Hey guys,
Sorry about the delay in posting, other commitments tied up my writing time so progress was slow. Hopefully I'll be back to a reasonably regular posting schedule now! For those who need a complete refresher on the story, here's the
TOC .
Thanks go out again to Carol for BRing this part.
*.*.*.
- from Part Five
Clark heard her movements rasp against the sheets, then felt her small frame press against his as she wrapped her arm as far around him as she could. He swallowed as he fought to control himself, then he put his arm around her in a relaxed embrace. "I know it doesn't make sense, we hardly know each other, but for some reason I feel really safe with you."
"I have no intention of hurting you," was the only reply he could think of.
Lois smiled in the darkness at his gentle and comforting words. "That might be it," she yawned, then she quickly fell asleep, listening only to the sound of his breathing and his heart beating steadily in his chest.*.*.*.
Part Six*.*.*.
They were halfway along the long road that wound its way past fields of corn towards the Kents' farm and Clark was beginning to get very annoyed with Lois' constant complaints. No matter how often he told her that they could have driven the whole way in her car, she still moaned about the journey that had been entirely her own idea. Now she was hopping around the edge of the lane, furiously shaking her upside-down sneaker trying to dislodge a stone, which was at least the size of a boulder according to the reporter, that had been sat under her foot for the last few metres. "Come on, come out, damn you. Haven't these stupid bumpkins ever heard of concrete?"
"Gee, Lois, you weren't kidding when you said you weren't a country girl were you?"
"No," she snapped at him, then she squealed in delight as the tiny stone dropped out onto the road with a clatter. She slipped her foot back into the sneaker and tied the laces securely. "The Kents' farm should be at the end of this medieval road, according to that woman in the diner. That's one thing about living in a small town, everyone knows everything about everyone else. I'd hate it, I like the anonymity of the big city. But that makes it even odder that a baby landed here in a spaceship and no-one noticed, or even questioned, your sudden appearance."
Clark sighed and glanced around for the millionth time at the countryside his spaceship had landed in. If the Kents hadn't handed him over to the police but kept him, he would have grown up here like a normal human boy. Almost. Maybe his removal had been a good thing. After all, if Lois was right and there was no secrecy in Smallville then the whole world would have known of his existence by now. At least this way he was keeping his alien heritage hidden; he looked human, so everyone they had met since his escape assumed he was human.
He realised he had been standing still, lost in his own thoughts, and so he hastened after Lois as she continued their journey down the lane, oblivious to his absence as she continued her babble about the horrors of small communities. Would he have grown up to be a farmer like the man who'd wanted to adopt him? He probably would have spent his entire life in Smallville, would have never gone to Metropolis and would have never met Lois. The thought made him sad; he was pretty sure he had fallen in love with her, from what little he understood about love. He wasn't sure he could love like humans did but he knew for sure that if he were a human, he would definitely be able to say that what he felt for her was love. Sometimes on this journey he had pretended that Lois was here as his friend and that was why she was accompanying him on this voyage of discovery. He knew the reality, that she was a journalist and he was her story but sometimes it seemed like she thought more of him than that and he clung to those moments, savouring them. Like last night, when she had poured her heart out to him, told him things that he would have sworn she would only have told a close friend and never a casual acquaintance. Lois didn't know it, but he had kissed her last night. She had fallen asleep in his arms and it was the most magical thing Clark had ever experienced. When he was certain she was asleep, he had gently kissed the top of her head and briefly inhaled the scent of her shampoo that lingered in her hair. It was nothing big, Lois probably wouldn't think much of it if he told her, but for some reason he felt strange, guilty almost, like he had violated her in some way. He had tried to speak to her about it in the morning as they got ready to leave but all she did was warn him not to repeat anything she had told him last night because she'd just deny it.
"Clark!" The sound of her voice disrupted his inner turmoil.
"What?"
"Is that it?"
He looked at the not-so-distant farm buildings she was pointing at. He turned his head and smiled at her. "Lois, as you know I have an excellent photographic memory, far superior to most humans. However even I cannot remember what happened to me as a baby."
