Author's Note: My first L&C fanfic! I've only recently discovered the wonderful world of 'Lois & Clark' and now I'm addicted! I must acknowledge my admiration for all the wonderful writers whose works I've been enjoying for the past months, especially (but not limited to) Wendy Richards, Meredith Knight, Nan Smith, Pam Jernigan, and Kaethel.
This fic takes off from the very end of S2's 'Lucky Leon' and borrows a few lines of dialogue from it- with one very significant change from the episode- and then continues on to deal with some of Resurrection's B-plot (specifically Dan Scardino) in light of the change.
Her Choice
Part 1: Truth and Lies
Clark clasped Mayson in his arms, helplessly watching as her life ebbed out of her.
He’d been too late. He’d been too late. The words repeated over and over in his head. He’d been too late. If only he had come a little earlier, if only his brain had registered the ticking sound he heard for the bomb it was just a few seconds sooner… But he hadn’t. His mind had been sluggish, dazed, drifting on a sea of bliss, only thinking of Lois, of the feeling of her lips on his, and the one word of, finally, echoing in his mind. Finally… he was kissing Lois, Lois was kissing him, she had admitted, tacitly, just how much she cared about him…
Mayson gasped for breath softly, her hand coming up to rest on his chest and then her fingers slipped in the rip on his shirt, torn from the force of the blast, and fingered the Superman suit. He inwardly flinched at the look in her eyes when she looked up at him, the shock, the hurt, the betrayal. “Clark, so that’s what you’ve been hiding…”
Oh God… She knew; she’d found out… And now she was hurt, dying, because he hadn’t been quick enough…
Her head fell back again and he tightened his grip on her. “Mayson!” His thoughts whirled around crazily with all that he wanted to say, to tell her. That he was sorry, that he did like her, that he hadn’t meant to hurt her…
Mayson gave another small gasp and forced her eyes open again, pulling herself in with the last of her ebbing energy.
He felt the wisp of her breath on his skin and heard her whisper, so softly he almost needed to use his super-hearing to catch it, “Resurrection.”
And then, she was gone.
Her head fell back, her arms going limp, as he stared, his eyes pricking with tears and his chest twisting painfully with guilt and sorrow.
Mayson…
He heard as well as sensed Lois come up behind him and heard her gasp of horror. “Oh my God, no…”
Gently, he lowered Mayson’s still body to the ground and felt Lois kneel beside him, her hand on his shoulder with a gentle pressure, as if to remind him that he wasn’t alone.
“I- I couldn’t save her,” he mumbled. “I was too late.”
Lois flinched at the self-reproachful tone of Clark’s words, realizing with a shock that Clark blamed himself, although why he would she couldn’t understand. Her head was spinning, her thoughts a confused mass after the whirlwind of emotions she’d felt in the space of the last few minutes, from the quiet euphoria of Clark’s kiss, to the brief moment of doubt before she’d quelled it firmly and kissed him again, to the haze of desire which had ignited inside her the moment his lips touched hers, to the disorientation when his
lips had left hers and she’d opened her eyes to find him running away from her, to the shocked confusion and dismay of seeing the explosion and Clark still running towards the burning car… She had no clear memory of running over to where Clark was kneeling on the ground holding Mayson in his arms.
And now, Mayson was dead.
Lois felt a wave of sympathy and remorse and sorrow. She hadn’t particularly liked Mayson; something about the blonde woman had just annoyed her and it didn’t help that Mayson had made her more-than-friendly interest in Clark obvious. But she had never wanted Mayson to be injured, let alone killed…
She wanted to say something, to comfort Clark, to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She had never been comfortable with the emotions she termed the “touchy-feely stuff”, had taken to scoffing at them in order to disguise her discomfort with them. It was rarely, usually when she had one of her not-infrequent moments of fearing for her life, when she felt her defenses weaken but she always rebuilt them. She had to; it was her best defense mechanism to keep from being hurt the way some people—like Claude—had hurt her. And she never knew what to say when something tragic happened, always ended up merely feeling inadequate at best or cold-hearted at worst.
But this was Clark and she couldn’t not try to comfort him; she cared about him too much… He was- he was… the most important person in her life, she thought.
She shifted closer to him, her hand moving down from where it rested on his back to his arm in something like a caress. “Clark…” she began softly, her voice gentle, as she studied him…
And then she saw something that made her stiffen in shock and forget all about her need to comfort him.
A flash of red and blue under the tattered front of his shirt.
Her hand moved without conscious direction, to push aside the torn pieces of his shirt to reveal… the unmistakable and very familiar stylized “S” of Superman’s suit.
