A "February - Planet" Challenge – Secrets
Disclaimer: Definitely not mine.
Category: Clark/Lois
Raiting: PG
Summary: Sometimes, it's worth to be falling.
Author's Note: Thanks to Fangirl for her invaluable time in betaing this for me! You always make me want to write better

The Meaning of Falling

Sometimes he catches her in midair.

Airplanes, buildings, cliffs, Niagara Falls, the Eiffel Tower, she's certainly found very creative ways to find herself falling, he would be the first to admit that. By this point, she can put a professional sky diver to shame, and he would know; he's rescued more than a couple himself.

Catching her always carries a very complex myriad of feelings, beginning with panic that he won't be on time, passing through the desperation and rage that she's done it again, and ending with the ever present supply of patience and love and rejoice that he's got her in his arms.

He would deny this out loud, but he loves the moment when he's got her secure in his arms, when they spiral upward in a dance that is truly only meant for them, the entire world fading away once more.

He loves her.

He's already lost count of how many times he's caught her, not because of a faulty memory –far from it- but because he doesn't think his heart and soul could take the knowledge of how many times she's ended up in a freefall time and time again.

So he keeps the number a secret from himself. She knows he will catch her, and he knows she'll keep falling, so this is a long lost argument on his part. Besides, it wouldn't be Lois if she didn't fall from the sky every once in a while.

.

Sometimes she sees him falter.

It doesn't take a big catastrophe, or even loss of lives, just a word here or a look there that will make his heart think that he's not doing enough. That he's been told countless times that he's the light to be followed does not help matters with the whole darn thing.

Seeing his spirit fall, however briefly, always leaves her feeling incomplete. In the heartbeat that takes her to notice that sad look on his eyes, she damns the whole world for thinking his soul can take it all in a stride.

She's never sure how to react. She wants to tell him that he's already doing everything that he possibly can. That life sucks and people suck and he shouldn't listen. That being the hero does not mean that he has to be perfect.

She wants to protect him, that's what she wants. To catch him in midair as effortlessly as he catches her, except she knows her words are not going to feel as strong and caring as his arms do. Somehow, she doesn't feel like she's enough.

She's wrong, of course. She knows that when he absently stretches his hand by his side knowing hers will be there, when he whispers her name to reassure himself she's real. When the world is right again because he's where he's supposed to be, with her.

She's never told him –and never will- that for all the wrongness of it all, she's glad he can falter once in a while. That the fact that his heart and soul are not perfect, that he can get angry and sad and frustrated means that he's the most human of them all.

So she secretly celebrates his smiles along with his tears, the hero along with the farmboy, the red cape along with the glasses, because one without the other wouldn't really be the Clark she loves.

And definitely wouldn't be a light worth following either.

The End