Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be. So sad.
A.N. This is my first Smallville fic and believe me it was a struggle, I don't think I'm ever going to attempt to voice Lois again. Unbeta'd.
Lois Lane's formative years had been spent under the supervision and tutelage of hard-bitten soldiers who had imparted many useful life-skills; she could drink generals under the table and out-cuss a sailor, instantly assess and adapt to any situation and she could quote proverbs in four different languages to describe every occasion. She felt English served well enough in this case - shit or get off the pot. The disaster in question? The dragged out angst-a-thon that was the trainwreck of Lana and Clark's relationship, the will they, won't the, just-get-over-it-already catastrophy they insisted on lingering over. Even as she directed Clark to Lana's hospital bedside she hoped that sooner or later they would get over themselves and subsequently get over each other. Neither of them brought out the best in the other, instead they fed their insecurities. Lana lacked trust and Clark lacked honesty, and so the drama continued. As far as she could tell they didn't seem to understand that they were teenagers. It was supposed to be fun - all hormones, sweat and fumbling, tingles and butterflies - laughter with the pain. It didn't have to last forever, people grow - usually apart. How could you find a soulmate this young? When there were so many things you didn't know about yourself yet? When it came to the miseducation of today's generation, well, frankly she felt Dawson's Creek had a lot to answer for.
Lois wanted Chloe to get over him. He wasn't ready and she was afraid you could get lost trying to decipher Clark Kent. He was hiding something and she suspected it would take a lifetime to work him out, certainly he'd seemed to to have spent the entirety of his avoiding straight answers. She didn't want her cousin to get lost in the fog of his half-truths and evasions; weirdness followed him around like fleas on a dog. It felt as though he held the greater part of himself back; set apart from everyone, watching everything from the sidelines. She hadn't been lying when she'd told his amnesiac self that he usually hid his emotions. He always seemed to be restraining and censoring himself; smoothing any jagged edges and concealing his true depths. There were times he came off as 2-dimensional, but in the way an Escher painting is. All optical illusions and impossibilities. The moment you try to focus your eyes on the detail, to figure it all out, you lose sight of the larger picture and give yourself a huge headache in the process.
She knows he's smarter than he lets on. She's been given his room and been left alone in the house enough to provide ample opportunity to do the investigative reporter thing and snoop through his loft. She's flipped through his books, seen his astronomy charts, his mathematical equations, knows he's more intelligent than he appears; than he allows anyone to see. To the world he was the white-bread farmboy, an all-american, football star, boy next door, he wears cliches like armour and it isn't a comfortable fit; too much normality is jarring.
She's been more than a casual observer this past year, she's watched him closely trying to get a handle on him because he was right - it wasn't often she came across someone she couldn't work out straight away. His mind often wandered and his gaze would be drawn to the stars but his feet seemed glued to the ground; fears rooting him in the mundane. The fear was a constant presence in the Kent household, less an elephant in the living room, more an unpleasant odour pervading the entire farm that no amount of baking could completely cover. She just couldn't figure out what the problem was, even when the non-verbals between the family were deafening. Lois envied that solidarity, that family loyalty. She had no doubt that should a danger to his family present itself, Mr Kent would take that old shotgun off the wall and shoot it down, Mrs Kent by his side. They'd made their family; Lois hadn't needed to be told that Clark was adopted (the hair was a dead giveaway) but she was aware of the strength of their bond - they'd chosen each other; but as supportive as they were Clark appeared isolated. She thought maybe that was why he held on so tightly to a dying relationship with Lana; he was lonely.
Clark kept everything inside him, she feared if he didn't learn to give, to bend a little, he'd break. He took responsibility for far too much, held himself accountable for all the town's ills and gave himself no credit for any of the joys. A hero-martyr complex of epic proportions that could wreak havoc with the strongest of psyches. The people in Smallville encouraged this insanity, they didn't let him foul up, they expected him to save the day. Lana didn't bat an eyelash whenever Clark rescued her from whatever psycho-of-the-day Smallville delivered, It was the 21st century - the damsals are damn well capable of saving themselves or of at least trying! His parents hadn't been concerned about their son's well-being at all during the latest meteor shower fallout, they'd had complete faith in his ability to prevail against preposterous circumstances; even Chloe had succumed to general perception of Clark's invincibility. But she had noticed they came down like a tonne of judgemental bricks whenever he failed, when he proved himself human and all too fallible.
It was because of all this she'd taken it upon herself to bring a little levity to Smallville, the fantastic was far too common in the small town. Some irreverence and banter to distract the natives from their melodrama, to remind them of the absurd, was just what they needed and it wasn't as though she had anywhere else to go, or anyone else that would take her in- who would welcome and care for her. So she'd hold her peace and watch the action unfold; she'd counsel her cousin and help out around the farm, she'd mock Clarkie every chance she got. She'd sit through the Lana and Clark re-run then she'd annoy him out of his brooding when it all fell to pieces, and above all else she'd deny to the end of her days that these people meant so very much to her.
FIN