Table of Contents
From Part 1:Torn between sympathy for his situation and almost delight that it meant he could be open to other offers, Lois shook her head. “She must be an idiot.”
“No.” His disagreement was immediate. “Just... thinks she’s in love with someone else.”
And he was desperately in love with her. Lois could tell. Something told her, too, that he wasn’t the kind of guy to seek comfort somewhere else while he felt that way. He wasn’t going to suggest that they ease each other’s loneliness. And, while one tiny fraction of her felt disappointment at that thought, overall she was relieved. She wasn’t going to have to fight off possibly unwelcome advances at the end of the evening.
The silence between them stretched to several moments. Then Darth broke it. “So, this guy. Does he happen to use a white stick, by any chance?”
“No.” She smiled wryly at the thought. “He does wear glasses, though.”
**********
Now read on...Clark missed a step, and had to concentrate to regain his timing. “Sorry. Just missed my footing,” he apologised. Inwardly, his brain was reeling.
Lois was talking about
him? Not Superman?
He was the guy who just wasn’t interested in her?
But how could that be? How could she possibly think that? Didn’t she know that he was head over heels in love with her... as he’d just told her?
Not that she would have known that he was talking about her, of course. Darth Vader was the perfect disguise for him tonight, in more ways than he’d appreciated when he’d chosen it.
He’d been
persuaded - ordered, more like - to attend the ball by a friend of his at City Hall with whom he occasionally played basketball. He’d owed Alex a favour for a significant tip-off recently, and when his friend had hinted strongly that buying a ticket to the ball would go some way towards making them even Clark had shrugged and agreed. After all, he’d known that he’d be there anyway; Superman had promised to put in an appearance just before midnight to accept the cheques on behalf of the two charities to benefit from the night’s activities. Wearing a costume that covered his entire face and head made it even less likely that anyone would realise that Superman had been at the ball the entire evening.
He hadn’t been particularly excited about attending the ball. Okay, the masquerade element had sounded fun, but it would’ve been much more fun if he’d been there with someone. Unfortunately, the only person he wanted to be with hated this sort of event, so he hadn’t even bothered asking if she’d come with him. Sure, he could’ve asked Mayson, but that would have been sending the sort of message he really didn’t want to be giving her. He liked her, but not enough to offer her the kind of relationship he knew she wanted.
The last person he’d expected to encounter at the ball had been Lois. He knew her well enough to know that this kind of event would be her idea of hell. In fact, although he’d recognised her voice immediately, he’d refused to accept that it really was Lois - he’d actually peeked under her mask to confirm it.
The silence was stretching too long. And he didn’t want Lois to suspect anything... even though he knew that the likelihood of her seeing through this disguise was even less than her seeing Clark Kent in Superman. But he was still trying to adjust his mind to believing that she... sort of cared... about him. Clark.
“So.” Trying to keep his voice light, he pressed on. “Wears glasses, huh? No wonder he can’t see what’s under his nose!”
She shrugged. “Maybe he can, but he’s just not interested.”
“I can’t believe that,” Clark protested.
He shouldn’t be doing this, he knew. He was now deliberately obtaining information from her under false pretences. And yet he couldn’t do the right thing and let it drop. He wanted to know: to know what she felt for him, why she thought he wasn’t interested.
“He’s not! Look, if you must know - ” Now she sounded irritated. “ - We’re good friends. Best friends. But he’s been seeing someone else for a couple of months now.”
Mayson? But surely Lois knew that he wasn’t serious about her? He’d been out with her a few times, sure, but although he liked her he wasn’t in love with her. And was never going to be. How on earth could Lois think that he wanted Mayson in preference to her?
“How do you know he’s serious about her?” he countered.
“Trust me, I know.”
He gave her a grunt of disbelief.
“Okay, look, he’s going home to Kansas for Christmas tomorrow. And we won’t see each other again for four days. So I thought it’d be nice to have our own Christmas celebration early...”
