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“Chloe said that you came by to talk to me,” Lana said. “What was it about?”
Clark was flustered by Lana’s direct line of questioning. He hadn’t expected her to know about his visit to the Luthor mansion since he knew there was no way Lex would’ve told her. He’d forgotten that Chloe knew.
“Whatever secret Chloe is helping you to protect, Clark…,” at this point Lana‘s emotions got the best of her, Clark could hear the pain in her voice as she begged him to let her in, “…please…just once…just trust me.”
Seeing Lana humble herself to plead for that which she should have been freely given was killing Clark. He knew…knew…that he could trust her with his secrets, it was her boyfriend that was the danger.
Clark had gone over to the Luthor mansion to come clean, to tell Lana all of the things he had told her before, all of the things she’d always wanted to hear, but he had been intercepted by Lex. Just thinking of Lex being Lana’s boyfriend made Clark’s blood boil, but learning from the smug b*stard himself that she was carrying his child had been too much. Clark hadn’t been able to go through with it. It had appeared to him at the time that Lana had irrevocably made her choice.
But now, she was here, tearing his guts out as she tried one more time…one last time. Clark had the unshakeable feeling this was his last chance to make things right between them. What it came down to was this: Clark knew the only way to get Lana away from Lex was to come clean. He had always maintained that he wouldn’t try to keep his secret if doing so would cost someone else their life.
Well, what do you think’s about to happen to Lana? Clark thought. She’s about to marry a man who is evil incarnate. Her life will definitely be ruined if that happens. If you’re willing to give up your secrets to save some random stranger on the street, how much more should you be willing to give them up for the woman you love?
Put like that, there was no decision to make. Now, all Clark had to do was to screw up the mental strength to force the words past his lips.
“Chloe told me about the run-in with Linda Lake. Apparently Linda listened in on a private conversation between Chloe and me. What Linda was about to send to her editor was a column that would reveal my deepest, darkest secret to the world.”
Lana froze in place. Clark was finally gonna tell her, she knew it. She was afraid to make a sound, she was even afraid to breathe, sure that if she did, she’d ruin everything.
“One thing in that article about you and Lex was wrong, Lana.”
No!! No, no, no! Go back to your secret! Lana pled silently. What she said though was, “What was that? I was there, and Linda reported our conversation word-for-word, so what did she get wrong?”
“The part where you said that when you were with me, you wouldn’t have hesitated at all to say yes to a proposal.”
Lana’s hands rose up and found resting places on her hips, palms pressed inward against the cream-colored fabric of her blouse. She had a dangerous look on her face, a look that was echoed by the tone of her voice. “What do you mean by that? Had you proposed at Christmas that year, you and I would be married by now.”
“Oh, I know you would’ve said yes, it’s just that you would’ve taken most of the day to say it.” Lana looked to be on the verge of a protest, so Clark forged ahead. “My secret is a lot bigger than you think, Lana. It will be hard for you to accept…especially now that you’ve met General Zod.”
“What does that egomaniacal jerk have to do with you and your secrets?”
“How do you think Zod was defeated? It sure wasn’t Lex, he was possessed by Zod at the time. It wasn’t you, you were passed out on the mansion’s library floor. Nope, when it comes to defeating super-powered bad guys, I’m the one who has to show up ready to fight.”
The realization hit Lana like a tidal wave. Clark has always been there to keep the meteor freaks from running amok…it was always him. She started ticking them off one-by-one in her mind and by the time she hit ten, she was amazed at her own willful stupidity.
How could I miss a body of evidence like that? Lana wondered. There’s no way he could consistently defeat freak after freak, without being a freak himself…except, he said straight out that he wasn’t a meteor freak after Van McNulty tried to kill him, and I knew he was telling the truth.
Lana was anything but stupid. All she had to do was put together the fact that Clark has special powers, the fact that he’s not a meteor freak, and the fact that Clark just said her knowledge of General Zod would make it harder for her to accept him. The logical answer followed that set of information like night follows day: Clark is an alien!
Lana involuntarily backed up a step and her hand rose to cover her mouth as more recollections came to mind. Those two aliens that showed up after the second meteor shower had been looking for someone named Kal-El, and she suddenly remembered that Clark had called himself Kal when he spent the summer in Metropolis. Without consciously thinking about it, Lana continued slowly backing away.
And who was it who defeated those two super-powered aliens? Lana wondered. It must have been Clark. He’s the one who happened to find me and brought me to the hospital.
