Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Once Bitten (36/40)

Matymbou swept through the gates; his people followed, but Clark stalled. When Diddi looked up at him questioningly, Clark released the boy's hand and bent down, saying quietly, "I'm going to wait in the quarantine area."

Diddi looked surprised, but he didn't argue.

"You go into the village," Clark directed the boy.

"OK." Diddi reached up to hug Clark's waist and then ran into his village.

Clark slipped away. He reached the gate to the quarantine area and paused.

Should he go in and await Lois's presence, knowing that staying would lead to inevitable interrogation and the resultant horror at his inhuman traits? Or should he spare himself and simply run away now?

Clarke pushed at the gate.

He had run away from the car wreck and his parents' bodies. He had run away from numerous foster homes. He had run away from Smallville when it had no longer felt like his home. He'd run away from Lana when she'd ended their marriage. He'd run from his job at the Planet and he'd run from Metropolis.

On multiple occasions, he'd tried to run away from Lois and the Bangala.

Eventually, a man had to stop running.

The gate swung open, and Clark entered the quarantine area to await his sentence.


Part 36

The hut was cold and shadowy, devoid of welcome.

Clark slumped onto the bed where Lois had slept, his elbows on his knees and his hands clenched as he stared past them to where his bare feet were indented slightly into the dirt floor.

He knew he should attempt to gather his thoughts, to think ahead, to try to construct a mask in the hope that it might provide a smattering of defence against the coming attack. But his mind felt like a lump of clay, stodgy with shock, vehemently refusing to process what had happened, and incapable of envisioning what might happen next.

So he waited, numb and detached, for his life to unfold as decreed by others.

Some time later - Clark couldn't have said if hours had passed or mere minutes - he heard the creak of the gate. His hiatus was over.

Muted footsteps crossed the dirt, and he recognised them as belonging to Lois. She was alone. She was walking with neither hurried purposefulness nor dragging reluctance. There was nothing in her gait to give him a clue as to her emotional state or how best to prepare for the coming confrontation.

A few moments later, the hut dimmed as her body filled the doorway.

She stepped forward and crouched at his knees, capping her hands over his. "Are you all right?" she asked in a soft voice that carried no discernible trace of disgust.

Clark nodded, although he wasn't sure if he would ever be all right again. "Lois, I -"

"I understand," she said, her thumb gliding over the skin on the back of his hand. "I understand everything."

"How can you understand?" he grated. "How can anyone understand something so incomprehensible?"

"I understand why you felt so strongly that you had to return to Metropolis. I understand your fears for Lana. I understand why Tempus wanted you dead. I understand why your marriage was so important to you and why you were so utterly devastated when it ended."

Perhaps she had grasped something of his desolation, but that was merely the entrance to a dungeon that was putrid with secrets.

Suddenly, Clark wished he could tell her. Everything. He wanted her to know … whatever the ramifications.

The touch of her caressing fingers lured him forward, and he imagined for a moment what it would feel like to crash through the walls of his prison and boldly reveal his real self.

But his tongue remained paralysed, and the words would not come.

"I'm sorry for how I reacted," Lois said. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you."

Her touch and her voice gave him the impetus he needed to venture into her eyes. He found no rejection there - only concern and such pure empathy that warm rivers of impossible hope began welling through his body, splashing against his barriers and threatening to dissolve them.

Clark slid his hands out from under hers and took gentle possession of her long graceful fingers. "You thought I'd come from Tempus," he said. "You thought I'd come to find you or to discover what had happened to the man who kidnapped you."

"Romaric told you about that?"

"Yes, he told me how the man died. He thought I was leaving because I had guessed you were keeping secrets from me."

"Had you guessed?"

"No." Clark slid his thumb along her forefinger and over her delicate knuckle. "I was too busy protecting secrets of my own to spend any time considering what you might be hiding from me."

"Romaric has given me so much," Lois said. "He's brave and honourable - such a fearless hunter. But in some things, he's almost childlike in his innocence. He can survive all the dangers of the African forest, but I've always felt an overwhelming compulsion to protect him."

"Tempus and his world would do a lot of damage to this one," Clark said.

Lois nodded earnestly. "From things I uncovered back in Metropolis, I believed Tempus was a man capable of inflicting ruthless vengeance on anyone who crossed him," she said. "I had to keep him away from Romaric, Kent. And the best way to do that was to stay hidden with the Bangala."

