware this time. There are things I can do to try to avoid it happening. But this ... this *thing* with you ... I have *never* felt so out of depth in anything in my life. And I'm not sure there is *anything* I can do to ensure that you don't get hurt."
Lois put her hand on his tightly clenched fist. "Clark," she said. "Just be you. That's what I need."
He laughed humourlessly. "That's the problem, Lois," he said. "I'm not sure how to be Clark Kent anymore. I'm not sure how to be an alien in a human world. I'm not sure how to be a son to a mother who has been locked away because of me. And most of all, I'm not sure how to be whatever it is you are hoping I will be."
Lois stroked the back of his hand. "Have you ever wondered if you put too much pressure on yourself?" she asked softly.
"No," he said with disarming honesty.
"You do," Lois said. "You expect far more of yourself than I expect from you."
His eyes wandered again, and he shuffled uncomfortably.
She'd pushed him far enough. It was time to give something back. "My greatest fear ..." Lois said.
Clark's eyes shot back to her face.
"My greatest fear ... I have two greatest fears."
"What they will do to you if they catch us?"
"No."
His smile glimmered for a tiny moment. "I should be surprised," he said. "But I'm not."
Lois answered his smile, giving herself a moment to construct her answer. "My two greatest fears are sort of the same. One is that I'll never be able to truly convince you that what I feel for you is not pity or compassion or sympathy but the real feelings of a woman for a man."
Clark swallowed loudly in the silence, but said nothing.
"And the second is similar," she said. "I'm scared that your feelings for me will always be influenced by what you think I want. Or what you think I need."
"I thought the best relationships were built on self-sacrifice," Clark said quickly.
"They are," Lois said. "But not to the exclusion of your wants, your needs."
Clark lifted his hand and sighed. "I'm not very good at this," he said disconsolately. "I'm even less sure now than I was before we started talking."
"I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm desperately hoping that you will fall in love with *me*. Not the guard. Not the woman who gave you reasonable living conditions. Not the woman who took the poison from your shoulder. Not the woman who helped you escape. Just me. Lois."
"I ..."
Lois tightened her grip on his hand. "See Clark, that's what I mean about you expecting so much from yourself. *I* don't expect you to know how you feel yet. That's why I want you to feel secure in my feelings for you - because I don't expect there is any possible way for you to feel secure in your feelings about anything. I want you to know that I'm here for you - and however long it takes, I'm willing to wait for you."
"Lois," Clark said. "I ... I can't believe that someone like you would be saying that to someone like me."
She smiled a little. "Well, I am. And I mean it."
"How can you be so sure?"
Lois thought for a moment, searching for the right words. "I think that if I were you, I would hate being reminded about the time in the cell and the way they forced you to live."
The muscles in Clark's hand tensed.
"But all that squalor and cruelty - much as I hated it - made it so easy to see exactly the sort of person you are. A bit like how a light shines brightest in the darkest places."
Clark slipped his hand out from under Lois's. "Can I turn off the light?" he asked.
"Sure," Lois said, wondering at his sudden desire for darkness.
He rose from the bed, removed his glasses, and put them on the lamp stand. He crossed the room and flicked the switch. A few seconds later, Lois felt his weight return to the bed.
"Are you OK?" she said.
"Yeah." His tone gave her no clues as to what he was feeling. Or what he was going to do next.
No one spoke for a long time. Only the sound of their breathing filled the void.
"Good night, Clark," Lois said.
"Lois?"
"Yes?"
"It wasn't you," Clark said. "It was me. It just got a bit too intense ...."
"I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
"You did. But you said things that I will dwell on for a long time ... and every time I think of them, I know it won't be my discomfort that I remember most, but my awe for you ... and my wonder at being with you."
"Are you sleepy yet?"
"No, not at all. My mind is too full for sleep."
"Do you want me to be quiet and leave you alone with your thoughts?"
"Not if you want to talk," he said. "But I'm not sure I could answer any more questions tonight."
