A/N Thanks to everyone who reviewed. I'm trying to update as often as I can now. Enjoy! ^_^

Previously...

"If only I hadn't, if only I hadn't been stupid enough to meddle! So what if Lois found out about Oliver, isn't that what I told him - to tell her before she found out? But I never would have helped him had she not given me the speech. She loves him! And if she found out that he's been lying to her all this time... I can totally relate to that. It's the exact situation that I nearly got myself into and I can't do that to Lois, I just can't.

"So this plan, it goes well. Too well. Lois ends up getting into trouble with some thugs, so what am I supposed to do? I'm in a Green Arrow costume for God's sake!"

Lois stared. She knew where this was going. This was the Green Arrow she kissed in the alley. This was the Green Arrow that had run faster than a thousandth of a second speed camera and thrown guys twice her weight clear across the alley. This was the Green Arrow look-a-like. This was Clark Kent!

Lois read and re-read those words over and over again. She daren't continue on.

'Clark? Meteor-infected?'

A thought struck her mind.

'Clark... The Red-Blue Blur?'

Suddenly, as if she had found the most important piece of a puzzle, it seemed as if everything made sense, as if the picture it had taken her years to build was finally complete. All of those times he'd disappeared suddenly, then returned with a lame excuse. All of those times he'd gone off on his own when they were on a story and the blur had magically saved the day, or the problem had seemingly resolved itself. All of those times he'd lied right to her face...

This was why...

This was why she could never get close to him, this was why she always felt as if she was out of the loop, this was why he couldn't open up to her. He was keeping his secret.

"He must have been so alone..." she muttered, now sitting as up-right as the small space would allow.

'But he wasn't alone...' Lois thought to herself. 'Ollie knew, so did Chloe - I've read that much in his book. His parents must have known too...'

So he wasn't alone. He'd had his friends and his family. He just hadn't had her.

Not that she deserved to know, after all, Chloe hadn't known all along. She had heard her cousin's insecurities about Clark hiding something from her, all the way up until she'd joined the gang for her repeat of senior year.

'He must have told her sometime around then.' Lois understood that, they had known each other for years, way longer than she had known Clark now. And Oliver was a fellow hero, he had only found out because of the whole secret identities thing.

Lying down again, Lois reasoned with herself that she was being ridiculous. Clark hadn't told her about his secret identity yet, so what? He would have done eventually. He was probably just waiting for the right time or protecting her or something. It didn't matter.

Only it did matter, to her...

She honestly didn't care whether he was meteor-infected, or that he prowled the streets protecting people. That, she could deal with. But the fact that he sat across from her, everyday, lying to her face... That just made her mad.

Lois gritted her teeth, and hated the fact that she had been stupid enough to rush into a barn during a tornado. All for a guy who could have been hit by a tractor and not even noticed.

A blur of a blonde bob whizzed through the crowd, bewildering some of the people flung out of its way as they looked - too slow - at the spot that it had once occupied. Chloe Sullivan, Watchtower and self-appointed eyes and ears of Metropolis, was in a hurry and was heading towards the landmark among the ocean of people - all six foot three inches of one Clark Kent.

"She's- Not- Here-" Chloe managed to pant in between gasps for oxygen.

Clark looked down in surprise, not having realized that Chloe standing in front of him- or the path of destruction behind her. "What?"

A look of exasperation took over her features before she took a breath and started again. "Lois, she's not here."

"What? What do you mean she's not here?" Clark looked around the bull pen, it was his day off. He had taken time off since his Mom had come to visit, Lois was working. She had to be here.

"Joe, the coffee guy, he said that when Lois heard about the storm going through Smallville, she took off. Apparently she left her source right at her desk and drove off to Smallville to help you and your Mom. She hasn't come back yet. Clark, what if she was caught out in the storm?"

Chloe looked at Clark, who was still and thinking. "Don't worry Chloe, Lois isn't stupid. She wouldn't have stayed out in the open, we just need to speed down to Smallville. We'll find her." Clark said this more for his own benefit than Chloe's.

The blonde nodded in response and they both exited the Daily Planet building, before finding an empty alleyway to speed off from.

Nothingness.

A numb sense of nothing surrounded her now, completely extinguishing any concept of time. The diary lay abandoned at her side while the photograph she had been subconsciously clutching shook as she did. The world seemed to be spinning as Lois shivered, not because of cold but instead the feeling of being caged. It was like she was being buried alive beneath a tonne of symbollic Clark.

Was it not bad enough that she was going to die, without doing so in the most ironic way possible?

She was going to die. Surely somebody would have found her by now, Chloe would be looking for her right? The reporter instinct in her cousin would mean that she was found almost immediately though... So why haven't they found her yet?

The Planet.

Lois was supposed to be working today. With the storm, the newspaper would be chaos, nobody would have even noticed that she was gone.

She was stuck here.

She was going to die alone, scared and with a secret that she hadn't been trusted enough to keep in the first place.