"So you and Romaric agreed to say nothing about the man who died?"

"Not even to Matymbou. Of course, it wasn't watertight; there was always the other man, the one who ran away. I have worried for five years that he would say something. That Tempus would demand answers about what happened and would discover his man had been killed. Not that I think he would care about the man specifically, but Romaric stopped them from killing me. Because of that, I believe it is imperative that no one in Metropolis suspects Lois Lane is alive."

"That must have been hard," Clark said, releasing her hand for a moment to brush back a few strands of the dark hair hanging loosely around her face. "Knowing that your family and friends think you are dead."

"When I reflecting on everything that had happened, I realised Tempus must have ordered my kidnapping," Lois said. "I knew then that I could never go back, not even to Brazzaville. It would mean certain death. I don't have the resources to challenge Tempus's authority or evade his extensive network of hit men. My safety - and Romaric's - relies on Tempus believing I am already dead and will never threaten his empire again."

"I never heard any suggestion that you could be alive," Clark said. "Most assumed you were chasing a big story and had paid with your life."

"A big story?" she squeaked. "No one was supposed to know why I came to Africa."

"Details of what that story might have entailed were very hazy. It was probably based more on your reputation than any real evidence."

"Perhaps Tempus stifled it."

"Yeah," Clark said with feeling.

Lois's eyes leapt into his. "You, too?" she said. "Your sources evaporated? Your notes went missing? People changed their stories? Or disappeared altogether?"

"I didn't …" Clark swallowed. "I suspected him, but I allowed myself to be too easily diverted. I didn't push on. When the leads faltered, so did I."

Her hand tightened, curling around his fingers. "That's understandable," she breathed. "Considering everything else you were dealing with."

Everything else. Clark's heart jangled with dread. They had danced around the core issue, but now … now, there was no way to avoid the awful truth. Lois had seen him do things no normal human being could do.

She pressed a kiss to the back of his hand. "I love you," she whispered.

"But?"

His quick-fire question seemed to surprise her. "But?" she exclaimed. "You want there to be a 'but'?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I expected …"

"You expected that my love would fail because of what I saw today?"

"I … I'm not … What did you see?"

"I love you, Kent. I get that you're not exactly the same as everyone else." She smiled up at him. "I know what it feels like to be different. But being different doesn't have to be a bad thing."

Her differences were not comparable to being an alien life form on a foreign planet. "Lois," Clark said desperately. "I can fly. I can see through things. I can hear sounds from miles away. I can run so fast, humans only see a blur. I can lift a train." His squall of confessions stopped abruptly. "At least, I used to be able to do all those things."

Lois didn't appear particularly shocked. She was smiling as she said, "I wish we could have been partners at the Planet. What a team we would have made!"

"Lois! Didn't you hear me? I can fly."

She stroked his chin with the tip of her thumb. "I wouldn't call it flying exactly," she said. "But you certainly came out of the forest with a mighty leap."

Clark opened his mouth, but no words came forth. They were talking about him flying - all right, leaping - as if it were the most natural thing in the world. A glance into Lois's crinkling eyes made him suspect that had been her intention. The wire, barbed with the poison of years of self-recrimination, loosened from around his heart. "You said you understand," he said. "But how can you understand when you saw that and I haven't given you any reasonable explanation?"

"I'm sure you have an explanation," Lois said, running her finger down the centre of his chest. "It'll be buried somewhere deep in that wonderful heart of yours. Eventually, you'll share it with me. Until then, well, all I can say is that you're lucky I'm Lois Moko, Bangala medicine woman, and not Lois Lane, Daily Planet reporter."

Amusement wriggled out from under the mountain of his fears and tugged his mouth to a stilted smile. "What would you do?" he asked. "If you were Lois Lane?"

"I would probably hound you with unending questions," Lois said with a wide grin. "And I would demand the exclusive interview."

"Would you print whatever answers you found?"

She didn't hesitate. "No."

"But Lois Moko would still like to have those answers, wouldn't she?" Clark said.

"Absolutely, I would," Lois admitted. "But despite what Matty thinks, the past five years have taught me a little patience. It might drive me completely crazy, but I can wait until you are ready to tell me everything."

"What did you see today?"

"I saw you save Lioli's life. I saw you jump into the river and push aside a full-grown male hippo." Lois chuckled softly. "I bet that old hippo was more shocked than he's ever been in his life."

