A/N: Yep, this one's long too. I've learned to stop fighting it.
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Chapter 3: Home Is Where The Truth Is
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The tidal wave would have been catastrophic, would have struck Indonesia and washed across it like a marauding army, would have obliterated everything in its path. It would have sundered families, aborted lives, and carelessly ripped away futures. It would have destroyed landscapes as easily as turpentine erased oil paintings, would have gnawed its way through topography with all the force its momentum could lend it, would have sought to return the islands to the sea.
It would have.
But it didn’t.
That boy, so young and precious with so much potential in his life, would have died, would have disappeared in a wet conflagration that would have left his family desolate and mourning. Hundreds more might have died, lost forever beneath a liquid veil that only he could safely traverse.
But they hadn’t died. The boy was alive, the others were safe, and Indonesia was unharmed.
This time.
“Look at all the good you do,” his mom had told him early on when she’d found him in his tree-house after an anonymous rescue gone bad, curled up tightly, rocking back and forth, staring ahead blankly.
“If you save even one life, son, that’s reason enough to do what you do,” his dad, a callused hand resting on his shoulder, had told his teenage son the first time Clark had begged to go answer a plea for help.
“Whatever he *can* do, it’s enough,” Lois had said, her eyes hazy with adoration for her absent hero.
He tried to remember those words, really he did, but it was so hard when the cries for help never stopped drowning them out.
The ocean closed around Clark, dampening the sounds of a world in need, veiling him from the ire and disappointment and pity of Lois Lane, moving against his skin like a constant stream of silk as he darted through its shifting mass, washing him clean of sand and silt and sweat and whatever other liquid might possibly have touched his face as he dug out a deep, mile-long trench to suck away the danger and drain the catastrophe down into the bowels of the earth.
The tidal wave itself was like a baptism, like that dash of cold water he needed to wake himself from the insular nightmare he had fallen into. It sluiced over him, powerless to hurt him, its force and strength turned into a flood of sensations that proved cathartic, invigorating, calming. For a moment after the crisis was averted, Clark simply stayed there, wrapped in aquamarine and sapphire, hanging motionless in the midst of the vast ocean, his power of flight camouflaged as simply floating in the water, a task any normal human could do. For a moment, he looked upward at diffused light beams waving gently in the now-calm current, let himself relax for this instant when the immediacy and urgency of the world and his own thoughts could be ignored.
He had learned not to push away his guilt into the deep recesses of his mind, not to compress it into a cold, dark lump inside himself lest it wind tighter and tighter until it exploded outward from him--had learned that lesson while traveling the world, returning to Smallville for quick sips of family and love and acceptance and absolution, had been taught the valuable lesson by the embrace of his parents, their soft reassurances, their firm assertions, the overheard sound of their own tears and murmurs to each other when they left his side to draw strength from each other.
So now he didn’t try to push away his guilt and regret and terror and desperate desire to go back in time and fix all his mistakes; instead, he took them and placed them in a little box and left them where they touched everything he did but stayed close enough to the surface so that the feel of the ocean waves, the touch of the sun, the smile from a casual passerby, the gift of holding the door open for another, the kind word of a friend--anything and everything that could cause joy and inspire delight--left them where those tiny gestures would cause the raw emotions to soften and relax and eventually evaporate. It was a slow process, but it worked, and it had been what had always let him leave a terrible rescue and walk into work with a smile on his face and a greeting of his own for his friends and a coffee in his hand for Lois.
Only when he was sure that his volatile reaction to the night’s events was placed somewhere safe, when he was sure he was in control of himself again, did he return to the air, vibrate himself dry, shake away the residual effects of those draining emotions, and firm his resolve.
He had promised he’d return to Lois. He couldn’t take back his revelation, couldn’t take back his admission of love, couldn’t take back the lies he’d told while they were partners…so he had to live with it. He had to accept it, just as he had to accept that he couldn’t save everyone every time.
Look at the good--he now had a chance to convince Lois to stay away from Luthor, or better yet, see if there was any way he could get her to help him find the evidence he needed to convict the monster.
Save one life--he would be able to protect Lois now without having to worry about keeping his secret, without having to hold himself back, without having to hide just how afraid he was of Luthor.
