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Reflections TOC Reflections
Part 17
A couple of hours later Lois and Clark were sitting at the diner near Lois’s apartment. Lois had long ago let her hair down, and Clark had removed his tie and coat. Clark had just finished telling his story about Lena, substituting parts where he had used his superpowers with more human actions. Of course, he couldn’t tell her about Lena’s threat to expose his origins.
“Clark, I’m so sorry that she had fooled you like that. I don’t know how I would even react if someone broke my trust like that.” She looked into Clark’s eyes for a couple of moments, weighing her words before she continued. “Listen, I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but I hope you learn that you can trust me, and that I won’t use you like she did. So if you need someone to talk to, you can always come to me.”
Clark was touched by Lois’s gesture, but felt a little guilty that he, in fact, had to hide a big part of himself from someone who just offered to be his friend. But there was nothing he could do about that. There was no way he wanted to burden someone with keeping his secret, especially someone he just met. So he just replied, “Thanks, Lois, I appreciate that.”
“I do have one question for you though,” Lois asked.
“Sure, what?”
“Are you going to finish that chocolate cake?” She looked down at his half eaten dessert with a look he could only describe as longing.
With a small chuckle he replied, “No, it’s all yours.” He slowly slid the plate across to her, and with gleeful look she picked up her fork and took a large bite of the cake.
“Mmmmmm...” She groaned with her eyes closed as she savored her bite of cake. Clark was amazed and couldn’t stop staring at the sight of her. He couldn’t remember seeing anyone so complete in rapture from the taste of their dessert before. It was mesmerizing. As she opened her eyes, he could see that she was embarrassed by her reaction, but he couldn’t look away.
“Sorry, I guess I get a little carried away with chocolate sometimes.”
All Clark could say, in a whisper, was, “I guess so.”
“So, you were going to talk about your investigations.”
Her statement shook him back into reality, and he started recount to her his last three years of investigations surrounding the illegal arms trade.
“Well I started out small. A follow up on the people she sold the weapons to. They turned out to be brokers to small groups that armed dissidents and terrorist in the Middle East and African nations. That lead to a few discoveries down the line, but up the line the trail grew cold quickly. And according to my contacts with the French police, the men never would reveal who they were working for. And even though it was set very high, they were able to post their bail. The police kept surveillance on them, but the next day they all simply disappeared without a trace. Then I tried to follow the trail of whoever shot Lena, but I ran into a dead end quickly on that also. As the months rolled by I found myself focusing more on stories surrounding the illegal arms trade than any others. As I dug deeper I started to discern a pattern.”
Clark paused long enough to take a sip of his coffee before continuing. “It seems that the arms were initially sold at a cut-rate to one side, and when the fighting would heat up both sides in the conflict would start bringing a lot of weapons into their area. It almost seemed as if someone, for lack of a better theory, was purposely starting wars in third world nations. Without the initial influx of weapons, the conflicts would remain at a fairly low level. But with the weapons, the conflicts flared to horrific levels.”
He stopped and stared into his coffee cup as he thought the thing that bothered him the most about all of it. After a few moments he heard Lois asked, “What is it, Clark?”
Looking up at Lois with a grim expression he replied, “From everything I’ve seen in the last three years, there only two possibilities I can think of as a motive. Either someone is purposely inciting these conflicts to increase their sales of illegal weapons, or someone is playing some kind of elaborate power game, with the world as his playing field. I’m not sure which scares me more, but it’s probably the latter.”
“That’s incredible. What would anyone have to gain from that?”
“I don’t know. It could be just greed. But for some reason I sense something darker.”
Lois sat silently for a minute, and then looked at Clark to say, “Have you been doing this all on your own?”
Clark shrugged, “Pretty much.”
“You know, Clark, these are very dangerous people. In fact I had my own run in with them a year ago in the Congo. I’d probably be dead now if I hadn’t been rescued by Superman.”
Clark knew exactly what she was talking about, but he had to act surprised at her revelation. “Really? I didn’t know you had met him before.”
“It’s a long story, but that’s not the point. The point is that these guys are dangerous, and doing this alone makes you target. You ever thought of getting help, someone to back you up?”
“Not really, I never felt the need before. I’m fairly good at taking care of myself.”