Lois didn't particularly want to talk. But it had been such a good day, and she didn't want it to finish like this. She wasn't sure how Clark would feel about her touch - the distance between their sleeping bags suddenly seemed like a canyon of separation. And after having admitted that she wanted him to fall in love with her, he might think she had more in mind than simple physical contact.
Perhaps she could touch him with her words. He had opened himself up a lot - admitted things she hadn't been expecting when she'd asked the question about his greatest fear. If she didn't open up to him, he might feel that their relationship had become even more unbalanced.
But talking was one thing. Knowing what to say was another.
This was Clark, she reminded herself. Clark - the most understanding person she had ever met. She could give him some of the story. She didn't have to include the worst bits. She could stop whenever she wanted to - Clark would never press her for more.
Before there was time to consider where it might end, Lois began. "Linda and I were sent on an assignment to a small village in a foreign country," she said. "We were to be there for three months, and our mission was to find out whatever we could about a rumoured terrorist training camp in the hills behind the village."
She had begun. She had begun the story she had thought she would never again vocalise to anyone.
Clark said nothing, but she knew he was listening.
"We got there, told our story, settled in, kept our ears open," Lois said. "On the second day, we met two young men - Ivica and Elan. From the start, there was something between Linda and Ivica. She was naturally more cautious than I was, and she was well aware of the dangers and difficulties of a relationship starting on a job. But she thought that Ivica seemed perfect for her - a steady man with a dry sense of humour that kept her laughing. We checked around, and he seemed legitimate. He came from a long-established local family, his mother had died when he was a child, and his father was a teacher in the school.
"I had reservations," Lois said, remembering the earnest discussions she'd had with Linda. "But the more we delved into Ivica's background, the more normal he appeared. I knew that he would never leave, and if Linda wanted to be with him, she was going to have to move permanently to the village. I certainly didn't want to live as a third wheel in a remote little village, so if anything did develop between Linda and Ivica, it would mean the end of our partnership."
Lois closed her eyes and was immediately transported back to the hot and oppressive atmosphere of the village.
"I had doubts," she said. "I always had doubts, but Linda figured they were just because I didn't want our partnership to end."
"That's a difficult situation for both of you," Clark said.
"Yeah," Lois said with a long sigh. "Then, about five weeks into the assignment, Ivica came early one morning. He banged on our door, urgent and distressed. He told us that the military was going to raid the village, looking for possible anti-government factions, and we had to get out fast."
"Did you believe him?"
"We had also heard a couple of whispers about anti-government factions," Lois said. "His fear seemed real - so did his concern for our safety."
Lois could hear the bitterness taint her voice. She wondered if Clark had heard it, too.
"Ivica said we would be safe if we went with him to a shack in the hills - a shack belonging to a friend of Elan's."
"What did you do?" Clark asked.
"He was insistent that we go with him then," Lois said. "But Linda and I had agreed a long time before this that unless it was literally a matter of life and death, we would do nothing major without consulting each other first. We sent him away and talked it through. It was almost a replica of our earlier discussions - could we trust Ivica? Except now, it wasn't Linda's happiness at stake but, possibly, our lives."
"What did you decide?"
"I had doubts," Lois said. "In fact, the more we talked about going, the less I liked it. But the other thing we had promised each other was that we would never separate because of a disagreement over what we should do. We would continue to talk it through until we reached a decision. Eventually, we did. Linda insisted that my feelings of uncertainty regarding Ivica were about a whole lot of things other than his actual trustworthiness.
"We'd meticulously covered every base. We'd found out all the information we could about him. We had no reason to suspect that he had any inking of why we were really there. Logically, there was no reason *not* to trust him."
"But you still weren't sure?"
Lois gulped down the ball of bitter regret and self-recrimination that had crept into her throat. "No," she said shakily. "I was worried. But I didn't want to appear petty and jealous of Linda's happiness."
There was a small rustle of movement, and she felt Clark's fingers brush against her arm.
She should stop now. She knew Clark would wonder about what else had happened, but he would never demand that she tell him more. She should stop. She had determined that she would never again relive what had happened.