Whatever he did do--well, if only that really were enough to make her love him. But even if it wasn’t, he still had to be there for her. He’d promised he would be, hadn’t he? He wanted to be, didn’t he? After all, it wasn’t her fault she couldn’t love him, wasn’t her fault he’d had to split himself into two personas in order to live with himself, wasn’t her fault his life was so messed up that just a Park Bench, Window, and Fountain could completely overset him. He could be there for her. He could pretend whatever their relationship was now was enough for him. He could be there to help her and protect her and encourage her and yet step aside whenever she didn’t want him there. It was what he had been doing for eight months now, practice enough to ensure he could continue to do it the rest of his life.
And if he sometimes felt like sharp, jagged pieces of something resided inside his chest instead of a whole heart…well, that was no one’s business but his own. If he sometimes were to look at Lois with all the longing he truly felt…well, as long as he didn’t say anything about it, it could surely go unremarked. If he sometimes dreamed dreams of a future with someone who accepted him wholeheartedly and loved him unreservedly and smiled at him and held his hand and teased him with intelligent banter and looked a lot like Lois…well, no one could completely excise his own heart.
He just had to keep his priorities straight, just had to remember the reason he had told Lois the truth in the first place, just had to remind himself that lives were on the line and his window of opportunity for convincing Lois of Luthor’s crimes was rapidly closing.
Luthor, he reminded himself as he landed once more on the rescue ship and searched for a glimpse of Lois. Luthor was what was important right now, and Clark couldn’t afford to forget that again, not if the criminal mastermind had Kryptonite in his possession.
He heard her before he saw her, a not uncommon occurrence. She was simultaneously helping the stranded passengers settle in belowdecks and interviewing them with her customary incisive questions. It was exactly the sort of story they wrote best together, Clark reflected poignantly, her nailing down the technical parts of the story while he wove in the softer elements of the victims’ plight.
But they wouldn’t be writing this story together.
With a shake of his head to dislodge the depressing thought, Clark found the officer in charge and made sure there wasn’t anything else that required his specific services before heading belowdecks to retrieve Lois. Belatedly, it was occurring to him that it wouldn’t be good for news to get back to Luthor--or any other criminal with their eye on Superman--that the superhero was showing such favoritism to a single reporter. Of course, it wasn’t like he’d hidden it that well before, and with any luck, Luthor at least would be down for the count very soon.
Still, bringing her along had been a mistake, and Clark cursed himself for being so caught up in his own pain that he hadn’t argued harder with Lois to stay behind.
When he made his way belowdecks, he was unexpectedly moved by the sight of Lois kneeling before a woman sitting on a cot beside an adolescent child. Lois finished her question, listened intently to the woman’s reply, her face upturned to the woman, expression open and focused. At the sight of her dedication, her purpose, her complete inability to be thrown off-balance for long, Clark found himself amazed by her yet again.
Everyone else that crowded belowdecks fell silent when they noticed Superman striding through their midst. When the woman Lois was interviewing saw Clark headed toward them, she quieted as well, and Lois looked over her shoulder to see what had drawn everyone’s attention. Her movement revealed the face of the boy lying in the cot, and a jolt of recognition ran through Clark.
The boy who had so briefly died. The boy he had overlooked in the ship’s debris. The boy who was now sleeping peacefully.
“Superman.” The boy’s mother spoke first, and Clark felt obligated to stride farther into the crowd of the wounded and rescued and allow the woman to take his hand.
At that signal, the others surged forward to completely engulf him, playing his cape through their fingers, reaching out to shake his hand, clamoring and calling out thanks and questions and names, an endless onslaught of noise that wasn’t as jagged as cries for help but that nonetheless unsettled him. He had never felt comfortable being so openly fawned over, but he had grown better at dealing with it since first becoming Superman, had almost resigned himself to the fact that his alter ego was a celebrity, and he tried to be fair and polite to everyone who wanted to speak to him.
His discomfort with the situation, however, was made a hundred times worse by the knowledge that Lois was standing on the periphery of the crowd, watching him with an indecipherable expression, her arms folded over her chest. Usually, she was in the vanguard of any crowd surrounding Superman, and Clark admitted to himself--reluctantly and a bit shamefully--that he did miss that look of admiration she had always directed toward Superman.