“Oh, really? Listen, I know from first hand experience how easy it is to get yourself in a situation where you can hurt… or worse. In fact I’ve been known to push the envelope a little in pursuit of a story.”
“A little?” he asked in an amused tone.
“I’m not kidding here, Smallville. I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes you’ve got to look before jumping into the deep end. A little backup wouldn’t hurt you any. You’re not Superman you know.”
Clark did a double take at her last statement, and had to stop himself from reacting to the irony of it. “Maybe, but I don’t feel like I can ask anybody to share the responsibility of what I feel I have to do. There’s a lot of secrecy around my, um, activities and I haven’t been in one place very long since I left home. I really don’t want to burden anyone.” He said the last thing very softly, almost in a whisper. Turning his head toward the window, he began to get lost in watching the rain fall outside the window.
“What if someone volunteered?”
He looked back at Lois in surprise. “Volunteered?”
“Yes, volunteered.”
“I… uh, don’t know. I never thought about it.” However, as soon as Clark said that, he knew he was lying. He had been thinking of just that the day before in Lois’s apartment.
“Well start thinking about it, ‘cause I’m volunteering.”
“But you work at the Planet.”
“So what? So do you. We’ll just lay out what you have so far for Perry, and get him to assign it to us as a continuing investigation. Of course we have to save the Space Program first,” she said with a grin.
“But Lois, I’m not staying at the Planet.”
Lois’s grin immediately fell away, to be replaced by shock. “What! What do mean you’re not staying at the Planet? Why in the world would you leave? You just started.”
“Lois, I haven’t stayed in one place for more than six months in the last seven years, and for the last three years it’s never been longer than three months. I only came to Metropolis because I was following a lead I had. I didn’t really think my job here would be permanent.” Seeing the look in her eyes, he concluded softly, “I’m sorry, it never occurred to me that I might be working with someone.”
“So you just follow your leads, and then pick up and leave when you’re done? What about the people you leave behind? Don’t you ever have regrets?”
He looked down at his cup as he quietly said, “I’ve never really gotten close to anyone. Not since Lena. And before that I was just an observer, reporting on the world. No time to form any lasting friendships.”
“Clark, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound like much of a life.”
Without looking up he said, “It’s not bad. I get to make a difference. But the way my life is now, I just couldn’t...” He paused trying to find the right words, finally getting out, “It’s too dangerous to let anyone close. I already live in fear about what would happen to my parents if someone found out about my ‘side job’. I don’t know if I have the right to ask anyone to accept the burden of this…” He stopped himself when he realized he was starting to talk about more than just his investigations. He looked out the window once again, unable to look at Lois.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lois was warring within herself at the moment, between being upset at Clark, and wanting to hold him and try to make the hurt go away. Manchester had really done on number on him, and now he felt he had to save the whole world on his own. Part of Lois wanted to say ‘if that’s the way he wants to be, then fine’, and the other part of her was plotting on how to build up his trust in her enough to let her help. Too bad Clark had no idea of this battle going on inside her, so he could appreciate that she was trying to be sensitive. And she didn’t do ‘sensitive’ very often. But she concluded part of being sensitive meant not pointing that out to him at this moment that she was trying to be sensitive. Making a decision, she plunged ahead into the uncharted waters of patience and understanding.
“What if someone volunteered who was used to all of this already? Who didn’t mind the extra burden? Would you still turn her down?”
She looked expectedly at Clark, whose attention was still riveted to the window. In the reflection she could see the struggle on his face. He turned to her after a few moments, his face unreadable to her. “Honestly, I don’t really know.” He sighed and continued, “I’m not sure I could stand letting someone… down again.”
Lois could see that the guilt over Manchester’s death was eating away at Clark, even though she had betrayed his trust. She wished she could find a way for him to get past the guilt and the hurt. It seemed like a very lonely existence for him to remain behind the emotional barrier he had erected for himself. That last thought surprised her. She never had been much of a ‘touchy-feely’ person before. Her normal tendency would be to tell him to suck it up and get over it. But she couldn’t bring herself to think that way with Clark. Maybe he just brought out the maternal instincts in her.