Knowing that Clark was a super-powered alien allowed Lana to piece together the answers to many of the questions she had always had about him. For his part, Clark just stood and watched as the woman he loved, the woman he would always love, pulled away from him. By now, she had backed up to the edge of the steps. If she took one more step back, he’d have to speed over to save her from a nasty fall, so Clark decided to get her attention.
“Lana?”
Lana’s head jerked up and her eyes focused on Clark for the first time since she realized what he was. Clark was relieved to see that there was no fear in her eyes, but what he did see was a desperate uncertainty.
“You’ve got a lot to think about regarding me. Go home, and take some time. You might even talk to Chloe if you want. I’ll tell her you know now…she’s been after me to tell you my secrets ever since she found out. She’ll be thrilled for the both of us and relieved for herself.”
“Yeah, uh, I think I’ll do just that,” Lana said distractedly.
As she turned for the stairs, Clark called out to her one more time.
“Lana, if you come back, we have many more things to talk about, but there’s one thing I have to tell you right now.”
Lana stopped and turned back to face Clark. “Okay, Clark, I’m listening.”
“From the way you reacted, it’s obvious you’ve figured out I’m an alien. By letting you know that, I’ve put my very life in your hands. If Lex, the man you’re living with, should learn that, I’ll be his next 33.1 experiment.” Lana gulped, stunned that Clark knew about Lex’s experiments. “Lex has been investigating me since the day I saved his life. He will stop at nothing to learn the truth.
“In fact,” Clark said quietly, “his need to know all about me has already stopped us from being together once.”
Lana loved Clark, but that didn’t make her not love Lex, and her eyes narrowed at Clark’s insistence that Lex was a bad guy.
“You might want to explain that to me, Clark,” Lana said.
“Okay…you asked for it.”
Clark went ahead and recounted the election day as only he remembered it. Lana listened in wonder as Clark described what sounded to her like a dream come true. When he told her about the proposal on an outcrop high over the floor of his Fortress of Solitude, Lana thought she was going to cry.
“That’s why I know you wouldn’t say yes without hesitation. You were stunned by what you had learned and I sent you on your way, telling you that I’d given you too much information all at once. I didn’t want you to say yes or no until you had had the time to think things through.”
“Later that night, we were supposed to meet at the Talon for Dad’s election rally, but you came out to meet me ahead of time at our house. I was scared out of my mind, because I knew you were coming to give me your answer. To this day I can remember exactly what we said on the walkway at my house.”
Enchanted by his story, Lana asked, “What? Tell me, please.”
Clark’s smile grew as he happily obliged Lana. For this one moment, she was his girl again, and he’d give the world just to please her.
“I asked, ‘Do I look different to you now?’ You stepped in close to me and replied, ‘Clark, you look like the same handsome guy I’ve always known.’”
From the moment he started telling this story, Clark had begun slowly walking toward Lana until he was as close to her now as he had been on that fateful winter day almost one year ago.
“What you said didn’t tell me anything, Lana, so I asked, ‘Handsome, as in I want to spend the rest of my life with you, or, handsome, as in I’m gonna let you down easy?’ By that time, my heart was pounding and breathing took a conscious effort. I lived in terror of your next words.”
“And…?” Lana was almost as nervous as he said he was, and she had been the one in control.
“Your reply was, ‘As in, yes, Clark, I’ll marry you.’”
Lana’s eyes lit up. Clark’s story sounded like a fairy tale, one that put her in a starring role. Even though she knew it didn’t happen this way, she was caught up in the moment and allowed Clark to continue telling his fantasy.
“You pulled the ring I had given you out of your coat pocket. That’s when it hit me: Lana said YES!”
Lana saw the unbridled joy on Clark’s face and she almost believed him. But how could this be true? she wondered. I know what happened that day in Clark’s loft. I came up here, slightly irritated that he was going to try a mystery date when mystery was the last thing on my mind. And then, Chicken Clark backed out on me.
Clark quickly cleared up any confusion she had. He was already to the point of his story that began to sound familiar to her. According to him, she had gone out to see Lex after Mr. Kent won the election. He didn’t know what happened out there, only that she had called him while she was racing away from the mansion with Lex in hot pursuit. Somehow, Lex had known that she knew everything about Clark and he had demanded that she tell him.
When Clark got to the part where he explained the wreck and finding her broken body in the middle of the asphalt, she could feel his despair and then his frantic need to fix things.