As soon as politely possible, feeling a little claustrophobic in the close confines with so many people begging for attention from him, he began to drift toward the ladder leading to the deck, still nodding and smiling and shaking hands, not even daring to risk a glance back to make sure Lois was following him, afraid that if he did, he’d see her trying not to burst as she held back her denunciations of him in front of these people who saw only one side of him.
It took longer than he liked, but finally Superman was given a few feet of room under cloudy skies. Lois stepped up close to him, the others falling back to make room for her just because that was the kind of presence she had. She was so utterly confident, so single-mindedly relentless, so sure of herself and her goals and her path. Clark had always envied her that.
She looked up at him, her expression just as open and intent and focused as it had been when interviewing the boy’s mother. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.
Clark almost imperceptibly flinched back from her hand reaching out to touch his arm. He hated that she had seen him during one of these kinds of rescues where so many things went wrong no matter what he did, where he made such a terrible, almost fatal mistake. He hated even more that she was still looking at him with that expression he couldn’t read, that she was still trying to interview him, that she still wouldn’t call him by name, though of course she couldn’t, not in front of all these people.
“I’m fine,” he said slowly, and spared a moment to wonder what she thought could possibly have happened to him. “Are you ready, Ms. Lane?”
She raised her eyebrow at his louder-than-strictly-necessary reply but matched his volume. “Yes, I am.”
Not even for the benefit of others would she call him Superman, Clark noted, and wondered how he felt about that. Wondered what it meant.
With a last taut smile and short wave to the rescue crews and their battered passengers, Superman scooped Lois up and flung himself into the empty, open skies. A tiny sigh of relief escaped him once the noise level receded and cool air replaced the cloying heat of hundreds of bodies swarming him and he could smell wind and rain and sea again.
“Any trouble with the tidal wave?” Lois asked unexpectedly, startling him. Her gaze was a palpable force, a presence all its own, zeroed in on him. With an effort, he ignored it, pretended avid interest in his flying, though in reality, almost the whole of his attention was centered on her, every supersense automatically attuned to her.
“Um, no. No. Why?” He felt another frisson of fear tumble its way down his spine and desperately wished he knew what she was thinking.
She gave a tiny shrug, still studying him with that look she always got just before she pounced on whoever she was interviewing. The pit in the center of Clark’s stomach gaped wider at this reminder that she considered him no more than a subject now. It was as he had always feared: once his secret was known, he instantly ceased being a person and became no more than an object for study.
“I was just wondering,” she answered him after a short pause. “I remember the first time you turned back a tidal wave.”
Clark remembered it too, his giddy relief to find Lois okay even if she had been tied up, his panic when he’d seen the wall of water heading toward his city, his hope that his frantic plan would work, the blur of water hitting him with a punch he’d actually felt, the wry thought that Superman needed to carry a shovel, his overwhelming relief when the floodwaters had receded and Metropolis had been saved.
“I dug a trench to stop this one too,” he offered hesitantly. He really wasn’t sure what else to say, couldn’t figure out what her strategy was. She was leaning against his chest companionably, but she looked at him as if he were under a microscope. She was actually talking to him without accusation, but she refused to call him by name. She hadn’t tried to argue with him since their flight to Kansas, but she was acting much too docile for him to believe that she wasn’t still angry with him. He had once thought he knew her pretty well, but now he wondered how one person could be so confusing, so ambiguous, so perplexing.
“*Was* the Shockwave tsunami in Metropolis the first tidal wave you stopped?” she inquired pointedly, as if he should have picked up on what she was asking without her having to say it aloud.
“Yes,” he answered. “I hadn’t realized I could stop a tidal wave before I actually managed to turn back Shockwave.” He frowned when she shivered and tightened her hold on him. “Are you cold?” he asked worriedly, ready to wrap his cape around her again.
She blinked. “What? Oh. No.” She blinked again and stared even more closely at him. He had made the mistake of meeting her eyes, and now he couldn’t tear himself away, and she was peering up at him as if he were a stranger that seemed familiar--or a friend who suddenly seemed a stranger--but that was what she thought of him now, wasn’t it? Unfortunately, with her dark eyes so close to his, her hands on his neck and shoulders, her soft voice whispering past his ear, he was already beginning to forget his resolution to set aside his hope that she’d ever return his love.