But now, something drove her forward.
She wanted to share it with someone.
And there was no one she trusted more than Clark.
Lois sucked in a steadying breath and continued. "When Ivica came back, we went with him," she said. "We drove in his old truck out of the village to the foothills and then left the truck and trekked into the mountains. Two hours later, we found the building. It was bigger than we had expected from Ivica's description - more like a compound than a shack - and it was built into the side of a rock face."
The powerful sense of evil that had assailed her as she had stood before the building struck her again. Then, she had grabbed Linda's arm and tried to telegraph her concerns, but Linda had been holding Ivica's hand as he'd hurried her forward.
Now, she grasped Clark's hand and clung to him.
"I ... I ... It felt wrong," Lois said. "It felt so wrong. But there was no way back. It was two hours down the mountain to Ivica's truck, and neither Linda nor I had been into the hills before. Now that we were there, it seemed safer to go in than to risk trying to get back to the village."
"But it wasn't safe?" Clark said.
"No," Lois said in an anguished cry. "And we knew within seconds. As soon as Ivica had shut the door, Elan appeared, and they dragged us to the back of the building and threw us into a dark room."
"Did they say anything? Did they give any reason?"
"Elan was a part of the terrorist training camp - and he'd recruited Ivica to the cause. We found out later that they had discovered the truth about us."
Clark lifted Lois's hand and placed it in the centre of his chest. His hands covered hers like a mantle of protection.
Lois pushed down the tears. She hadn't intended to say this much. Even when she had been debriefed, she had kept detail to a minimum and claimed that the trauma had blunted her memory.
That wasn't true. Every memory, every pang of fear, every stab of apprehension was still vividly sharp in her memory.
"They tied us up and gagged us and left us for a long time," Lois said. The darkness of the motel room closed around her, oppressive and replete with unseen threats. But her hand was cocooned between Clark's large and gentle hands and his solid chest. She concentrated on him, and the darkness retreated.
"We managed to communicate enough to get my tied feet under Linda's tied hands, and she worked tirelessly at loosening the knots. Then Ivica and Elan came back, and they were like two strangers," Lois said. "I smelled alcohol on them, but it wasn't just two men who'd had too much to drink. It was as if their personalities had undergone a complete change. They jeered at us and told us that they knew we were American agents. Then ..."
Lois stopped as the pile-up of memories jammed the words in her throat.
Clark's thumb glided gently over the back of her hand.
"Then, they began discussing who would go first. Ivica said he had waited long enough for the blonde slut. Elan agreed and told me he'd be back for me, and then he left. Ivica untied Linda and pushed her onto the floor in the corner. He turned off his flashlight ... and then ... in the darkness ... it began."
There was sudden movement, and Lois's head was on Clark's chest, his arm tight around her, his hand sweeping with utmost gentleness through her hair.
The dam of rigid control burst, and Lois's tears swept free.
She cried for Linda and the agony and torture Ivica had inflicted on her before finally releasing her to the haven of death.
She cried for the friend and partner that she missed so much.
As she cried, Clark held her.
And in his arms, she found comfort.
Comfort that flowed unerringly into all the crevices of her heart where pain had festered. Comfort that carried healing.
And such sweet love.
||_||
Clark didn't move to wipe away the stray tears that had drizzled from his eyes.
That anyone could have treated Lois that way - it felt like a poisoned rod being gouged through his chest.
But what was even more excruciating was the knowledge that she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him everything.
There was more.
He was sure there was more.
She hadn't told him how she had escaped. She hadn't finished the story.
And it was what had happened between Linda's death and Lois's escape that haunted Clark.
He was sure that something bad - really, really bad - had happened to Lois.
Worse than hearing her friend being violated and killed.
Clark's imagination rioted at what they might have done - sickening him.
Lois needed support. She needed understanding. She needed stability.
She needed someone to help her.
Someone whole. Someone human. Someone who would know instinctively what she needed.
And Clark wasn't that person.
It had been his greatest fear - and now he was sure.
He could never be what Lois needed.