Clark was wearing Superman’s suit under his clothing.
It was a sign of just how confused her thoughts were at that time that she didn’t immediately register the significance of the discovery, but then she heard his slight intake of breath and saw him look up at her.
And the expression in his face as he met her eyes made the truth come crashing down on her.
Clark was Superman.
She gaped at him, too shocked to think of any words to say or express her confused emotions. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling.
“Clark,” she gasped out. “I…”
“Lois,” he began but then stopped, his head lifting. He looked back at her with a resigned expression. “The police are coming and will be here in a minute. We’ll talk later, I promise.”
“How do you-” she began and then stopped, remembering. Of course. He was Superman; he could hear them.
He was Superman!
All this time and he hadn’t told her…
“Count on it,” she said grimly and saw a flicker of some emotion she couldn’t identify in his eyes.
The police cars raced around the corner, sirens blaring, as Clark stood up, pulling his jacket closed over his torn shirt.
An officer both Lois and Clark recognized as being Officer Templeton ran out of the car.
“What happened here?” He glanced down at the body of Mayson and then the burnt car.
“Oh God, it’s Mayson Drake. Kent, what happened?”
“There was a bomb,” Clark began. “I think it was activated when she unlocked her car or something, judging from the timing of it. I- I was too late to stop it.”
Officer Templeton gave Clark a look. “How could you have stopped it?”
“I- er- Lois and I were supposed to meet with Mayson and we were delayed. I thought if we had gotten here earlier, we might- um- have been able to stop her from getting into her car.”
Lois studied Clark for a moment, suddenly recognizing the same expression he always got when concocting one of his strange and usually ridiculous excuses for running off.
Well, now, she knew where he ran off to.
The thought was a forceful reminder of all the hundreds of lies he had told her since the day they’d met and she stiffened as a wave of anger went through her. Oh he had a lot of explaining to do!
“Okay, I’ll need to talk to both of you later for statements but I think you had better leave so we can begin our investigation.”
“We’ll start investigating too,” Lois inserted before Clark could and caught his grateful glance.
Officer Templeton looked irritated. “Just don’t get in our way, then, Lane.”
“Right.”
“Come on, let’s go, Lois,” Clark said, putting his hand on Lois’s back.
She shook off his hand and stalked forward alone. He had lied to her! He’d been lying to her for months!
Clark winced at her rejection of his touch and quickened his pace to catch up with her.
“Lois, I’m sorry for not telling you,” he began quietly. “I- I’ve wanted to for a long time
and I’ve been planning to tell you but it just got complicated…”
Lois threw him a glare. “You expect me to believe you when you say you’ve been meaning to tell me? You’ve had a year and half, Clark! I thought we were friends; I thought you trusted me! How could you—why didn’t you tell me?”
Clark sighed. “Lois, you have to understand. I’ve never told anyone about what I can do; I’ve gotten used to hiding and, yes, lying when I needed to. My father always said that if anyone found out, they’d lock me up in a lab and dissect me.”
“Oh fine, so you didn’t have to tell the world but why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t think I would--”
“No, it’s—I wanted you to learn to like me as me and not as Superman. I didn’t want you to--”
Lois cut him off. “Don’t be ridiculous! You are Superman!” she hissed in a low voice,
mindful that they were on a public street.
Clark sighed again, softly, in frustration. “Lois, no, you don’t understand,” he began but she interrupted him again.
“Don’t patronize me, Clark! What I understand is that the man I thought I knew isn’t who I thought he was—in either of your incarnations! How can I ever trust you when I know you’ve been lying to me since the day we met?”
“Lois, I haven’t lied to you; I just omitted to mention a few facts.”
“A lie by any other name,” Lois snapped.
She sucked in her breath sharply, stopping in her tracks to stare at him, as another thought surfaced. Pain lanced through her heart, mixed with anger—and of its own volition, her hand whipped up and cracked across his face.
She winced, holding her aching hand with her other one, and glared at him. “You- you let me think you were dead! How could you… Do you have any idea how I felt, what I went through those two days when I thought you were dead and it was all my fault and…” her voice cracked in remembered pain as she relived those most painful days of her life—and it had been for nothing! Because he hadn’t been dead; he’d never been
dead! He hadn’t even been hurt at all!
He flinched at the hurt in her tone. “Lois, I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am and my only excuse is that I panicked. That was the last thing I expected to have happen, that Clark Kent would be shot in front of so many witnesses, and I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to go on without telling everyone that I’m Superman. But I promise you that the moment I found a way, in reading Professor Hamilton’s book, you were the first person I thought of, the first person I wanted to
see…”
“You should have told me the truth! You say you’ve wanted to tell me but you’ve had so many chances, so many times when you could have told me, and you didn’t. You always lied.”