“No wonder you didn’t sweat during the heat-wave,” she said, breaking the silence between them and looking away, allowing him to do the same. Her voice had an almost otherworldly calm. “And why you’d occasionally forget your coat at the Planet during the winter. Or why you were always so willing to lend me your jacket--it was hardly a sacrifice for you, was it?”
He didn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t make her angrier, didn’t know how to say what he truly felt and thought, and so he said nothing because it was just so much easier to remain silent than to deal with the repercussions of whatever he ended up saying. So, carefully, he shoved his immediate response into that open-ended box, determined not to let it and the sting of his hurt out into the open. After all, the last time he had failed to compartmentalize what he was feeling, he had told her he was Superman, and look where that had gotten him.
And yet, he couldn’t help but visibly flinch away from her assertion that his being an alien made all his sacrifices null and void.
“Are you going to deny that temperature doesn’t affect you?” she snapped after a moment, and Clark caged a sigh. Apparently, a non-answer wasn’t the right course either.
“No,” he said stiffly. “I can feel the changes in temperature, but they don’t really bother me unless I’m emotionally disturbed.”
And right now, he added silently, he felt chilled down to the very marrow in his bones.
She studied him again, and Clark inwardly shrank away from her constant scrutiny. He *hated* being the center of attention, hated it when people looked at him too closely, hated drawing focus his way, and his aversion to being noticed was made worse by the fact that Lois knew the truth about him.
Luthor, he reminded himself yet again. He had to make sure she understood how much danger she was in before he reached her apartment and left her side.
“Lois,” he began, but she was already speaking.
“You lied about that pheromone affecting you, didn’t you?”
He studiously locked his gaze on the leagues of water disappearing beneath them to be replaced by the West Coast. Embarrassment flooded through him, burning away his chill and leaving him feeling flushed. He had known it was wrong to tell her how he felt while pretending to be under the influence of Miranda’s love perfume, but by then, his ability to resist temptation had been completely eroded.
“I--” he began, though he had no idea how he was hoping to talk himself out of this one, but Lois interrupted him again, her voice tinged with what sounded like--but couldn’t have been--amusement.
“Never mind.”
She stopped talking after that, her gaze on the scenery passing away below them, moving from deepest night to the barest beginnings of dawn. And strangely, no matter that he hadn’t known how to answer her questions, he wished she would say something, wished she would talk to him, wished that, if he couldn’t understand her, he could at least understand himself.
“I’ll take you to your apartment,” Clark blurted when her silence became too much for him to bear, when he felt his skin starting to crawl with everything she might be thinking about him. For once, he actually wished there was an emergency that demanded Superman’s presence immediately, a crisis that only the superhero could avert, a cry for help that would echo his own and give him a graceful exit from Lois’s too-quiet mood.
“No.” Her tone was perfectly calm, her statement irrevocable, and that pit in his stomach twisted uncomfortably. “Not my apartment.”
“No?” he repeated, as if he might possibly have misheard her. A dark insidious thought wriggled into the forefront of his mind. She couldn’t possibly--no! She wouldn’t ask him to drop her off at Luthor’s. It was a ridiculous thought to even consider. No matter that she had asked Clark--her brotherly friend--to fetch Superman--her favored crush--she would never be so cruel as to ask him, after all she had learned this night, to bring her straight to Lex Luthor’s greedy arms.
Would she?
He hated his doubt, hated his hesitation, hated the very idea…and yet still it persisted.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked her, proud when his voice emerged steady and low, not at all like the tremulous, stuttering gasp he felt like uttering.
“I want you to take me to Smallville.”
“Smallville?” There was an echo in the air, but he couldn’t help that--it had leaped out before he could catch it. “Why do you want to go to Smallville?”
A trace of exasperation dusted Lois’s expression, a tinge of impatience flavored her voice, a wealth of meaning littered her words. “I already told you--I want to understand you. You claim Smallville’s your home, so I want to go there. So far, I’ve only seen Superman. I want to see Clark now.”
