Sorry it took so long.

Disclaimer: still don't own any of it.


Chapter 4:

"That ability must really come in handy, right, Clark?" Lois jibed.

He looked up, blushing furiously. "I don't take advantage of my X-ray vision, well, except for the rare times I'm under the influence of red-" he suddenly stopped, just realizing what he'd been about to say.

Lois, however, didn't back off but pressed on. "Influence of red what?"

Clark shifted nervously under her withering stare. He backed up a few feet and started pacing for a moment, then stopped and turned back to her.

"It's not that I don't trust you with this, because I do, it's just that this is very dangerous."

"I can handle danger, Clark," Lois said flatly. He shot her a look that told her that she was treating this far too lightly.

"This is way more dangerous than you realize, Lois," he snapped. "One of my best friends had to leave because the FBI was putting too much pressure on him."

"I can handle pressure, Smallville."

"An agent captured him and tried to beat the information out of him." Clark paused for a moment, taking a deep breath before continuing. "I'll only tell you if you are absolutely sure you want this burden."

His tone gave her a momentary pause before she responded.

Clark nodded once in resignation. "Red Kryptonite, it affects me like a drug would you. There was probably some in the alcohol, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten drunk."

"What's red Kryptonite?"

"Kryptonite, what people call the meteor rocks, is the remnants of a planet called Krypton. My birth parents sent me here when it exploded." Lois's eyes snapped up to meet his.

At any other time he would have laughed at seeing Lois Lane speechless, but not now. No, now it wasn't funny; it was nerve wracking. "Lois? Say something?" She still stared at him blankly. "Anything?"

She blinked twice before grinning at the nervous farmboy before her. Who would've thought that the 'Flannel King of the Midwest' was really an alien with superpowers? "Do you have any idea how, for lack of a better term, cool this is?"

Clark shook his head sadly, "You don't get it, Lois. There's nothing 'cool' about it. The meteor shower, everyone who died during it, all the people affected by the green Kryptonite, all of it's my fault."

Lois gestured for him to stop. "Wait a second, you lost me there. How is any of this your fault?" Instead of giving him a chance to answer, she plunged forward. "Clark, did you choose to come to earth?" He shook his head slightly. "Did you choose to bring the meteors here? No, of course you didn't. Did you look at this town and say, 'Hey, there's a great spot for the future capitol of weirdness'? No, Clark, you were what? Two or three when the meteor shower happened? How many toddlers do you know that can direct a meteor shower? It wasn't your fault, so get over it!" Her voice softened and she took his hand in both of hers. "Sometimes things happen, Clark, that we have no control over. Things with both good and bad results."

"But what good came out of all this?" he asked skeptically.

"Think of all the people you've saved, Clark. What would have happened to those people if you hadn't been here?"

"They wouldn't have needed to have been saved. All I did was save them from things that only happened because of the meteor shower."

"So, Lionel Luthor wouldn't have been an evil maniac and wouldn't have tried to kill Chloe?"

"He wouldn't have been after Chloe if it hadn't been for me."

Lois grabbed him by the shirt and pulled his face down to her level, fire blazing in her eyes. "What the heck are you talking about, Smallville?"

"She wouldn't have been working for him investigating me, wouldn't have been under the wrath of Lionel."

Lois let go of him and pressed her fingers to her temple. What was with him and his continual guilt trip? "Clark, Chloe made her own decision. It's called free will. You didn't make anyone do anything, and are thereby not responsible for what anyone does." She closed her eyes in exasperation. She needed coffee, in fact, a whole mug of espresso was sounding really good right then. Her eyes flew open and locked on his. "So, Lex's care wouldn't have gone off the bridge if the meteor shower hadn't happened?" she said skeptically.

"I guess I see your point," he conceded after a long moment, though somewhat reluctantly.

"You'd better see it, because it's too early and I'm too caffeine deprived to get into explaining all the good you've done, Smallville," she said with a slight grin as she poked him in the chest to emphasize her point. "And you might find yourself with a few broken bones if you stubbornly continue to make me explain."

Clark's eyebrows rose. "Me? Stubborn! Look who's talking! And I doubt you'd be able to break any of my bones seeing as how I'm invulnerable. Well, except for my allergy to green Kryptonite, and magic, I guess, but that's not a good area of discussion," he amended, face reddening with the last of the statement.

Lois merely rolled her eyes at him. "No wonder you're always getting your butt kicked by every bad guy that shows up, telling people who threaten you your weakness," she scoffed.

A wide grin appeared on Clark's face, "Yeah, they always seem to find out about it somehow, and I guess, I told you about the Kryptonite because I trust you not to take unfair advantage of it."

"Unfair advantage?" she questioned, stepping towards him so they were only a few inches apart.

"Well, yeah, I trust you not to use it on me unless it's really necessary, like to get a piece of red Kryptonite away from me, or something like that."

"As fun as Red Kryptonite Clark is, I think I'd prefer the mild mannered, geeky, farmboy to the egomaniac any day of the week." It was supposed to come out as a light hearted joke, but instead it came out as something completely different, and Lois was at a loss as to why. Something that, she could tell, was not at all lost on Clark, if the way he was looking at her was any indication. He leaned in slightly, and she tilted her head upwards to meet his kiss. Just as they were about to kiss, Lois's cell phone rang. They both stepped back awkwardly as they fully realized what they had been about to do. Say something, Lois commanded herself. "I should, um, get that," she gestured pathetically to her phone sitting in its charger.

"Yeah," Clark said a bit too quickly. "Can I use your shower?" he asked, hoping it would give him time to clear his head.

Lois nodded as she walked over to her phone. "There's towels in the cabinet." She picked up her phone, "Hello?"

Clark quickly got a towel out of the cabinet and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He splashed some cold water on his face and leaned on the sink, looking in the mirror. What was going on with him?