Sorry this took too long. I'm not quite done with it yet. However, I should be finished by the end of this weekend, as long as I don't have another flareup of illness.
I hope you like this, DS.
Love is in the Err
By Mr_D8a
The Outcome Part 1
Three months was a long time to wait and Lois had no intention of waiting that long. Franklin Stern believed that the repair and remodel of the building would be done in less than three months.
Perry opted to take an extended vacation for at least a month. Cat decided to quit and went to the French cultural paper Télérama. Lois decided to be a correspondent in London during the interim. Clark went to Chicago to work for the Chicago Tribune, a sister paper to the Daily Planet. Jimmy had gone to Chicago with Clark, but had been in a serious automobile accident about two weeks in and was in the hospital undergoing extensive reconstructive surgery. Perry and Alice decided to change their vacation plans to take in the sights of Chicago and be closer to Jimmy.
The longer that Lois had stayed away from Clark the more frustrated she had become. She replayed in her mind over and over the conversation that she had had with Clark outside the demolished Daily Planet. And she came to the same conclusion, now that some time had passed.
Clark had lied to her.
She didn’t know why he had lied to her, but he had. And there was no way that she was going to let him get away with that.
If for no other reason, she was going to have the last word, even if it killed her.
~*~
The flight from London to Chicago took forever, but Lois didn’t sleep the entire time. She plotted and planned her entire attack.
She got her rental car and headed toward to the local office of the Daily Planet. Unfortunately, Clark wasn’t there. He was visiting Jimmy in the hospital.
She pulled up and found her way to Jimmy’s room. Clark was in there, sitting next to Jimmy, reading aloud a book, of all things. She couldn’t see quite what it was. It looked old, though.
The poor boy looked like a mummy. He was wrapped from head to toe. It had been a pretty bad accident. Most of his bones were broken and nary an inch of skin wasn’t damaged in some way. They got a plastic surgeon from Germany to come over to do the reconstruction work. He was supposed to be some wunderkind with the flesh. Only a small percentage of his patients ever complained about their appearance afterwards. And even then, he explained it away that it was their inner look that he had seen in them and he had brought it out for the world to see.
She quietly opened the door and Clark looked up, surprised to see her there. Clark quietly placed a small piece of paper to mark his place. He closed the book and placed it face down on the night stand.
When he spoke, it was in soft tone. “Jimmy drifted off a little while ago. I’ve been continuing to read, just in case, but his breathing has been steady for some time. Usually, I ask him what he last remembers and we just back up to that page.”
Trying to be conversational, but chopping at the bit to get it all over with, Lois simply said, “What book are you reading him?”
“‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’ by Arthur Conan Doyle--can you imagine that he has never read this one before? He hasn’t even seen the Illustrated Classic Comic of it. What is the school system coming to if this isn’t required reading?”
“Yeah, really. I read that in my junior year of college. Listen, can we go some place to talk?” She tried to look hopefully pleading. It was to mask her desire to rip out his heart and serve it on a platter to him. And it wasn’t that much of a desire anymore. Anyone that can read ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’ by Arthur Conan Doyle couldn’t be that much of a cad.
Clark smiled brightly. “I’d rather wait until Perry and Alice come back. They should be here shortly to spell me. We’ve been taking turns with some fill-in from just about every cute nurse and candy striper the hospital has. Maybe because he is mummified, Jimmy is getting lucky for once where the girls are concerned. If we are quiet, we can talk here. The meds he has keep him pretty pain free, but a little loopy. He usually is out for a while when he sleeps. What did you want to talk about?” He looked genuinely at a loss for her reason for being there--which was right where she wanted him.
“Here will be fine. I can be very quiet.” The quiet ones were always the most deadly.
Clark and Lois walked over the spare chairs in the back of the room. The room itself wasn’t all that quiet. The various machines beeped, chirped, whirred and hissed with quite a bit of regularity. It was almost musical, in an odd sort of way.
Finally settled, Lois started immediately. “Do you remember what you said when you insisted on going first?” She could see from the loss of the smile that he had. She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Did you really feel you had to lie to me?”
Clark was totally unprepared for that. How did she know that he lied?
As though reading his mind she stated, “How did I know that you lied? It’s elementary, my dear hayseed.”
‘Well, this is a good start, if she’s going to call me names.’
“You have been smitten with me from the beginning. You never let me get the upper hand. You and only you have ever put me in my place. You put me in a cab to take me home after I didn’t get Superman at that auction.”
Clark finally found his voice. “Any self respecting man would have done the same thing.” It was an argument, not a very good one, but still an argument.
“Yeah, if you are Perry’s age!” She hissed at him. She cased a worried glance at Jimmy’s bed, but the young man hadn’t even stirred. “Now, I have to admit that the way you treated me during the whole Toasters affair was more of what I would have expected from you the entire time, but I think that was the exception to the rule for you.”
Clark took a breath, but Lois boldly went forward. “You knew that I would be what Inez needed to help her sister and friends. I showed you I could tush-push! I never would have done that if I thought you didn’t have some redeeming values. You tried nothing with me while I was under Miranda’s pheromone. That shows that you respect me too much to destroy our friendship. You stood up to Superman’s clone for me. How you did that, anyway?”
“An ancient martial art I learned in my travels. Strength has its limits against such things.” Clark looked like he hoped she believed him. She did, for now.
“Oh, you’ll have to teach it to me sometime.” She got her focus back in place. “You did everything you could to convince me that Luthor wasn’t on the level and I just wouldn’t believe you. You even declared your love to me. Do you know what that did to me? Do you know how deeply you affected me with that declaration? It was the final straw. It was what made me say ‘I don’t’, to Lex at the altar in front of everyone. Thoughts of you and how you have cared for me since we have known each other flooded my mind as I walked down the aisle to Lex. I threw it all away because I had and have fallen for you.
“I. Love. You. Clark Kent. I love you. I don’t care if you like me as a sister, and I don’t believe that for a moment. I believed you when you said I loved you, it just took me a while for it to really sink in.
“So, why did you lie to me?” She was done. It was up to Clark now.
Clark’s next words died in his mouth. He looked in amazement at the woman of his desires. The woman that tortured his mental landscape all day long and flitted around his dreamscape at night. He totally didn’t hear her ask the question.
Like all men who have been confronted with that which they have wanted for so long he uttered the first, most original thing that came to him, “What?”
Lois was confused at first. He was reacting the way she had hoped, but expecting and getting was two different things. She was fearful that she had broken something precious, yet at the same time she believe that she was getting through. “Which ‘what’ are you talking about, Clark? The ‘I love you’ part or the ‘why you lied to me’ part?
That time he heard all that she said. He looked like someone that got caught in a lie, which was exactly what she did. Caught him red handed.
He sighed. He knew he couldn’t tell her the real reason why he lied. She might believe him if he said he was a lunkhead. If he thought he was doing the right thing, maybe.
But she would never believe that he had done it to fulfill the writing in an old diary…
