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  • #61
    aaaah, the power of love.... glad that they finally admit they still love each other. sweet update card. ppms!

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    • #62
      bump... this needs and update...

      can we hope for one soon Card? please?

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      • #63
        AWWWWWE! Such as sweet update! PPMS!

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        • #64
          when's the next update card?

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          • #65
            What Now?


            After discovering they still love each other, Clark and Lana stood there, unsure of what came next for them. Their eyes were still locked, but no words were spoken.

            Clark finally managed to say, “There are other things I need to tell you.”

            “More?” Lana said, with a lopsided smile. “I’d think you’ve just about exhausted your store of Ripley’s Believe It or Not information.”

            “Not even close.”

            Lana was curious about what else he might have to tell her, but she had different priorities.

            “Clark? I’m sure there are a million things you want to tell me, but right now there is only one thing I need to hear.” She didn’t want to mention this, but if he couldn’t handle it, she needed to know now. “I’m pregnant, with Lex’s baby. Are you going to be able to help me raise this baby? Can you love it with all of your heart? If my being pregnant is still going to make a difference to you, then I don’t know that we have a future together.”

            Clark chose his next words very carefully. “I admit to having been crushed the day I learned you were pregnant. I had come rushing out to the mansion to talk to you, determined to make things right between us. Instead of talking to you, Lex came out and told me about the baby. I know you, Lana. I know how cautious you’ve always been when it came to having sex, so I figured if you had taken that step with Lex, he must mean more to you than I thought…or maybe it was that I worried I meant less to you than I thought.

            “I never had a real problem with the baby. It was just a target of opportunity, something to vent my anger and hurt on.” Clark reached out tentatively and took Lana’s hands. “But now that we’ve cleared up the things between us, I can say with perfect conviction that any child of yours, is a child of mine.” Clark’s eyes were filled with love as he said, “I would be honored to help you raise our child.”

            Lana allowed Clark to use her hands to draw her into his chest. She felt like a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders by his simple pronouncement. Our child, she thought. He said it so warmly, so lovingly…I couldn’t ask for anything more.

            Jor-El chose that moment to rejoin the ‘party.’

            “You have told her enough, Kal-El. You have done well.” Unconsciously expecting to see a body to go with the voice, Lana took a quick look around, while Clark kept his nose buried in her strawberry-scented hair. “I now have two pieces of information for Miss Lang, if she wants them.”

            Not having a face to focus on, Lana decided to look at the crystal console. “What information?”

            “There are two pieces of information. First, I know something about your pregnancy. It’s something you will learn in time on your own, but I think you would prefer to know it now. Second, if you wish, I will now do what my son wanted me to do earlier. I am offering to restore your memories of the lost day. Be warned, if you choose to remember, I must restore all of the memories. That will include the physical pain of your death.”

            Lana looked up at Clark as if looking for guidance.

            “It’s your choice, Lana. I can’t help you here…but whatever you decide, know that I’ll support you.”

            The question about whether or not she wanted to learn something about her baby was really no question at all. Of course she wanted to know, even if she had no idea how this disembodied voice could know anything at all about her pregnancy.

            “Please,” Lana asked, “if you know anything at all about my pregnancy, let me know.”

            “Do you want the information to be private? Or will you allow Kal-El to hear also?”

            Lana looked lovingly up at Clark and smiled as she said, “This baby is just as much his as it is mine…let him hear it, too.”

            “As you desire,” Jor-El said. There was a sadness in his voice that confused both Lana and Clark. “What I know about your pregnancy…is that there is no pregnancy.”

            “Huh?” Lana and Clark said in unison.

            “You are not now, nor have you ever been, pregnant.”

            “No,” Lana said, “That can’t be true. I’ve been to the doctor many times. He says everything is normal.”

            “If this is your idea of a joke, Jor-El,” Clark said angrily, “I don’t appreciate it one bit.”

            “She is not pregnant. She thinks she is because she has been dosed with a synthetic hormone that simulates a pregnancy.” Then, almost to himself, Jor-El added, “A rather inelegant approach, but I suppose it’s the best these primitives can manage.”