“I went to the Fortress of Solitude and begged Jor-El to help me go back and fix things. I knew someone would have to pay for my resurrection, but I couldn’t bear for it to be you. I was willing to do anything, sacrifice anything, to see you safe.”
In that moment, Lana believed.
She believed, and felt an unholy rage pour out of her gut into every corner of her being. She slapped Clark as hard as she could, right across his face.
“Oww!” Lana said.
Her hand felt like she had just punched a brick wall. Got to remember not to hit the unbreakable alien, Lana thought as she gasped in pain. Despite Clark’s lack of physical pain, Lana could see from the wounded expression on his face that her blow had gotten to him on an emotional level.
“How dare you!” Lana yelled. She began poking Clark in the chest with one finger of her uninjured hand to punctuate her statements. “I’m thrilled you wanted to change time itself to save my life, but to then take away what made my life worth living is…is horrible. All you had to do was warn me about Lex, tell me what was about to happen, and I would have stayed by your side.”
Clark saw the dangerous look in Lana’s eyes, and despite his invulnerability, he began a slow retreat. Lana wasn’t about to let him get away from her until she had had her say, so she followed his retreating body, poking him in the chest all the way.
“You arrogant, selfish b*astard! Always thinking that you, and only you, knows what’s best for everyone. Well, I’m here to tell you different!”
Lana had backed Clark so far that he was standing in front of that old, beat up, but oh-so-comfortable red couch of his. Seeing that, she put the palm of her hand in the middle of his chest and pushed. Clark’s legs buckled and he sat down heavily on the couch. To complete her capture, Lana stood directly in front of Clark, and straddled his knees, with her shins pressing lightly against the front of the couch. The position wasn’t comfortable, but she didn’t intend to hold it for long.
“I loved you, Clark, and I still love you. Whatever reason you thought you had for lying to me on election day was insufficient in the face of our love. You should have been willing to brave anything to be with me, as I would have been to be with you.
“You think you sacrificed to save me, but what you really did was turn and run.” All of a sudden, Lana’s voice went from angry and insistent to plaintive, almost distraught. “You abandoned me just when I needed you the most.” Lana’s voice started to break and she was almost in tears. “Why?”
“You’re right, Lana. Though I never thought of it that way, I was scared. Scared that no matter what I did, Lex would come after you, demanding to know my secrets. I thought the only way to save you, to be sure you’d be safe, was to not tell you my secrets, but I couldn’t ask your opinion without telling you my secrets. This is one decision I had to make alone.”
Clark reached up and took Lana’s hands in his, first x-raying the one she’d slapped him with to be sure nothing was broken. Gently, he rubbed his thumbs along the backs of her hands, marveling at the delicacy of their construction.
“I freely admit to having made a huge mistake when I chose to not tell you the second time around, but I was out of my mind with grief, and with the limited information at my disposal, that decision appeared to be the right one at the time. I’m sorry.”
Clark’s apology released something within both of them. As one, they began to cry, and the only place either one of them could find solace was in the arms of the other. Lana slumped against Clark, and he released her hands to lift and turn her so that she could sit sideways across his lap. Once she was in place, they snuggled in tight to each other and held on for dear life. Neither one knew who started first, but soon they were taking turns tentatively kissing away each other’s tears.
“What now?” Clark asked, in a husky voice.
“I don’t know. I do love Lex, but not the way I love you. It’s the difference between a candle flame and a raging inferno.”
Clark drew in a deep breath and said, “Lana? Chloe has a deep file on Lex that you need to see. It'll tell you things about him that will hurt you to read, but read it you must if you choose to be with me.”
“Why?”
“Despite what may feel for him, you can’t stay friends with both of us. If you want to be with me, you must break off your relationship with Lex entirely, no friendship or anything. Lex is my bitterest enemy now.” Allowing himself a humorless chuckle, Clark added, “I bet he would say the same about me.”
“So, it’s one or the other, huh?”
Clark pushed a stray wisp of hair behind Lana’s ear.
“Yeah, it is. There’s no way to straddle the fence on this one.”
“Okay, Clark,” Lana sighed, “I’ll see Chloe’s evidence.”
“Trust me, Lana, it won’t take much for you to see Lex in a whole new light.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, Clark. Lex has always been good to me, I will hate having to think ill of him.”
Clark rested one hand in Lana’s lap while his other hand drew lazy circles in the small of her back. “I’m sorry, Lana, but what you will hate is the fact that he pulled the wool over your eyes for so long and managed to keep us apart.”
“Just as long as we’re together now.”
“Now and always.”
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