Despite the fact that he’d been avoiding meeting her eyes for hours now, he stared levelly at her and wished she would look at him and see the real intensity behind his own words. “You want to see Clark? You want to understand me--*all* of me? Then we don’t need to go to Smallville.”
A crease marred Lois’s dirt-smudged forehead and she cast a sidelong glance his way, suspecting a trick. “Really? Are you admitting that you lied about your home then?” Strangely, she didn’t sound mad about that; instead, she sounded a little sad, or maybe just disillusioned.
“I didn’t lie,” Clark stated as Metropolis came into view on the distant horizon. “Smallville *was* my home. It’s where I was raised, it fills my earliest memories, it’s somewhere I visit often so I can see Mom and Dad--but it’s not where you need to go if you want to know me.”
Lois narrowed her eyes and looked at the countryside below as if she would be able to tell where he was heading. Clark had no doubt that she would figure it out soon enough; after all, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been there a hundred times before, often late at night or early in the morning, coming and going from work or stakeouts or poker nights at the Planet or friendly outings.
Earlier, he had determined to show her Superman; now, he was just as determined to show her Clark. He wasn’t sure *he* fully understood himself, but he wanted Lois to, wanted it almost more badly than he wanted her to love him. Or maybe they were equal desires; maybe they were inextricably linked; maybe there couldn’t be one without the other.
He couldn’t forget Luthor, he knew, or the Kryptonite. But showing Lois the place he called home, the place that most reflected who he was, wouldn’t distract from his investigation into Luthor. In fact, it might even help, might finally break a tiny hole through Lois’s walls, might loosen the tension coiling his every muscle into a knot so tight it would have hurt if he weren’t invulnerable.
Clark snorted inwardly. After everything, it seemed he was still an optimist.
He carefully averted his eyes when he passed over Centennial Park, not eager to revisit the places of such pain, made certain he picked a route that bypassed Lois’s window entirely. He was grateful when his flight over the city didn’t reveal any crises he needed to answer, though nervousness rose up to assault him when he neared his destination.
Lois frowned when she recognized where he was going, and when he set her down on the balcony of his apartment, she put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “This is your apartment. I’ve been here hundreds of times.”
“I know, Lois. I love having you here all the time.” He stepped inside, giving a cursory glance to the interior of the apartment as he flipped on the lights. Lois followed behind, stumbling back a bit when he spun into his regular clothes, eager to be out of the grimy, soot-stained, blood-scented Suit. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Lois gaping at the Suit he casually tossed into the laundry hamper, would have grinned in other circumstances at the way she shook aside her shock and glared at him lest he admit he’d seen her discomfiture.
“So why did you bring me here?” Lois demanded when he moved to brew a pot of coffee. She crossed her arms over her chest, a firm gesture to prove she wouldn’t be tricked. He’d seen her use it a hundred times before, but he knew she didn’t need to worry--he didn’t plan on tricking her. He was done lying to her.
Clark allowed the habitual movements, the familiar monotony of preparing coffee, to settle his thoughts, calm his emotions, slow his desire to get out as much information as quickly as possible. This was his one chance to get through to Lois, and he couldn’t mess it up.
“This is my home, Lois.” He used an expansive hand to indicate the whole of the apartment. “This is who I am. I was so excited to finally risk coming to Metropolis and trying to settle down in one city; getting a place of my own, fixing it up, moving all my things in…it seemed to make it real to me. I painted this place, decorated it, and maybe it’s not much, maybe it’s ordinary and boring to everyone else, but to me, it’s home.”
Lois’s arms fell back to her sides and she swept the apartment with a suddenly piercing gaze.
“Here.” Clark left the coffee pot and moved to run a finger over a few figurines on a shelf. “These were given to me for helping a family with their pastry shop while I was in Spain. And these,” he moved to gesture at the multitude of books filling every shelf he had, “are books I enjoy, either because they taught me something important or because they inspired my imagination. That laptop, it’s been with me since my parents saved up enough money to buy it for me when I graduated college. I wrote my first freelance article on it. This furniture--I saved enough money from my paychecks at the Planet to buy it all, and it took me awhile because I wanted to pay Dad back what he had loaned me when I first moved here. And this quilt,” he stepped into the bedroom to run a hand over the blanket on his bed. “My mom made this for me when I first left home. She said it would make my dorm room look brighter and more like home, and she was right.”
