Secrets
Lois caught her breath as she wracked her brain, trying to come up with an acceptable explanation for the odd behavior he must have noticed. Stalling for time, she said, "I don't really know what you mean, Mr. Kent."
"Miss Lane, I may not have met you before yesterday, but I can't help but think there's something you're not telling us." She knew she had fallen silent for too long in response to these words, because he said, a bit irritably, "You're supposed to know all of us pretty well; that means that, whatever it is that you're hiding, you should know that you don't have to protect me!"
"Yes, yes I do," she murmured, too softly for him to hear. When he stepped toward her and asked her to repeat what she'd said, however, she sighed and did so, though she still kept her gaze focused firmly on the dishes she was scrubbing in the sink. "I said I do, actually. I have to protect you. And you may not like it, and you may not understand it, but I don't really give a damn; I'm going to do it anyway."
She still wasn't looking at him, but she was fairly confident that she knew the expression on his face and the body language conveying his irritation in response to her words. She could have painted a picture from the image in her memory, in fact. "Okay…care to tell me why?" he demanded, and, if the subject weren't so serious, she would have smiled at the familiarity of it all.
Instead, she sighed. She knew he was still trying to discern what she was trying to protect him from, but she evaded the question. Because, for a while, I had the relationship with you that I couldn't have with my own father. Because you took me in, you trusted me, and you told me you were proud of me, even before I'd given you any reason to be. Because I couldn't be there for you, with you, when you needed me the most. Because I loved you, Mr. Kent, and I never got the chance to tell you goodbye. All of these reasons paraded through her mind, but she could confess to none of them. "Because, Mr. Kent, in another world, you would do the same for me."
"Hey, Dad, could I get your help outside for just a moment?" Clark asked as he peeked his head into the kitchen, interrupting the ongoing conversation, for which Lois was almost pathetically grateful.
Though Jonathan was still fixing Lois with a hard look, he replied shortly, "Yeah, just let me grab my coat." Without another word, he stormed into the other room, and the woman left behind winced. She knew he wasn't happy about her stance on the issue, but he'd get over it. She hoped.
At any rate, she was almost finished with the dishes, so she continued humming softly as the sound of the back door slamming reverberated through the kitchen. Once they'd gone, she felt the muscles in her shoulders lose some of their tension; it was incredibly difficult, having to be careful of everything she said, in case she inadvertently let something slip – particularly since mincing words was not something that had ever come naturally to her.
She had almost finished with the dishes when she heard footsteps from behind her and she turned to throw a smile over her shoulder at Mrs. Kent. "I'm just about done here."
"Lois, how long have you been in love with my son?" The words were spoken so softly, Lois almost didn't hear them, and she was so taken aback by the question that the plate in her hands slipped through her fingers. Luckily, she had just begun to pull it out of the water, so it didn't shatter upon contact with the bottom of the sink. It was then that she decided that she was going to have to stop humming to herself. It seemed to somehow trigger uncomfortable questions directed her way by various members of the Kent clan.
"Wh-what do you mean?" she stammered nervously as she felt herself pale at the question. If she'd thought things couldn't get much worse than having to face Jonathan's curiosity, she'd clearly been wrong. "What makes you think I'm in love with Clark?" Though she was trying to force an air of nonchalance into the question, she could tell her voice sounded too strained to pull it off.
Smiling gently, Mrs. Kent replied, "I paid attention at dinner. You're a wonderful storyteller, Lois, and every single one of your stories featured my son."
"Well, he is my partner," she explained weakly.
"You don't talk about him like he's just your partner," Martha replied implacably. Stepping forward, she asked, "Does he know how you feel, the Clark in your world?"
Lois nibbled on her lower lip as she tried to decide how to respond. "He…we've talked about it," she said carefully, shifting her weight uncomfortably.
The sympathetic look Mrs. Kent threw her way was almost too much to take. "I've noticed you don't talk much about James," she said softly, her eyes filled with concern. "I don't mean to pry, but…is there something you'd like to talk about? I know that I'm not the same person you know, and of course I've never met your fiancé. But if you're having second thoughts about getting married because you're in love with my son and you need someone to talk to, I'm here to listen."
Lois winced at the mention of the man she'd claimed as her fiancé. That was one little white lie – done more or less on the spur of the moment – that she had a feeling she was never going to live down. When Clark had asked her about her fiancé, she'd latched on to the first name that had come to mind of a person she knew well enough to maintain a fictional relationship. The fact that she would, as a consequence, become too mortified by the very idea that she'd never be able to face him (or, for that matter, the Chloe and possibly Clark in her world) again had, unfortunately, not occurred to her until it was too late.