"So you don't remember this place or the Kents."
"No," he shook his head, "just Bureau 39."
She shrugged her shoulders and continued walking along the path towards the buildings. "So much for the alien super-memory. It seems to be very human-esque."
"Here we go again. I wish you'd stop doing that."
"What?"
"Making out that I'm turning this alien thing into a bigger deal than it is, that I'm pretty much human just with a few extras and I have trouble accepting that I'm normal or something."
"Well you are."
"I'm not."
"Are."
"Not."
"Are."
"Not."
"Are."
"Excuse me," an amused-sounding voice cut into their argument. "Can I help you two?"
"Yes," Lois shot Clark a dirty look and walked towards the kindly-looking woman who had spoken, "we're looking for Jonathan and Martha Kent."
The woman smiled broadly at Lois. In her arms was a basket of washing, which she shifted onto her hip so that she could offer Lois her hand. "I'm Martha Kent."
"Lois Lane."
Martha immediately withdrew her hand. "Didn't I speak to you on the phone?"
"Yes and I was very interested in what you didn't tell me." As Martha opened her mouth to reply, Lois glanced back at the suddenly shy Clark. "You never believed that Clark was reunited with his birth parents did you?"
Martha glared at her. "Who are you? Who do you work for?"
Lois smiled back. "You know who I am and who I work for. I think you might be more interested in who he is, though. Mrs. Kent, I can see that you don't trust me and probably with better reason than you are aware of. So before I ask you some questions, I think after all this time you and your husband deserve some answers." She looked again at Clark, who was rooted at the spot. <Why doesn't he say something?> "Mrs. Kent, this is Clark."
The woman looked over at Clark with tears in her eyes. "Clark?"
Finally Clark became unfrozen. He moved to stand beside Lois then looked at her, unsure of what to do. Lois folded her arms and took a step back. The meaning was clear, this was Clark's meeting, not hers and she was not going to tell him what to do or say. "Yes. I'm Clark," he held out his hand and Martha grabbed it. "Please don't be upset," he told her stiffly, unsure why she was beginning to cry.
"Oh," Martha waved her arm at him, "I'm not upset, Clark. This is just all so strange." She sighed, then looked at them. "I suppose you'd best come in then. This sounds like it's going to get very complicated. I'll put the kettle on for some tea, then I'll go and grab Jonathan. Do you like scones?"
*.*.*.
Clark had watched the Kents very carefully as they listened, horrified, to Lois' tale of his life. She had seemed rather annoyed at him taking a back-seat in this exchange of information but he had no idea what to say to the people who could have been his parents. From the little he had seen of them so far he would have liked to have been their son, they seemed so nice and kind. After Lois finished speaking Martha let go of Jonathan's hand, which she had been holding throughout for moral support and gazed up at him.
Jonathan looked stoically at Clark, although his penitence shone through his eyes. "I'm sorry. It was my idea to notify someone about finding you."
"Don't be silly," Martha told her husband, unwilling to let him take the blame upon himself, "you might have been the first to say, but we both thought about it."
"When we found you," Jonathan continued his apology as if Martha hadn't spoken, "it was like a miracle. We'd just found out we couldn't have children, you see and there you were, needing someone to take you in and look after you. It was perfect. Martha had chosen your name before we'd even returned home! We kept you for a week before we went to the police but we thought that maybe your real parents were regretting dumping you and wanted you back, although we were dubious as to whether they should be allowed to have you back after leaving you alone in a field."
Clark looked at them puzzled as he processed the Kents' logic. "You found me in a spaceship. Did it not occur to you that I may not have been human?" He ignored Lois' groan at the end of his question.
Martha chuckled fondly at him. "Of course but that didn't matter. You were just a baby, as helpless as any infant and very cute. We couldn't help but think that there was a very slim possibility that the spaceship was just a prop or some cruel prank or something."
"It was only after you had left us that we learnt about the strange men that had been seen around Smallville, your Bureau 39 it must have been. They'd been asking if anyone had seen any debris from a Russian satellite or anything else out of the ordinary."