Lois followed him, not interrupting, not saying a word, looking at each item he indicated as if she were actually, really listening to him. Which made him, simultaneously, almost insanely hopeful and suddenly incredibly self-conscious about what he was saying. How many times during his life had he wanted to tell someone the truth, thought about what it would be like to explain his life, tried to compose the perfect words to convey just how much of an ordinary person he really was even though, in reality, he wasn’t? More times than he could count, and yet this starkly vivid moment was more important than all those sepia dreams…because this was Lois. The one person in the world he wanted above all to hear what he now had the chance to say.
“This is my home, Lois,” he repeated. “And, yes, I don’t always come in the front door, and a lot of times I leave by way of the balcony, and I can look through the walls, and here--” Feeling liberated, feeling as if he teetered on the edge of a precipice, Clark pulled open his closet. “These clothes, I bought most of them after I got the job at the Planet because I wanted to live up to Perry’s faith in me, but this…” He opened the secret compartment and let her see the hanging Suits, the sapphire and crimson colors a startling, brilliant counterpoint to the earth tones of his regular clothes. “I got the idea of Superman when you told me I should bring a change of clothes to work, Lois. I’d always wanted to find a way to help people without constantly having to move on the minute anyone grew suspicious of me, and your comment gave me the idea of hiding in plain sight.”
Delicately, tentatively, Lois reached out a hand to run her fingers over the dangling capes, trailed them across the bright ties hanging along the edge of the closet like splashes of color dripping down the wall. Clark watched her fearfully, hopefully, and had to remind himself to breathe so he could talk.
“This apartment is who I am, Lois, and yes, it has a secret closet that hides Superman Suits. But this closet is exactly how much of Superman I am.” He stopped, shook his head, knowing he wasn’t making sense, started over again. “This entire apartment is Clark Kent’s, and only one tiny compartment is Superman’s. You say you don’t know me, but that’s not true at all. You’ve been in every room of this apartment except this one closet. And the truth is…the truth is, if you take away Superman, Clark Kent will still be here. More afraid, more constrained, maybe having to move on after too many anonymous rescues--but still *me*. But if you take Clark Kent away…there is no Superman. There’s no one, nobody, nothing.”
Daringly, breathlessly, he reached out his hand and slid his fingers through Lois’s, met her eyes, hoped his own conveyed all his sincerity. “You know Clark, Lois. You know the ordinary man. And you know Superman, the alien. You do know me.”
“Do I?” she whispered, her breath spilling from her lips to scent the air with uncertainty. But she didn’t tug her hand free of his, didn’t look away, didn’t call him a liar.
“You do,” he insisted, his own voice almost as quiet as hers. “This is just one secret, Lois, and I know it’s big, but…but it’s just like Claude.”
She stiffened, her hand going still and cold in his. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t you see, Lois? That’s your secret. You hide that portion of your life, letting only a few people know about it. What he did to you shaped who you are now, it influences you, but you don’t tell everyone about it. *You* hide that your heart was broken by a scumbag who didn’t realize what he was throwing away; *I* hide that my parents put their baby in a spaceship and sent him to another world in the hopes that he’d escape the fate of their doomed planet.” Her narrowed eyes didn’t look promising, so he added, “I know it’s not exactly the same, but--”
“No, let’s go with that analogy.” She pulled her hand out of his, and Clark felt a pang of doubt slice through him, let his empty hand fall back to his side. “I told you about Claude only days after first meeting you. It took *you* almost a year before you told me this secret--and if it weren’t for Lex, I doubt you would have told me at all!”
“How long have you been keeping Claude a secret?” he asked with more calm than he felt. “Four years? Five? My parents and I have been hiding this secret my entire life! And the consequences of people finding out about Claude are nothing compared to what would happen if they all knew I was Superman!”
“But I’m your friend!” Lois snapped, and finally the anger she had been hiding burst through her façade to blind him with its vehemence, its strength, its anguish. “I championed Superman! I told Clark things I’ve never told anyone else! But you--you couldn’t trust me with this?”