And now her little lie had stuck her with a bigger problem than her future pride. It was obvious what the older woman was thinking – that the attraction Lois had confessed to feeling for Clark was somehow interfering with her engagement, possibly even causing her to rethink the whole thing. Her shoulders sagged in defeat; clearly, she was going to have to divulge some more details before she had the entire Kent clan convinced her arrival on their doorstep was part of a Runaway Bride scenario. She had a feeling she was going to regret not being able to keep the nature of her relationship with the Clark in her reality a secret – her pain at not having him around was too near to the surface; if she began to actually talk about what she'd lost, she was afraid she might not be able to withstand the urge to cry. Still, she'd always hated lying to Mrs. Kent, and she desperately longed for someone with whom she could actually speak honestly. With a resigned sigh, she slowly and deliberately dried her hands on a nearby dishtowel, turned, and said gravely, "You don't understand, Mrs. Kent. I am marrying the man that I love."
Slowly, she twisted the engagement ring off her finger and passed it to the woman beside her. She gave it over reluctantly; she hadn't taken it off when she'd begun to do the dishes because there was a part of her that had begun to worry it would somehow vanish if it left her finger, and she'd be left in this place without any tangible proof of the world she'd left behind. When Mrs. Kent took the offered object, she held both her breath and her tongue as she watched the woman who would be her mother-in-law read the inscription inside.
True love lasts forever. CK & LL
As Martha peered at the tiny letters, Lois quoted, "'Some love lasts a lifetime. True love lasts forever.'" With a soft, wistful smile as if recalling some fond memory to mind, she said, "Chloe loves to tease me about it, because I was always pretty vocal that I'd never fall for anyone the way I did Clark, but that's just how things are between us. I mean, don't get me wrong; he drives me crazy sometimes. But even when we're fighting, I can't help but feel like what we have together is somehow stronger than anything else I could possibly imagine. It's greater than either of us alone, more powerful than distance, or death. Or even fate." With a slight start, Lois blushed, realizing how she must have sounded. "Well, anyway, those are the words Clark chose to have engraved."
"They're beautiful," Mrs. Kent murmured as she handed the ring back, an inscrutable look on her face.
Glancing at it, Lois chuckled and said, "Well, it's not like you haven't seen it before. I mean, it was yours, after all."
Amusement twinkled in her eyes as Martha replied, "I thought it looked familiar."
Then, with a slight twist of her mouth as she slipped the ring back on her finger, Lois added morosely, "And, of course, we can't forget that it's identical to Lana's, isn't it?"
Humor melted from Mrs. Kent's gaze, to be replaced by sympathy "Not exactly," she replied softly.
Mrs. Kent didn't elaborate, and Lois didn't ask her to; she really didn't want to talk about Lana right now. Or possibly ever. "Yeah, well, right now, I think this ring may be the only thing keeping me from going stark raving mad," she said ruefully as she ran her thumb along the smooth underside of the band. "It's the only proof I have that my entire relationship with Clark – that is, the Clark in my world – wasn't just a dream or a vivid hallucination. He gave me this ring on the third anniversary of our first official date. He's the man I love, the man I'm going to marry, the man who's waiting somewhere for my return."
Martha Kent was silent in response to this, and Lois could tell she needed some time to process the information. So, instead of hitting her with more details, she walked over to the table to take a seat and gestured for her companion to do the same. Finally, Mrs. Kent asked, clearly confused, "Why haven't you mentioned this before? You told Clark that you were engaged to someone else."
Lois grimaced. "Well, yes. At first, I didn't mention it because I didn't know what was going on, and I thought it might not be entirely prudent to just blurt out the nature of my relationship with Su – your son," she amended at the last minute. She figured Mrs. Kent needed time to process what she'd already heard before she was given any further revelations. After all, it's not every day that you discover that the woman who'd landed so unexpectedly on your doorstep would have been your daughter-in-law in another life. "When I realized that the situation was even far more complicated than I'd originally thought, well," she paused. "It wouldn't change anything; it would just make everyone, particularly Clark, feel even more uncomfortable around me than they already do. So I lied."
Mrs. Kent frowned. "And James is…?" she prompted.
"A friend of mine," came the reply, accompanied by a rueful look. "He works at the Daily Planet with Clark and me; he's a photographer there." When she saw that Martha still wasn't entirely satisfied, she continued, "We're friends, and he's a really sweet guy. He's just not really my type." Upon consideration, she decided against divulging Jimmy and Chloe's relationship. For one thing, it wouldn't do much to make the entire fiasco less bizarre for anyone. More importantly, however, in light of the charade of her own making, it really wasn't something Lois wanted to think too much about.
After her confession, she waited in silence for a reaction. She probably shouldn't have been surprised when the older woman broke her silence by stating, "I think you should tell Clark the truth."