"Normal people don't push a ton of adult hippo out of the way," Clark noted.

Lois shrugged. "Where we come from, 'normal' is overrated," she said. "When I arrived on Bangala land, I wasn't normal at all. I was white, American, and I couldn't speak a word of their language. But that was superficial. The real differences were the cynicism and mistrust that I'd taken on as necessary survival skills. The Bangala people looked beyond that and accepted me anyway. They saw my heart, not my differences."

A woman who saw his heart, not his differences - that had been the essence of Clark's dream for most of his life. "I was born on another planet," he said quietly. "My birth parents knew their home was doomed, so they packed me into a spaceship and sent me to Earth."

"Just you? Or others?"

"Just me."

"Aw, Kent." Her hand slid up his arm; her fingers rested on his neck. She rose to her feet and enclosed him in her embrace. "You don't ever have to be alone again."

"Lois …" He had to make sure she understood. "I'm not human."

Her arms tightened. "You're the man I love. The man who makes me whole."

Clark shuffled to his feet and clutched her against his chest. Perhaps he was dreaming. Perhaps Lois hadn't completely thought through what she was saying. Perhaps she hadn't fully grasped the cost of loving an alien. But for now, he didn't have the strength to do anything but cling to her.

After a long time, she eased back and looked into his face as her fingers burrowed through the hair on his neck. "Does Tempus know?" she asked. "About your origins? Is that why he targeted you?"

Clark forced himself to focus on her words, when he wanted most to close his eyes and lose himself in her acceptance. "Maybe. I didn't know he knew until he captured me. He also knew about the power of the green rock - its ability to cause incredible pain and take away the things I could do."

"Until today."

"Today …" Today, he'd done the unthinkable. "Today, I just heard your call and acted. My dad … Mom … Lana … They all warned me about letting that happen. They begged me not to let anyone see my weird abilities."

"If you hadn't acted so quickly, Lioli would be dead," Lois said solemnly.

"I've let people get hurt in the past," Clark said as the prickly ball of regret rolled through him again.

"You were doing what the people you loved had asked you to do."

"It always felt wrong, though," Clark said. "I would run away because I couldn't watch, knowing I could make a difference if only I hadn't been so terrified of the consequences of letting people see the real me."

"Those consequences would have affected others, too. Not just you."

"I'm not sure that's a good enough excuse."

"I will always be grateful for what you did today."

"I should have done more. In the past. When I saw people who needed help. Until I came into contact with the green rock, I thought I was invulnerable."

"Invulnerable?"

"Nothing ever hurt me. Not physically."

Lois stroked his shoulder. "You were in such pain when I first saw you …"

Clark didn't want to think about the green rock now. He didn't want to remember the time when he'd lost everything - even the abilities he'd always despised. "I got in the way of a stray bullet once. It just bounced off me."

"So the green rock causes something like an allergy?"

"I guess so."

"How could Tempus have known it would affect you?"

Clark shrugged, partly to accentuate her touch on his shoulder. "I've thought about that over and over, but I don't have any answers. I didn't even know the stuff existed. I'd never encountered it before. But Tempus was sure of the harm it would cause me."

"There was a lot about Tempus that didn't make any sense." Lois's brow had puckered as if her mind had continued beyond her words, and Clark figured he was getting a glimpse of Lois Lane, the super-reporter. "But if he knew about your abilities, I'm not surprised he wanted you dead."

"I don't know if it was just me," Clark said. "I have wondered if he would stoop to hurting Lana as part of his vendetta against me."

"That's why you knew you had to return?"

"I dreamed about it last night … about being captured by Tempus."

"Aw, Kent." Her fingers slid up the curve of his shoulder and onto his neck, leaving a tingling trail of pleasure. "That must have been awful."

"I remembered something. Something I'd forgotten until last night."

"What?"

"Something Tempus said. He told me I was going to die, and then he said, 'Your body will rot near hers.'"

"You think he meant Lana?"

"We'd been talking about Lana." Huge black damning headlines smeared shame across Clark's mind, but he refused to be cowed into silence. "He showed me a newspaper report where Lana claimed I'd abused her."

Lois didn't back away. Instead, her arms tightened around his neck and she held him close. She didn't even ask if the report were true. She knew him - the good, the bad, the different - and she loved him anyway.

Suddenly, Lois jolted away, her face lit with a smile. "He didn't mean Lana," she said jubilantly. "He meant me!"