“You are my friend,” he said, desperate to make her understand, stepping forward as if mere proximity could convince her, falling still when she retreated a step. “But so is Perry, so is Jimmy, so is Pete Ross, so is Henderson. Should I tell--”
“I thought I was your *best* friend!” she cried, and underneath her fury, there were tears shimmering in liquid eyes, turning Clark’s insides to dandelion seeds that fluttered in the pull of the vacuum in the pit of his stomach, sending his rational thoughts spinning into oblivion. “I thought I meant something to you! I thought…I thought I was special to you. To both of you.”
“You are, Lois.” And forgetting for the moment that she didn’t want him near her, Clark stepped forward and reached up a gentle hand to rest it on her cheek, wiping a thumb across her cheekbone as if to wipe away her tears before they could fall. His voice fell lower, his breath catching. “You are. You’re infinitely special to me. I lo--I’ve never had a better friend than you, and I did want, so many times, to tell you. But this secret…it’s huge, Lois. It takes over your entire life and it never goes away. It’s a burden that’s almost heavier than I can bear! It means you have to lie every day about even trivial things--have to do things like remember to grab a coat even if you’re not cold just so no one will look at you and start seeing a creature instead of a person. It means you can never let your guard down, never answer anyone honestly when they ask how your day went, never commit to a full evening with someone because you never know when an emergency will come up. It means your world is forever divided between those who know and those who don’t and there will never be a time when the former equals the latter.”
With an effort, Clark fell silent, his gaze locked on his thumb as it swished slowly back and forth over Lois’s smooth, soft skin. She brought up one hand to his; for an instant, he was afraid she’d knock his hand aside, but instead she simply rested her cool, slender fingers on his, holding it closer to her cheek.
“It means,” Clark added quietly, “that no matter how much you want to, you can’t tell your best friend that the man she’s dating, the man she might marry, the man she hopes will make her happy, is in fact a monster. Because if you told her that, you’d have to tell her how you know he’s a monster. The secret isolates you and cuts you off from everyone else and turns you into the bad guy when you give your vague, watered-down warnings to her about her boyfriend and possible fiancé. Why…” He pulled in a ragged breath, slowly let it out. “*Why* would I wish that kind of burden on you, Lois?”
Lois’s expression turned suddenly contemplative. “*Possible* fiancé? You still think I’m going back to Lex?”
His hand fell away from her, and he stared at her in the dim hope that if he looked at her long enough, he’d develop the ability to read her mind. “I don’t know,” he said, and Lois flinched at the ragged edge to his voice. “I don’t know anymore, haven’t known anything since you told me you were thinking about accepting his proposal.” Clark squeezed his eyes shut against that memory and the power it still held to make him feel as if he’d been sucker-punched. “I hadn’t thought he and you were so serious. I mean, you never talked about him--and I guess that’s because you knew I didn’t like him. But then, when those terrorists took us hostage at the Planet…” He trailed off, unable to put into words how helpless and disbelieving and lost he had felt to actually watch Lois and Luthor behaving like a couple. Seeing her laying across Luthor’s lap and smiling up at him had made Clark feel as if he’d been stabbed with a Kryptonite blade.
“I just never thought it would be like this,” he finally finished lamely. “I never thought it would go too far.”
Lois drew herself up, her eyes flashing sparks. “Why not? You didn’t think he could love me?”
He didn’t, actually, not really, not when Luthor’s first and only interest was himself, but he knew better than to say it aloud and couldn’t bear to anyway, not when he knew how Lois would take it. Besides, this was probably his best and only chance to present his case against Luthor.
“No,” he contradicted her gently. “I didn’t think Luthor would let himself get too close to you because you’re an award-winning journalist and he’s playing with fire just being around you, almost daring you to find him out. Here, you asked for my proof--this is what I have.” He bent down and retrieved the fireproof box he’d bought to hold what physical evidence against Luthor he’d been able to chase down. He knew it wasn’t enough on its own--not without Superman--but he set it down on the bed anyway and opened it so Lois could look through it.