With an exasperated sigh, Lois huffed, "Why, so a situation that's already difficult can become absolutely unbearable? It doesn't change anything, Mrs. Kent. People don't fall into other realities because they get engaged; not even people like Clark and me." She really didn't want to open that can of worms. She knew that, if she confessed to Clark that they were supposed to be engaged, there would be no way to avoid the inevitable conversation. The hold she had on her emotions was already tenuous at best; she didn't think she could bear to talk about them with someone who, by all outward appearances, was identical to the man she'd left behind – except that she didn't see that same love reflected in his eyes when he looked back at her.
"He'd want to know; you know that," Martha pressed, apparently oblivious to the younger woman's inner turmoil.
With a small shake of her head, Lois replied, "Maybe so, but he doesn't need to." Her tone brooked no argument, but that had never stopped Mrs. Kent – or, really, anyone in the Kent family tree, so far as she could tell.
Reaching out to grab her hand reassuringly, Mrs. Kent began, "Lois, I know this must be hard on you –"
Lois interrupted before her companion could speak further. It was obviously a mistake, letting herself get dragged into this conversation. It was clear that Mrs. Kent didn't understand. How could she? Once again, Lois found that she had to remind herself that this wasn't the Martha Kent she knew. "You have no idea how hard this is!" she cried in frustration, pulling her hand away. Taking a deep breath, she tried to regain control of herself, reaching up with one hand to rub her forehead wearily. She had to find a way to get her point across to the woman across the table from her. She had to make Martha understand why she was so desperate to keep her secrets – a difficult chore, since she wasn't even sure she could explain that desire to herself.
After a few more deep breaths, her hand dropped to her lap and she said slowly, "You know, you told me once that you knew you wanted to marry Mr. Kent the first time you met him. That first day, you knew you wanted him to be yours. Well, that's not how it worked with Clark and me. We didn't fall in love at first sight. In fact, we could barely stand each other the first time we met, if you want to be frank about it. He thought I was bossy and annoying, and I thought he was…well, a lot of things, but I definitely thought he was weird – and definitely not my type.
"We'd known each other for years before we fell in love, and, even now, I'm not sure I can really explain how my feelings for him crept up on me the way they did. I never intended to fall in love with him; it was just something that happened, and I didn't even see it coming until it was too late to do anything about it."
Leaning forward, she met Mrs. Kent's eyes and said earnestly, "I have no idea how I got here, or why I fell out of my dimension into this one, or really even what to do now that I'm here. But, no offense, Mrs. Kent…you have no idea what it's like to be standing right next to the man who looks, and acts, and talks like the man you love but isn't." She could feel the tears threaten to fall, and she blinked them back fiercely. She was not going to lose her composure now.
After another few deep breaths to make sure she could maintain the iron grip she had on her emotions, she said, "It took me forever to fall in love with him, and now there isn't a day that goes by that I don't fall in love with him all over again. And you think this is a little hard on me? No offense, but are you crazy? This is killing me! I spent every moment that I'm with him trying convince myself that the man I'm talking to isn't really Clark Kent. Because I can't bear to let myself think that he's the same person."
Her voice was shaking, but she could see that Martha was beginning to understand, so she said rather desperately, "I can only survive living without Clark because this…because your son doesn't know what… He doesn't look at me in the same way my Clark does. He isn't the man I love; I can't have him. But if he did look at me like that – if he looked at me like he understood that he might have someday loved me…don't you understand? I just don't think I could bear it."
A heavy silence fell between them. Finally, Martha whispered, "Lois, sweetheart, I'm so sorry."
The younger woman hadn't realized that she'd squeezed her eyes shut as she finished her explanation, but they flew open again at the endearment. By the look on Mrs. Kent's face, it seemed that she had finally come to understand the enormity of the loss Lois felt – the pain inside that was like a live thing, growing so large sometimes that she could barely breathe under the weight of it. Taking a deep breath, she promised, "If it becomes important, if it'll help me get home somehow, I'll tell him. I swear. But until then, please. Let me keep my secrets."
In reply, Mrs. Kent reached forward and clutched her companion's trembling hands. Neither of them spoke again until the back door opened again and Mr. Kent walked into the room. Throwing them a concerned look, he cleared his throat and asked, "Martha? Is something wrong?"
The two women broke apart suddenly, and Lois took the opportunity to jump to her feet. "It's late," she blurted, ignoring the inquiry. She'd had about as much as she could take for one evening; she felt stretched thin, like she might tear in two if anyone asked anything more of her this evening. "I'm going to bed."
Turning her head away, Lois refused to look back as she bolted for the stairs. She didn't want to hear Mrs. Kent's reply to her husband's question. She didn't want to face their pity when they talked about her. Mostly, she didn't want to see what they couldn't entirely hide – their pity that Lois had been separated from the man she was born to love, and their relief that they weren't in the same predicament.