Oh no. Clark could see what was coming. He remembered her invitation. It had been very casual, along the lines of ‘if you’re not doing anything else’. And he had already been doing something else - he’d committed to attending this ball. So, very reluctantly, he’d had to say no.
Now, it was sounding as if the invitation couldn’t have been less casual. And he’d turned her down without even explaining properly - he’d just said that he had other plans.
But why had she acted as if it couldn’t have mattered less, when it had clearly been so important to her?
Immediately, he answered his own question. Because that was his partner all over. Never let anyone see that something mattered to her, because that would make her vulnerable.
But hiding it from
him? That hurt. At least, until he saw it in the light of what she’d just confessed to the man she’d thought was a stranger. She cared about him - Clark - more than she’d ever let on. And so she would take great care not to let him see it until she was absolutely positive that he cared about her just as much.
Part of him wished that he could sweep her off now to a dark corner somewhere, remove his disguise and tell her how much he loved her. How much he’d wanted to spend tonight with her - and how happy he’d been that he’d recognised her within seconds of having collided with her after that idiot in the reindeer outfit had been hassling her.
Caution prevented him. He knew his partner far too well to risk the consequences of springing something like that on her. She’d be embarrassed, and therefore furious, that she’d been confessing her secret feelings to him, the guy she’d just confessed to... caring about, instead of some anonymous stranger whom she’d never see again after tonight.
Oh yeah, she’d just love that.
Okay. He was Darth Vader. He wasn’t supposed to know who she was; he was just a stranger who started off by flirting with her a little because it was fun but now the two of them were sharing a couple of confidences and indulging in a bout of mutual commiseration. That was all. He needed to keep it light and not give anything away.
“So, what happened? He blow you off?” There. That was good. Nicely casual, but with just the right amount of sympathy for her and condemnation of the idiot who didn’t appreciate her.
“Pretty much,” she said. “He said he had plans. I mean, I was offering to cook him a meal - and I don’t cook, trust me - with some nice wine, and music, and the whole Christmas thing - and I just don’t
do Christmas - and give him his Christmas present...” She broke off, and he could sense that she was biting her lip. “Anyway. I was really going to go to a lot of trouble. And all he could say was that he had
plans. It didn’t take too much imagination to work out what plans, either. I know he’s with her. So, anyway, that’s that. I guess I should really just forget about him, shouldn’t I? I mean, what’s the point wasting my energy on someone who doesn’t want me...”
“Hey.” He couldn’t listen to her torturing herself any more. No; he wouldn’t tell her the truth now. But at the earliest possible opportunity -
tomorrow - he would get her alone and tell her how he really felt about her. How much he loved her. And he’d ask her out. Of course, they couldn’t actually go out until he was back from Smallville, but that was only a few days away.
In the meantime, his alter ego - his
other alter ego - had to say something reassuring.
“Don’t, L- Susan,” he murmured, preventing himself saying her real name just in time. “You don’t know that he’s not interested. Maybe he really did just have other plans. I mean, you’re here tonight. Couldn’t he have had some Christmas party to go to?”
She was silent for a moment. Then, very quietly, she said, “But if he’d been going alone, he’d have asked me to go with him.”
Would he? Clark thought about that for a moment. He hadn’t asked her to come with him tonight, had he?
“Well, you just got through telling me that you don’t do Christmas,” he said, keeping a faint hint of teasing in his voice. “Maybe he knew that and decided not to risk you telling him what he could do with his invitation?”
A giggle escaped her, and he smiled. Good - it had worked. “Yeah, you might be right,” she conceded. “After all, I have spent the last month telling Cl -
him how much I loathe this time of year. So, assuming you’re right - and I’m not saying I think you are - he was probably afraid I’d strangle him with one of his own ties if he asked me.”
Well, she’d got that one right.
But then she added, so quietly that without his super-hearing he doubted he’d have heard her, “He still would’ve told me what he was doing. Unless he was seeing
her.”
Or, Clark thought, unless he was doing something Superman-related...