Lois ran her fingers over the files but didn’t pull any of them out. “You keep it with the Suits?” Her tone was neutral, her manner once more unreadable, the sparks hidden beneath slowly burning coals. “That’s somewhat ironic--hiding his skeletons in your closet. I mean, you’re both hiding the two biggest secrets in Metropolis, maybe in the world. You’re both daring the same reporter to find you out, both lying through your teeth with a charming smile. You’ve even both been the recipients for the key to the city! I mean, on the outside, you’re completely the same, and yet there’s no--”
“What?” Clark stared at her, stricken, unable to breathe.
*You’re completely the same.* Her words ran through his mind like a mantra, obliterating the noise of Metropolis, the sound of the waves in the harbor, the passage of the planes overhead. He had just called Luthor a monster, had given her proof--it had seemed she was listening to him, appeared that she believed him--and yet…yet she thought he was exactly like Luthor.
A liar. A con artist. A pretender.
*You’re just like the rest,* she’d told him earlier that night, and now it seemed nothing he’d said had changed her mind in the slightest.
A monster. She thought he was a monster. Not an ordinary man, not a superhero, not even her friend. Just a liar. Someone who used her, taunted her, dared her to see the secret hiding right in front of her. She hadn’t listened to a word he’d said, hadn’t seen anything he’d tried so hard to show her…and it was all his fault.
He should never have told her.
He wished he could summon the anger that had been all-consuming and had lurked just below the surface earlier, wished he could retreat to that sphere of numbness that had protected him from her scorn and condemnation, wished he could wall off his love and hurt and anguish. But now, in the face of this cruelty, he was utterly defenseless.
“I…” He frantically looked about for an excuse to leave, to flee, to fling himself into the sky and burn his way through the atmosphere in an effort to cauterize the gaping wound in his chest. “I need to go.”
“What?” Lois gaped at him incredulously. “But--”
“Please.” He tried to walk around her, but she backed up a bit, the move keeping her in his path. “If you think I’m just like Luthor, then…” He choked on those words, kept talking anyway because if he was talking, if he was filling his apartment with words, it meant she couldn’t say anything else to scar him. “If you think that, then clearly there’s no reason for me to stay, nothing more for me to say.”
“What?” Pure emotion flooded through Lois’s large, dark eyes, and she reached out her hands to place on his chest, as if trying to hold him in place. “Stop! That’s not what I was saying. I mean, it is what I said, but it’s not what I meant! I was trying to say that you could be like him--you could be *just* like him--but instead you’re--”
A sharp, imperative knock on the door interrupted both Lois’s impassioned speech and Clark’s attempts to step past her. Both of them froze, both looking toward the door, and it would have been almost comical if Clark hadn’t slipped his glasses down, looked through the door, and seen Luthor on the other side.
He had been afraid all night, bouncing back and forth between anger and numbness but always somehow terrified that he’d lose Lois. But now, at the sight of Luthor on his doorstep, he was abruptly, coldly calm, emotion fading away, repelled by Luthor’s mere presence.
“It’s Luthor,” he said mildly.
“Lex?” Lois frowned in puzzlement. “What is he doing *here*? I didn’t think he ever paid much attention to you.”
“Thankfully,” Clark muttered before putting his hands on Lois’s shoulders and spinning her toward the closet. “Quick, Lois, inside the secret compartment--I don’t want him to know you’re here.”
“What? Why not? What are you doing?”
“Shh,” he hissed, reminded of the long ago night when she’d followed him back from the Metro Club and then protested when he tried to hide her from Toni Taylor. “If you were supposed to meet Luthor earlier and then didn’t, he might be suspicious of you.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Lois retorted, though at least she kept her voice low.
“Then why is he at Clark Kent’s apartment at five in the morning?” Clark asked her matter-of-factly. “Please, Lois, if it’s nothing, you can always come out later, but if it is about you, it’s better if he doesn’t know you’re here.”
Lois took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, then grimaced at him. “Fine!” she snapped. She swept his box of proof up in her arms and then ducked past his suit coats to clamber into the secret compartment. His Suits wrapped her in their smooth embrace, and Clark swallowed as he closed the door on her, the sight of her dark hair mingling with his capes threatening his icy composure.
Another knock sounded imperiously, echoing through the living room. Clark cast a quick glance around, noted the brewing coffee that proved he’d been awake, ran a hand through his hair to tousle it, and took a deep breath as he moved to the landing to open the door on his arch-nemesis.
***