            Neither Clark or Lana heard Jor-El’s last sentence because Lana was in the process of falling apart and Clark was wholly focused on supporting her. The fact that she was going to be a mother had been the best part of the whole mess her life had become. And then the thought that she would be able to raise this child with the man she loved had been, for the brief moment it had lasted, more happiness than she thought she could bear. As usual, whenever Lana came close to being truly happy, the happiness was ruthlessly yanked away from her.

            Lana’s slight body was wracked with sobs. Inside her mind, she mourned the child that never was and then her thoughts shifted from sorrow to anger and from anger to rage. Damn you, she thought, damn you, Lex Luthor. What did I ever do to deserve this from you? I tried so hard to love you, and yet, you responded with this!

            Clark had enfolded Lana in his arms even before she had accepted what Jor-El had to say and had begun to cry. The harder she cried, the closer Clark held her. The only thing he said was to whisper over and over, “I love you. I love you. I love you. I…love…you!” He wasn’t even sure if Lana was hearing him at that moment, but he whispered it every way possible as he did everything he could to support her in her hour of need.

            It took a long while for Lana to adjust to the ‘loss’ of a child that had never been, but that had nonetheless become very real to her. After mostly regaining control of her emotions, her first coherent words were, “Did you know I had names picked out for our baby?” Clark shook his head hesitantly as he handed her a handkerchief for her snotty nose. She gave a mighty blow and two smaller ones and then said, “Well, I did. There were other names that would have been used had I married that bald bastard,” Lana spat. “But even when I was with him, I would daydream about what names I could use if I was still with you.”

            “What names did you choose for our baby?” Clark asked.

            “Either Lewis or Jonathan for a boy, and definitely Laura for a girl.”

            “Ah, to honor our dead parents.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, I bet you don’t know that my birth mother’s name was Lara, too. I don’t know if it’s spelled the same way, after all, she was Kryptonian, but I’ll bet she would’ve been pleased with the name Laura just as much as I would’ve been.”

            Clark finally took a seat on one of the higher outcrops of crystal and ice, effortlessly picking Lana up and swinging her around so she sat sideways across his lap. A very convenient height for kissing, Clark thought. I’ll have to remember that.

            “So,” Clark said, “do you think you want to ‘remember’ the lost day right now? Or have you suffered enough?”

            “I don’t know,” Lana said truthfully. “I’m afraid of knowing the pain of the wreck, even if it only will be a memory, but I desperately want to remember the rest of that day. I need a happy memory right now.”

            “Take all the time you need, Lana,” Clark said. “I’m here for you. This is all about what you need.”

            If she was by herself, Lana would have wanted to wait. As strong as she had always thought she was, she didn’t know if she could stand up to this on her own. But with Clark by her side, she knew she’d be able to lean on him for the extra endurance she’d need.

            “Let’s have it,” she said quietly.

            “Are you sure?” Clark wasn’t sure she was emotionally ready, but he was done trying to make her decisions for her. All he wanted now was for her to know her own mind on this subject before allowing Jor-El to proceed.

            “Not one-hundred percent,” Lana admitted, “but I’ll want to know eventually, and I might as well do it while I’m already a wreck.”

            Once again, they heard Jor-El say, “As you desire.”

            Clark watched on helplessly as Lana went into a trance and her face went from confused to worried to elated, back to confused and then to amazed. That was quickly followed by more confusion and then a look of excitement. The rest of her expressions revealed emotions he couldn’t even guess at until the end, when her face was fixed in a rictus of pain. The whole transfer of memories took only a half a minute, but to Clark’s anxious mind, it had taken half a lifetime.

            When Lana came to, she had all of her lost memories back, the last of which was the mercifully brief wreck. The memories were fading, already acquiring the foggy texture that comes with time, but Lana was howling in agony.

            Clark was of two minds when he heard Lana’s pain. He reflexively wrapped her tighter, wanting to ease her suffering but feeling helpless despite all of his powers. On the other hand, he rejoiced to hear her suffering the after-effects of her wreck, because it meant she was alive.

            The mental pain of losing her baby followed closely by the physical pain of dying, Clark thought. They say that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. If that’s true, Lana’s emotions can bench press a Buick by now.