"You?"

Lois did a little skip. "Don't you see, Kent? Tempus meant me. He thinks I'm dead. And that's the best possible news. If he thinks I'm dead and he thinks you're dead, we are free. He won't come after us. He won't try to find us. We don't have to worry anymore."

Clark tried to recall each line of the conversation with Tempus. "You weren't mentioned," he said doubtfully. "Not once."

"Even if Tempus had alluded to me, why would you think he was talking about Lois Lane? Did you suspect he had had anything to do with my disappearance?"

"No," Clark said, although thinking about it now, he should have realised it was a possibility.

"So perhaps the guy who ran away lied. Perhaps he told Tempus he'd successfully killed me. You were also a reporter from the Daily Planet who got too close to exposing his evil ways, so it's possible he found some sort of sick satisfaction in dumping your body over the Congo near mine."

"He did say something about irony," Clark said.

Lois threw her arms around his neck and kissed him exuberantly on the mouth. "We're free," she said when she'd released him. "Tempus won't come looking for us because he thinks we're dead. We're free to live our lives, Kent. Here. Together."

Clark had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to take her into his arms and capture her mouth in a kiss that would last a lot longer than the brief encounter that had been over before he'd completely realised it was happening. He wanted to agree that the future had opened up before them and all they had to do was take it.

But …

But Clark knew he wouldn't be able to do it.

He could pretend. He was good at that.

He'd been pretending for most of his life.

His marriage to Lana had been pretence.

But whatever he would have with Lois was going to be different.

Starting now.

"I have to go back to Metropolis," he said with quiet finality. "I have to know that Lana is all right."

"Of course, she's all right," Lois said. "Tempus wasn't talking about her body. He was talking about mine."

"Lois …" Clark sought her eyes, pleading for even more of her understanding. "I can't move on without knowing," he said with morose certainty. "I have to be sure she's all right."

Lois's arms dropped from his body. She stared at him, her face blank, her eyes clouded over. "And what if she isn't all right?" she asked in a tone that had hardened. "What will you do then? Stay? Pretend none of this happened? Pretend the child is yours? Pretend she never cheated on you? Pretend she never lied about you? Pretend you have the perfect marriage? Pretend you never felt …" Lois gulped. Took a deep breath. "… pretend none of this ever happened?"

"No, no, no," Clark said. "I …" He didn't know what he would do if Lana needed him. "I love you now, Lois," he said lamely. "I love you in a way that's completely different from anything I felt for Lana."

"But she's your wife," Lois said with stinging frostiness.

"I'm married, Lois," Clark said desperately. "I need to finish that before I can move on."

"And if 'finishing' your marriage is more complicated than you hope? What will you do then?"

Clark's mind flooded with all sorts of complications - none of them pleasant, none of them easily or simply overcome. "I don't know," he said, uncomfortably aware his reply was glaringly inadequate. "But nothing will stop me wanting to be with you."

"If you go back you Metropolis, you could face charges over Lana's claims of abuse," Lois said. "How are you going to apply for a divorce incognito? Tempus will know you're not dead. Coming back here will risk leading him to the Bangala people. You'll jeopardise Romaric. And Matymbou. And all the people who've given so much to both of us."

She was right, but Clark knew he had no choice. "Lois," he said. "I promise I will be careful. I can use my abilities to move very fast and avoid being seen."

"If Lana sees you … if she knows you're back - She lied about you, Kent. Why would she have done that unless she'd made deals with Tempus? And when you think about it, I think it's pretty obvious who gave Tempus information about you."

"I won't let Lana see me," Clark promised.

"How can you initiate a divorce without her seeing you?" Lois demanded. "How are you going to consult a lawyer without Tempus knowing you're not dead?"

"I don't know. I need to find out -"

"Kent …" Lois sucked in a wobbly breath. "I'm so scared. I'm scared you'll go and you'll never come back. And then, I won't know. I won't know what Tempus did to you. I won't know if I should be worried about someone coming after Romaric." She dropped her forehead into his chest.

Clark pressed a kiss into her hair. Lois deserved so much more than he had given her. His grasp on her shoulders tightened, and her head lifted in silent response.

"I'll show you," he offered.

"Show me?"

"I'll show you what I can do. Then, perhaps you won't be so scared."

Another deep breath steadied her. "Can you really fly?" she asked him.