Turning on her side and curling into a foetal position, Lois hated that she was being resorted to this. She was Lois Lane for goodness' sake! And that meant that she was strong and wouldn't let any farm-boy reduce her to a snivelling mess (no matter how blue his eyes were). Feeling better, or at least more angry than doomed, Lois sat up and hated him. Hated the guy who she had once considered her best friend.

Unfortunately, as is the way with Lois, a few minutes of seething anger later and she was bored. Foot tapping and lip being nibbled, Lois looked around with the aid of her flash light. The diary stared at her, called her, tempted her reporter's instinct and dared her to have another read. She barely hesitated before it was open and in her lap once more. Deciding to miss out on Clark's surely terrible opinion of their kiss in the alley, Lois flicked through passages of guilt trips and Lana-loving until she found something that caught her eye.

"February 1st 2007

"I hate to start this diary the same way every time I write but what can I say other than that I've had just another day in Smallville? I guess it all started when Jimmy tried to set me and Lois up on a blind date - crazy I know."

Lois' heart gave an involuntary ache at the mention of Jimmy's name, she still couldn't believe that he was gone. Her cousin had been crushed since his death, she was still withdrawn and barely answered her calls any more. Jimmy's death had changed her cousin, she barely left wherever it was that she lived now - Lois didn't even know.

As Clark's words continued, memories flooded back into Lois' mind- she remembered this, some of it anyway. "The next morning Lois turns up looking... well... amazing. The weirdest thing though, she was all over me (is it really any shock that I super-sped out of there the first moment I got?) I had no clue what had gotten into her, she hates me! Well, maybe not as harsh as hate, but we couldn't go a day without annoying each other to the brink of a fist fight. And then she's giving me mixed CD's? I knew something had to be wrong, so naturally I went to Chloe.

"Besides Chloe being the smartest person I know, she also knows a lot about Lois (and the probability that Lois is on drugs- apparently zero). She didn't even believe me when I told her! Understandable I suppose, but why would I make something like this up? Next thing I know, Lois is coming towards me and shows me a tattoo. It was right on her body, plain enought to see the words 'Lois & Clark Forever' evermore seared on her skin. I panicked, resisting the urge to speed off to Venezuela. She'd tattooed her chest because of me, nobody does that - not even someone as questionable as Lois! All Chloe could do was stare at her as Lois' gaze raked my body, making me feel naked before her gaze. And then my so called friend ups and leaves me to the wrath of a love-struck Lois!"

Lois cringed, she'd really done all that? And he hadn't even told her... But, as she thought about it, she'd rather not have had that conversation.

"My breath hitched as Lois has her hands on me, on my chest, in my hair. I couldn't form a sentence, my brain just wasn't focusing properly. I hadn't had someone just throw themselves at me since Chloe was on that obsessive potion thing. It's weird though, because it wasn't the same. Chloe's my friend and there's nothing romantic at all between us, but with Lois it was always banter. Not really a friendship but nothing like a romance either. But when I pulled her into a more secluded area of the bullpen, I couldn't stop her when she dragged me into the nearest phone booth.

"Then I found out that Lois definitely wasn't on drugs. As her lips crashed into mine the euphoric rush of red kryptonite flashed through my system and my inhibitions were sent to distant parts of the cosmos. My tongue instantly found hers and we quickly found our way to an empty office. My alter-ego was completely in control as the contamination searged through my body and I remember as I arrogantly boasted of my superiority to Oliver. I felt that I had to impress her, I needed the satisfaction of being thought of as amazing. So I jumped from the Daily Planet roof and onto Oliver's balcony, enjoying every moment of her shocked expression.

"I seriously think that we would've gone all the way right there if I hadn't seen the engagement party invitation. It was a long story, but I ended up telling everyone about Lana's pregnancy and kidnapping her, after I dumped Lois. Luckily, Mom managed to stop me from doing anything stupid by using regular kryptonite. All this only showed me that I can't let Lana marry Lex. I can't let her make the biggest mistake of her life. I told Mom, and she says that I need to let go of my feelings for Lana, but before she could talk Lois turned up. On the up side, she seemed genuinely embarrassed when I showed her the mixed CD. A rarity for her. But it was hard having to avoid the subject and dodge around questions. She was really worried about what we'd done. It was refreshing, seeing her so exposed, so unguarded."

Not believing that he had thought all of this, a stunned Lois couldn't understand that Clark had actually felt this way. Or at least, a drugged up Clark did. It was kind of embarrassing that it was the red-blue blur who she constantly teased. He had to deal with things on a daily basis that a normal guy never would have to. Clark could conquer the world, but instead he chooses to sacrifice what he really wants for the greater good. Already, Lois had read a number of times where Clark had gone out of his way to save her. But the craziest thing was that this guy, who saved people on a daily basis, had seen right through her. Even then, when he'd only known her two years, he'd worked out that she kept people at a distance.

It was getting so difficult to be mad at the guy.

A sharp pain on the edge of her back annoyingly interrupted Lois' trail of thought so, after putting the diary in her purse, she turned and grasped the offending object. Pulling at it, it came free and she smiled triumphantly at what felt like a rusty nail.

The makeshift shelter groaned and, before Lois could react, the debris was collapsing in on her.