            “What a day I had,” Lana said, in what might’ve been the understatement of her life. “You told me everything!” Lana pulled back from Clark just enough to crane her neck upward as she tried to pick out the distant ledge where Clark had proposed. “And then, that proposal!”

            Wanting to satisfy a long-held curiosity, Clark asked, “How’d you decide to say yes? When I left you after proposing that day, you seemed to have some real doubts.”

            “I went to the Talon because I had promised to help Lois decorate for the election night rally. She was up in the apartment when I got there, and she helped me sift through the unimportant stuff and realize that you were what mattered.” A radiance settled onto Lana’s face. “Just like I said to you at your house, I realized you were the same handsome guy I’d always known…that’s when I knew.

            “You looked so scared when I strolled up the walk to your house, Clark.”

            “I was scared,” Clark replied. “In fact, I was petrified.”

            “Poor baby,” Lana said, as she stretched up to kiss Clark. “The things you’ve suffered for me.”

            After receiving the kiss, Clark said hopefully, “Oh, I’ve suffered a lot more than that.”

            “You wouldn’t happen to need more kisses to make you feel better, would you?”

            “Oh yes! Lots and lots.”

            Lana was happy to oblige, and she and Clark spent the next several minutes involved in some serious kissing.

            Finally coming up for air, Lana asked, “What are we going to do now?”

            Clark understood what she meant. “I don’t know. We need to get you away from Lex. I’m hoping we can find a way to use your false pregnancy as leverage to keep him away from you.”

            “If we could just come up with some evidence, then we ought to be okay.”

            Jor-El rejoined the conversation one last time. “When you return home, a simple blood test will confirm what I have told you. Use that information as leverage on the medical professional who injected you, his testimony should be enough.”

            Grateful for his father’s assistance, Clark added, “We’d better get the doc’s testimony on tape though, in case Lex tries to kill him to save his own skin.”

            “Yeah,” Lana agreed, “if we send Lex a tape, he’ll know that killing the doc won’t help him at all.”

            “Now,” Clark said, “what do we do about Lex?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “When you break up with him, how long do we wait before we’re publicly a couple again?”

            “You think we should wait to allow Lex to keep some dignity?” Clark knew the very idea made Lana mad because he could almost see tendrils of smoke curling out of her ears. “After the things he’s done, he deserves no such courtesy. Once I tell him I’m leaving him and give him a copy of our evidence, I intend to drive straight over to your farm where you will be in charge of making me feel better after having to deal with him.”

            “I think I can handle that,” Clark said, “as long as you’re sure.”

            Leaning in for a last kiss, Lana said, “I’m sure.”



            The End
            Last edited by Cardinal; 03-19-2007, 06:04 PM.

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            • #66


              Yeah it took me a while... but here is my answer...

              That was good!!!!!!!

              great ending... but once again... there could be more to explain all that is left open

              Sooo... one more down... 2 to go... and from what you said...

              next one to end will be BBR... cause it feels like the end is coming and Somebody to Love still feels like it hasn't truly started yet...

              Soo... Great job on this...

              PPMS on your other ones

              Last edited by Nemu; 03-19-2007, 05:07 PM.

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              • #67
                Yay! Clana reunited for good! And their plan will save the doctor's life besides. It must be weird for Lana to have regained her memories and now have memories of both time lines - but I guess Clark's memories are that way too. I loved how Lana's kisses make Clark feel better. Sweet!

                Thanks for this story, Card. Is it possible you are now down to only 2 fics again? Looking fwd to more BR & StL soon. (Don't you dare start another new one yet. We need more on those two before you get any more wonderful ideas.)
                Last edited by SVsleuth; 03-19-2007, 08:56 AM.

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                • #68
                  wonderful job wrapping it up Card! Everything got sorted out perfectly! Would love to see the look on Lex's face, but I think I can get a pretty good picture! Really like how you had Lana get all her memories back and glad she's not having Lex's child! Great Job!

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                  • #69
                    AWE! Great ending Card! CLANA FOREVER!

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                    • #70
                      loved the ending card! lana's right, they should come out in public and announce that they're a couple again...the h*ll with lex's dignity!

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                      • #71
                        Wonderful story!

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