"I used to be able to." His need to hide suddenly seemed insignificant compared with the much greater need to demonstrate to Lois that she could trust his judgement on this. "I won't attempt to leave until I have enough strength and speed to get to Metropolis - and back - safely," Clark promised.

"When will you know?"

Ignoring the ingrained habits of a lifetime, he said took her hand in his and said, "Let's try now, shall we?"

Lois gave him a tremulous smile. "If you're going to try flying, we should go outside," she said. "A smashed roof isn't going to be easy to explain."

Her attempt at humour filled him with confidence. Perhaps everything was going to be all right. They walked together - slowly and sombrely - to the centre of the quarantine area as the last rays of sunlight filtered through the trees. When they stopped, Lois looked at him expectantly. She squeezed his hand and released him.

To fly.

Clark experienced a brief moment of panic when he couldn't remember exactly how he lifted himself from the ground. But he connected with Lois's eyes, and his feet rose slowly from the ground.

"Wow!" she called up to him. "That's amazing, Kent. Can you move around?"

He shot higher, above the tops of the trees, and executed a wide arc over the jungle, being careful to stay out of sight of the village.

Flying was exhilarating. And terrifying, too.

Lois knew. She'd seen. He'd given her undeniable proof of his abnormal abilities.

Unable to wait a moment longer for her response, Clark turned in the direction of the quarantine area. He landed lightly in the dirt, a few feet from Lois.

She leapt at him, hugging him effusively, and laughing like a bubbling creek. Clark folded his arms around her back, hoping like crazy that this was not a dream.

"That was incredible," she said. "You are incredible."

Over the years, Clark had applied many adjectives to his abilities. 'Incredible' had never been one of them. "I … Thank you, Lois."

She drew back and sobered. "OK," she said. "We need to plan how we're going to do this."

Her sudden agreement shocked him. He hurried to offer an explanation. To justify his stubbornness. "I don't want to go, Lois," he said. "I want nothing more than to stay with you. But I have to go."

She looked at the ground for a long moment. "I know," she said, lifting her head and looking at him with moist eyes. "I should have known that's how you'd feel."

"I'm sorry."

Lois patted his arm and blinked a couple of times. "How long will it take you to fly to Metropolis?" she asked. "A couple of days?"

"Before the green rock, it would have taken a couple of minutes."

Her mouth dropped. "A couple of minutes?" she echoed.

"I can … I used to be able to move pretty fast."

"So you could be back just a couple of hours after you leave?" she said, little sprays of optimism pushing through her disbelief.

"I don't know how fast I can fly now," Clark said, wanting to spare her if something delayed him. "I might need to stop and rest."

"Will you be safe? I mean, you're not going to drop out of the sky, are you?"

"No. If I feel I'm losing power, I'll land and rest."

"What if you're over the ocean?" she gasped.

"I'll find an island."

"There aren't that many islands in the Atlantic."

"I'll go north before turning west."

"It's such a long way, Kent. So much can go wrong. And that's before you even get to Metropolis."

"I will get back to you, Lois," he vowed. "And I won't put you or your people in danger."

She took both his hands. She huffed out a breath. She gave him a brave smile. "We have a few hours to prepare."

"I think I should go now," Clark said. The longer he stayed, the less he trusted himself to do what was right.

"Metropolis is five or six hours behind Brazzaville," Lois said. "It's early afternoon there now. Wouldn't it be better to go when it's dark? At least initially, when you'll be trying to gather information without being seen?"

"Yes," Clark admitted, realising that in a just a few minutes, Lois had achieved a greater degree of clarity than had been possible for him.

"We need to go back to the village," she said, leading him to the gate. "We have a lot to do."

"Lois?"

She turned and waited.

"What do they know?" Clark asked, gesturing towards the village. "About Lioli and the hippo? Do they know what I did?"

"Whatever they've been told, nothing is going to be as important as the fact that you saved Lioli. Life means everything to the Bangala. In their eyes, you're going to be a hero."

"A hero?" Clark muttered. "I've never thought of myself as …"

Lois grinned. "Well, you better get used to it," she said. "'Cause the entire village is going to want to thank you for saving their little girl."

"What …" He stopped, clammed up with sudden shyness. He pushed through it. "What about you? What do you think?"

Lois glanced down, and when she looked up again, she was smiling. "You have been a hero to me since I first met you," she said. "And the more I learn about you, the more captivated I become."