Then, to him and sounding as if the notion had only just occurred to her and she was taken aback, she said, “Actually, he’s been secretive a lot lately. Just disappearing without telling me where he was going. Or not being where I expected him to be and just giving me stupid excuses for where he was. He’s seeing her and just not telling me.”
No, Clark thought. He was having to go and be Superman. But, put like that, he could see why Lois might think otherwise. She sounded upset, too, and he hated being the cause of it. Unfortunately, though, unless he decided that he was ready to tell her about his alter ego, there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.
But what he
could do was to reassure her about his feelings for her tomorrow, as he’d already resolved.
That wasn’t going to help her right now, though. So he summoned his Darth Vader personality and said, in a near-growl, “You know, it sounds to me like this guy’s not worth it. Not if he treats you like that. You want me to vaporise him for you?”
He expected her to agree. He knew Lois - and her temper - very well, after all. She’d been known to hold grudges for days over the most trivial of offences.
In a small voice, she said, “He is worth it. That’s the problem.”
More touched than he could say, Clark just held her in silence for several moments, continuing to guide her around the dance-floor. Then, when he could trust himself to speak, he said lightly, “You’ve got it bad.”
“Yeah, well, it’s my own fault,” Lois said, still sounding miserable. “He
was interested in me. But I blew him off. So I can hardly blame him for dating
her.”
Well, she was right about that - she
had blown him off. But what she didn’t know was that he hadn’t lost hope that she might change her mind.
“Anyway,” she continued, while he was still struggling for something to say, “you don’t want to hear all that. And I don’t want to talk about it any more. So, what about this woman you’re interested in? She can’t let herself fall for a Dark Lord, is that it?”
“Yeah, that whole evil empire thing tends to put women off, you know.” Clark grinned behind his visor. It was much easier when he could get back in character. “Women, on the whole, are kind of squeamish. They wimp out when it comes to necessary tasks like killing people.”
“And you do that a lot?” Lois seemed to prefer their ‘in character’ conversation too. “Kill people?”
“Only when it’s essential. Or when I’m bored,” he drawled. “You sure about this loser of yours? Because I really don’t mind removing him for you. Or maybe the woman you think he’s seeing. It would be no trouble at all. One blast of my light-sabre and poof! They’re history.”
She giggled again. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t object if you wanted to vaporise her.”
“Consider it done,” he promised. It was true anyway; Mayson was history as far as he was concerned.
*********
Oh, it was so tempting to wish that her mysterious partner really was Darth Vader and that he really could blast Mayson Drake out of existence. But what she’d told him was no more than the truth. She’d lost Clark by her own actions, not because someone else had come along and stolen him away from her.
If she were going to be alone for Christmas again - and that was a foregone conclusion now - she had only herself to blame. If she hadn’t been so stupid as to fail to see what was under her nose, that Clark was the best thing that had ever happened to her, he’d be spending the holiday with her. He wouldn’t just have been with her tonight; he’d have stayed in Metropolis to be with her instead of going to Smallville. Or she might even have gone to Smallville with him.
She hated Christmas.
But she shook herself mentally. Okay, so she was going to go home after this farce of a masquerade and weep through reruns of her favourite sappy soap opera, but that didn’t mean she had to let anyone else, especially not a perfect stranger, see just how miserable she was. Time to pull herself together, definitely.
“You know,” she said, forcing a light note into her voice, “you might not be safe here. I hear that Superman’s coming to accept the cheques on behalf of the charities - he might feel that it’s his duty as a concerned citizen to make sure that someone like you doesn’t harm anyone.”
“You’re right,” Darth rumbled. “Perhaps I’d better make a discreet exit before he arrives, do you think?”
Um. No, she hadn’t wanted that. She was enjoying the guy’s company, as weird as it seemed. If anyone had told her before that evening that she’d spend over an hour in the company of a man dressed as Darth Vader, she’d have given them a blistering stare and a sarcastic retort. And yet the guy was nice. Funny. Sympathetic. Maybe someone she might even want to get to know after tonight. If she couldn’t have Clark...
But, even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t what she wanted. She might like to have Darth as a friend, perhaps. But she loved Clark.
