He stood. "Well, the first thing is to get you back to the tent for some rest and an evening meal." Deliberately he did not mention anything but the immediate present, the action needed right now.
"I guess so." Lana stood, her ungainly body slow to arise. She staggered a little as she straightened up.
Clark's arm was around her, supporting her; she hadn't seen him move. "Are you all right?"
"Just a little stiff", she said ruefully. Her back ached and her feet were swollen. She couldn't wait till she had the baby.
"Can I carry you back to the campsite?" Clark asked carefully.
Lana considered it. Options: being held by Clark, when she still felt a little…funny…about him. Or, on the other hand, a half-mile hike with swollen feet down an irregular lakeshore, having to climb over dead branches and sink into the sand. For some reason, she flashed back to a memory of a day in Smallville when she and Clark were five; Mr. and Mrs. Kent were correcting Clark's manners.
"But I wanted it!"
"Clark, Lana is your guest. You always offer your guests the cookies first." Martha Kent gave Clark the Family Look – a significant glance that Lana knew about, getting it regularly herself from Aunt Nell.
Mr. Kent chimed in. "We expect you to be polite, son", he said.
"Sorry", Clark said abashedly, handing her the plate of cookies.
Lana gave an inward smile and made her decision.
"Carrying me - that would be nice", she said softly. Clark moved behind her, began to put his arms around her, obviously ready to scoop her up. Then he staggered back, and collapsed.
"Clark! What is it?" Lana asked, turning to him in concern.
"The meteor rock…"
Lana looked; the lead cylinder's open end pointed toward him. She quickly bent down and turned it away. Clark's agonized motions subsided; the gray cast to his complexion disappeared. He sat on the ground, panting heavily.
Clark's not kidding. The meteor rock really does hurt him. Lana thought about that, thought about how she'd just talked with Clark, walked with him. He hadn't hurt her. In fact, he seemed more concerned about her being afraid of him. That rock…I actually hurt him with it.
Lana reached for the lead cylinder, swung around, and offered it to him. He leapt up, fear on his face, and backed away. Lana looked at the cylinder, looked at Clark, and made a decision.
"Clark." She checked the cylinder; it was pointed directly away from Clark. "I was hoping you could seal this."
He looked at her in astonishment. Lana stood still, holding the meteor rock. "Can you seal it?" she asked again.
Clark dragged his gaze down to the cylinder, then back to her. Then he gave her a wide smile. "Yes." Then he said, more softly, "Thank you."
Carefully he walked to her and took the lead object in his hands. Holding it much as one would hold an unexploded bomb, he inched his fingers up the walls of the cylinder. Never putting his hand in front of the opening, he flexed his fingers. The open end of the cylinder crimped shut. Clark gave a sigh of relief and relaxed.
Lana reached for the lead object. "I think we should still take this out of here", she said. "I don't want to put lead in the lake." Clark looked dubious, but said nothing as she tucked it into her pocket.
She looked at Clark; apparently the meteor rock sickness had passed. He seemed fine now. "What's that like?" she asked curiously.
"It really hurts", he said shortly. Then he swallowed and said, "I know you might feel you need to protect yourself…"
Lana thought about it, felt surprise at how fast her feelings had changed. Apparently, her subconscious had decided to trust him. "No. No. You're OK." She reached out and held his hand again. Clark moved a little closer, took her in his arms.
"Are you ready to go back to the campsite?" Clark asked her. She nodded.
She gave a little gasp as he swung her up, holding her across his body. Lana had forgotten how warm he was; she could feel his body heat through his thin T-shirt. It felt good; she was getting a little chilled.
"Slow or fast?" Clark asked her, a teasing tone in his voice.
"What?"
"I can take you back to the campsite at a regular walking pace – or you can go with the speed."
Lana considered it. She was curious now. This is Clark – he won't hurt me. She laughed and said, "Speed for sure."
Clark seemed to pick up that she had relaxed, that she was easier with him now. He laughed too. "OK."
Lana looked at the lake. She turned her head back to Clark. She saw him tense his muscles. Then a breeze, a blur, and she was back at the campsite. She held onto him for a moment more before he let her down.
"Wow."
Clark stood by her, seemingly amused by her amazement. "Are you OK?" he asked.
"Um…yeah. That was…a little, ah, unusual."
"I can do more, you know", he said earnestly.
Lana rubbed her back and sat down on the sleeping bag. "Can you do that water thing again?" she asked.