He opened his mouth but suddenly, Lois didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear any more excuses from this man who suddenly seemed like a stranger to her. She’d thought she could trust Clark, that he was the one man she could trust—and now to find out just when she’d begun to think she could trust him with her heart that he wasn’t at all who she’d thought he was. And just who was he—farmboy from Kansas, Kryptonian
super-hero? Both? Neither? Everything she’d thought she’d known had been turned on its head and she just couldn’t deal with it. Not then.
“Don’t!” she said sharply, holding up one hand in an unmistakable gesture. “I don’t want to listen to this anymore. I- I feel like I don’t know who you are anymore and I don’t know how I can ever trust you again.” She hesitated and then added in a lower voice, “I need to get away from you. I can’t—I think we should take a break from, well,
whatever-this-is between us.”
Clark sucked in a sharp breath, his face going white. “Lois, please, don’t do this. I love you and I’m so sorry you had to find out this way but you have to believe that I never meant to hurt you in any way.” He hesitated and then repeated, very quietly and with
such obvious sincerity that Lois couldn’t help but be reminded of that day in Centennial Park so many months ago when he’d first declared his love, “I love you, Lois.”
“Clark, don’t. I- I just don’t know right now—about us, if I can do this.” Lois inwardly
flinched at the naked hurt on Clark’s expression and in his eyes, wondering how she could be so angry at him and yet still hate to see him hurt.
“I’m not saying forever,” Lois relented almost in spite of herself. “I just mean, for now. And we’ll still have to work together to investigate Mayson’s murder.”
“You just want to be work partners and nothing else,” Clark said tonelessly and somehow the very tonelessness of his voice managed to convey even more pain than a cry would have.
“Yes,” she sighed and then forcibly stopped herself from reaching out to him at the bleak
look in his eyes. “At least for now. I- I need to readjust all of what I thought I knew about you—and about Superman. I just need some time…”
~*~
Just work partners.
The words sounded like a death knell to all his dearest hopes and dreams.
Clark stared helplessly at Lois, taking in the vulnerability mixed in with the anger and the hurt and the betrayal he could see in her dark eyes. He should have told her, he knew.
He should have told her the moment he’d decided to ask her out, should have told her months ago even. He should have told her if it hadn’t been for his own stupid pride and his desperate need to know that Lois cared for him as Clark and not as Superman—and it was only now he realized how unfair to her he was being, wanting her to love only the side of him he chose when the truth was that he was both Clark and Superman and if they
were going to have a real relationship, she would have to accept and love both of them.
Why hadn’t he told her?
Clark wanted to flagellate himself for his own stupidity.
And now he might have lost Lois forever because of his lack of trust and his stubbornness. Worse, he knew he had hurt her by not telling her, by having her find out like this.
It was worse now than it might have been before, too, worse because now he didn’t know if he could just treat Lois like only a work partner and not even his best friend. Worse because now he knew a little of what it would be like to go out with Lois, knew what it felt like to kiss her, as himself, with no pretenses this time… Worse because he knew that Lois had begun to care about him as Clark; she had run back into a nuclear blast for him! And now…
He might have lost her, perhaps forever…
Clark flinched at the pain he felt; it felt as if a hard hand had reached into his chest and
was squeezing his heart.
He grasped at the strands of hope her words about just needing some time offered him—but the hope felt feeble, almost forced.
Some time—but some time could easily stretch into longer and longer, until it just became impossible to go back to the way they’d been.
And what if- what if Lois decided she really couldn’t deal with having to share him with the rest of the world? What if she decided she didn’t want to date someone who’d been lying to her for almost two years now? What if…
She was angry, deservedly angry, and hurt too.
What if she decided she never wanted to speak to him again?
He tried to imagine the devastation he would feel if he lost Lois and flinched involuntarily. He would be lost… He needed her, needed her faith in him, needed her cleverness and her energy and her courage, needed her way of treating Superman like a human being, unlike almost everyone else who was too much in awe of him to treat him
normally…
It was ironic, bitterly so, he reflected suddenly, that his earlier guilt and grief over Mayson’s death had been entirely subsumed and pushed aside in this much greater, all-consuming fear that he might have lost Lois, in his much deeper hurt…
He couldn’t lose Lois.
And yet—he knew he couldn’t force her to forgive him or to have a relationship with him. He couldn’t do anything; he could only wait for her decision as to what to do about their relationship now that she knew the truth; he could only wait for her forgiveness, if she ever could forgive him…
He could only wait...
To be continued...
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