There. She’d said it. She loved him.
No. She couldn’t dwell on that now.
“You don’t need to go. I’ll protect you,” she offered. “Superman’s a friend of mine, so you’ll be safe with me.”
She thought she heard him chuckle. “That’s very kind of you - and quite a sacrifice, too. Protecting a male of the species, I mean.”
“Oh, well... You wouldn’t want to believe everything you read about suffragettes, you know,” she told him.
In the background, someone had stopped the music and was making an announcement of some sort. Lois ignored it; she wasn’t interested in what any of the organisers had to say. She was just enjoying her conversation with Darth too much.
“Actually...” Suddenly, he began to detach himself from her. “I do need to go. Thank you for the dances - it’s been a lot of fun.” And he stepped back, inclined his head and started to back away from her.
“But...” Staring at him, Lois barely knew what to say. What had she done? What had she said to make him leave so abruptly?
Why did it matter? she asked herself immediately. He was just a guy. Someone she didn’t even know. Why should she care whether he left now or in half an hour’s time, at the end of the ball?
But she did care. She didn’t understand why; it was just that something about this guy had... well, made her feel drawn to him. And she’d thought it was mutual; that he’d been enjoying her company as much as she had his.
Obviously not.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just remembered that I need to be somewhere else now, that’s all.”
He was going. She felt his withdrawal from her - both physical and mental - like a slap in the face.
“Will you be back for the unmasking?” she asked in a small voice.
He hesitated, then shook his head. “I... can’t. I’m sorry. I’ve really enjoyed your company, but I have to leave.”
And then he strode away.
To add insult to injury, the band was playing again, just music again and no singing, but the song was recognisable enough. All I want for Christmas is you.
“Yeah,” she muttered, turning away so that she wouldn’t have to see him leave - or have anyone else watch her watching him leave. “Just go. Just like every other guy. Just like Clark. Just leave me.”
Feeling sick inside, she located the ladies’ room and marched towards it. She’d catch her breath, make sure that she wasn’t going to disgrace herself and then, Matty or no Matty, she was going home.
**********
Clark heard Lois’s muttered words as he darted through the crowd on his way to find somewhere to change. And his heart sank. Now what had he done?
He knew what he’d done. Run out on her one time too many. And, given that she thought he was a stranger, from her perspective she’d been deserted by two men. He had left kind of abruptly, he knew, but he’d completely lost track of time and couldn’t make his exit any less sudden.
There was nothing he could do about it now, he realised. The organisers had already given the cue that Superman had promised them he’d listen out for and would respond to. He was supposed to make his dramatic entrance any second now.
“I’m sorry, Lois,” he whispered, slipping through a side door and from there to a fire-escape. Once outside, he was able to spin into his Superman outfit in less than a second and fly up to the large window along one side of the ballroom. He tapped loudly, as pre-arranged, and the window was opened for him to enter.
As he made his speech and accepted the cheques, passing them back to the organisers for safe-keeping, he looked around for Lois. It worried him that she was nowhere in sight. Especially since she hadn’t even stayed around to watch Superman - that meant that she had to be upset.
Five minutes later, he’d done his duty. And he’d also managed to locate Lois. She was slipping out of the ballroom via a side exit. Something was telling him that she didn’t intend to come back. Leaving via the window, he hovered above the hotel and watched her progress. She went to the cloakroom and collected her thick winter coat, dumped her Susan Anthony mask and cap in a trashcan, and then walked out to the lobby. He heard her ask a busboy to find her a taxi, and the busboy’s reply that he would try, but he thought she’d have a long wait.
“It’s two days before Christmas, ma’am. Every cab company in town has more custom than it can handle.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he heard Lois say. “I’ll walk.”
Clark rolled his eyes. It was at least two miles to her apartment from here, and it had to be a couple of degrees below freezing outside. And, as a couple of white flakes floated past his face, he realised that it was snowing.
“Oh, Lois,” he murmured. “Impulsive as ever.”
He shook his head slightly, then headed towards her.
**********
...tbc