"We'd been so wrapped up in you that we hadn't really left the farm, so we didn't know. If we had heard about them before, we would never have told anyone where we found you. We saw them around town after you went, I wouldn't have let you go with them if I'd have known but by then it was too late."
Clark gave them a sad smile. "Thank you. I know you did the right thing, really. Trying to give me back to my real parents."
Jonathan and Martha exchanged a conspiring glance. "You were right about one thing, Miss Lane," Jonathan told her after a brief pause, "we didn't tell the cops everything. They took the spaceship and assumed that was that."
Lois gave him an inquisitive look, her interest raised. "But it wasn't?"
Martha shook her head as she stood up. "No. It wasn't much but we kept the blanket we found Clark in."
She left them for a few minutes, then returned with it. It was blue, a proper blue rather than the pale blue one would expect on a baby blanket. Martha held it as if it was the most precious thing she owned before she gave it to Clark, who looked at it in his hands with awe. The other three watched him as he traced over every inch of the blanket, as if it somehow answered all the questions he had ever wondered about himself. He stopped as he touched the emblem embroidered on one of the corners. "What's this?"
"We don't know," Jonathan told him, "but it was on the spaceship as well."
"What is it?" Curiosity got the better of Lois as she leant over to see what it was that had captivated Clark's gaze. It looked like a red 'S' on a yellow shield. "Oh."
Clark gave a short and shallow laugh. "It probably meant a great deal on my home planet."
"Probably," Jonathan agreed.
"Well," Martha exhaled sharply, "we've been talking all afternoon, it's almost dinner time. I assume you two will be staying with us?"
"Oh," said Lois, "we wouldn't want to impose, I mean I wouldn't, I'm not speaking for Clark, in fact I'm sure he would like to get to know you better, but--"
Jonathan laughed at her babbling. "It's no trouble."
"No," Martha agreed, "and I told you it was an assumption. I'll make it an order if that's any better."
Lois smiled sheepishly at the kindly woman. "Thank you."
Martha stood up as she prepared to play hostess. "Now, er, how shall I put this? Do I need to make up two beds, or one?"
Clark's eyebrows raced each other up to the top of his head at super speed. "Huh? I mean, you can't possibly think that Lois and I... I'm not even human!"
"Two beds will be fine," Lois said sharply, annoyed at herself for feeling hurt that Clark had so quickly rushed to assure the Kents that they weren't sleeping together, even knowing that if she had spoken first she would have shown that she had taken offence at the suggestion, "and don't put yourself out. I can make up my own bed."
Martha bit her lip as she realised how badly her assumption had been taken by the pair, who she could see were greatly attracted to each other even if they couldn't. "Sorry. I didn't mean any offence. When I first saw you outside... I just assumed."
Lois stood up, already sorry that she had snapped at the woman when it hadn't been her she was annoyed with. "No, I wasn't offended, really. Well, not much. I guess it was a fair enough thought, I was just snapping at Clark's 'human' comment," which had also been a rather large factor in her anger at Clark's response.
"Oh," Martha signalled for Lois to follow her out of the room, "the men can make a start on dinner. Does Clark do that a lot then?"
"Constantly," Lois' voice drifted down the stairs to Clark's ears and he wondered if she'd spoken slightly louder than necessary in order to make sure he heard her.
Jonathan gave the man who should have been his son an amused glance as Clark looked transfixed at the doorway through which the women had departed. "So, Clark, how are you at cooking?"
Clark blinked as he slowly brought his attention back to Jonathan, realising how rude he must seem to him. "I don't know."
"Let's find out then. Martha's much better at cooking than I am but I've yet to give anyone food poisoning." Clark followed him into the kitchen, with an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach that he recognised as being a result of his mini fight with Lois. He resisted the urge to tell Jonathan that it would be impossible for him to contract food poisoning but only because he knew it would only further irritate Lois and he wanted to get back into her good books, so he decided to keep his mouth shut. Maybe learning to cook would help to keep his mind off Lois. He sighed. Then again, maybe not.
To Be Continued...