“Well, Clark, I want you to think about it now, because I just volunteered. And you don’t have to worry that you’re ‘burdening’ me with extra danger in my life, ‘cause that’s pretty much the norm for my job already.” She could see that he was about to give her another argument, but she cut him off by continuing with, “Besides, technically, this is my story too. It turns out that I had the same experience in the Congo trying to find out who those guys were connected to. There was one guy, who obviously was in charge, but he got away, and no clues to his identity were found.”
“Yeah, I know,” Clark replied. A sudden look of panic flitted across his face, which Lois picked up on immediately.
“And just how would you know that?” She said each word of her query slowly and carefully, not so much for emphasis, but so as to keep herself from sounding upset at him (which she failed at).
Sheepishly Clark replied, “I, um, kind of know about that incident. You see, when I was, um, gathering facts about a set of guns that had been shipped into Africa, I got information about a shipment that had been captured in the Congo. I had heard that a reporter had been involved, and I did some checking into myself after the fact. I guess now I know that you were the reporter my sources mentioned.”
Lois scrutinized him through narrowed eyes as he finished. She could tell that he was leaving out something, maybe even outright lying about part of it. However since he was just starting to open up to her for the first time, he was going to get a one time only offer of a Lois ‘I’m Being Sensitive - Get Out of Jail Free’ card. Still something more in what he said flittered at the back of her mind. Not being able to quite put her finger on what she was missing, she continued, “See, it’s still my story too. So we might as well partner up on this, since I’ll probably continue on my own anyway, now that you’ve got my interest back up. Besides that you don’t have to worry about moving on after the leads here in Metropolis pan out. If we pitch this as a continuing investigation to Perry, we can go where we need to follow up leads, and you’ll always have the Planet as your base of operations. You’ll get more done with the Planet backing you up. So right after this Shuttle investigation, we’ll put a proposal together for Perry, so he knows what we’re doing with this.”
She smiled and took another bite of Clark’s cake, satisfied that he had no way to escape her logic.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clark just stared at Lois, unsure of what just happened. She had essentially backed him into a logical corner that he really couldn’t get out of without appearing to be an idiot. All her arguments made perfect sense, if not for the fact of his superpowers. And couldn’t very well say, ‘Well thanks, Lois, but you don’t have to worry since I’m really a super-powered Kryptonian and nothing can really hurt me.’ Yeah, that would work.
How could he work with a partner, and still keep his super-activities hidden from her? He wasn’t very good at lying (at least according to his Mom), so he would end up making up lame excuses to get away. In fact, he was lucky it had been relatively quiet for the last two hours, probably due to the rain and late hour.
He contemplated how to answer as he watched her trying to recover that last few crumbs of his chocolate cake with her fork. Part of him wanted just to run away again, to make sure he kept his secret safe. Another part of him wanted to have some degree of a normal life and accept her offer for help. He had to admit it would be nice to have a stable base of operations, and someone to bounce ideas off of from time to time.
“Lois.” She paused in her pursuit of chocolate crumbs, and looked up at him expectantly. He sighed before continuing. “I can see your point, and it would be nice to have some backup… some stability in my life. But it’s… it’s…”
“Hard for you not to worry about what might happen to me,” she finished for him.
“Well… yeah.”
She started to collect her stuff around her seat as she said, “Tell you what then, you sleep on it. In the meantime we still have to investigate Baines, and find out why someone it trying to sabotage the Shuttle program. By the time we finish that, you’ll have enough time to see that I’m right.” Getting up from the table and heading for the door she added, “Come on, you can do your Boy Scout routine and walk me home.”
He had to shake himself out of his ‘deer in the headlights’ reaction to her statements, and slowly got up himself. He threw some money on the table and muttered to himself, “Sure, Lois, let’s go.” He hurried to catch up with her at the door, getting there in time to open it for her. As she stepped through the open door, he asked her, “Did it ever occur to you that I might not agree with you?”
She stopped, turned toward him, and smiling sweetly replied, “Nope, not for a second.” Not waiting for him to react to her statement, she exited on to the sidewalk. He shook his head and followed her out the door. He had only one thought in his mind. Either she was really going to be a big help to him, or he was going to be in big trouble.
Probably both.
-- End Part 17 --