"No problem." Quickly he presented her with another cup of boiled, then cooled lake water. He stood, viewing the campsite as she drank.
"I think you need some dinner, Lana." Clark walked to the backpack, rummaged in it for another dehydrated meal. "This will take a little more time."
Despite his warning, it wasn't long at all before she was digging into the hot meal, appetite sharpened by the clean outdoor air. The fresh air, scented with wood smoke from their fire, added spice to the otherwise bland meal. She ate several bites before she noticed, guiltily, that he hadn't cooked for himself.
"What about you?" Lana asked. She mentally counted backwards. "You haven't eaten in a day."
"I'm all right", Clark said. "Don't worry about me."
"No, that's not right, Clark!" Lana said, thrusting her mess tin and spoon towards him. "You've got to keep up your strength…" she trailed off.
Clark began laughing, a full throated belly laugh. Whoops of laughter filled the night. "Keep…my…strength up!" he choked out between guffaws. He thought about going to the forest and uprooting a tree or something, just to show her. Regretfully he decided against it. It might scare her again.
Lana giggled a little bit, too, as she realized what she'd said. She caught Clark's eye; soon she was howling with laughter along with him. The tenseness between them dissolved.
"Actually, I am OK, Lana", Clark said, as their laughter dwindled away. "I can go a lot longer without food than you can." He reached over, held his long, muscular arm up against her petite one. "Ah…the, um, the…alien…heritage aside, I still outweigh you by a hundred pounds. I've got a lot more body mass than you do." He lowered his arm. "If I need to eat something tomorrow, I'll hunt or something." He gave her a hopeful look. "Do you know anything about edible plants?"
"Unfortunately, no." Lana smiled apologetically. "Regrettably, my wilderness survival education is deficient."
Clark said, "Besides, you've got to eat for your little girl, too."
Lana stiffened. "Girl?" How do you know that?
She could see Clark's eyes shutter, the expression she'd seen so often when he was going to lie to her, before she knew. Then he apparently realized it didn't matter anymore. He gazed at her directly, then looked at her abdomen. "I can see her."
"You can see her?" Lana repeated.
Clark seemed diffident again. "I can see through things."
"See through things?" Lana seemed to be able only to repeat what he said.
Clark scuffed the ground with his foot. "It's…it's like seeing with x-rays." He looked down at his foot, apparently fascinated by the knot in his shoelace, avoiding her gaze. "I call it x-ray vision."
The redundancy slipped by Lana as she stiffened and shrank back from Clark again.
Oh, no, back to the beginning, Clark thought. Apparently he'd just freaked Lana out again. He thought he'd gotten her calmed down fairly well, but his slip of the tongue had only emphasized once again how different he was. Again, he sat quietly, making no moves, not reaching to her, trying not to frighten her.
Clark looked at Lana; she hunched up, making herself as small as possible. A moment passed. Then she sat straighter, posture erect. Her expression changed from fear to anger.
"And you've been looking at me, haven't you?" she asked. "Looking inside me…" She swallowed. "How long have you been doing that?"
"No, Lana!" Clark rushed to deny it. "I did look at you right at the beginning when I got here. I wanted to make sure you were OK. But since then I haven't used it."
"Yeah, right."
"No, really! It only works when I focus, and I do not use it to invade other people's privacy!" He pleaded in a desperate voice, trying to make her believe him.
"What other powers do you have, Clark?" Lana demanded. "There's so much you haven't told me. How can I trust you? Let me know."
Clark sat speechless for a moment at the venom in her voice. Then he realized the basis of her fears. He was alien, unknown, different. She was vulnerable, and pregnant. Her first thought was to protect her baby. Was he a threat? In Lana's mind, maybe.
"OK", he said, trying to keep a calm, soft voice. He gave her an reassuring smile. "Do you want demonstrations, or can I just tell you?"
Lana relaxed a little bit at his even tone. "I think you can just tell me. I've seen you do the heat-vision thing and that was scary enough."
Clark's lips tightened at this description, but he didn't contest it. "I'm sorry, Lana, I didn't mean to scare you."
"Just tell me what you can do so I don't have to get freaked out anymore", she said.
Clark stood up, moved back a little so he wasn't looming over Lana. He felt almost embarrassed telling her what he had concealed for so long. He moved across the fire from her.
"Well, I'm strong." He started with the simplest.
"How strong?"
"Um…I can lift up our tractor." He didn't tell Lana that he thought he was stronger than that, that the tractor-lifting didn't strain him at all.
"Yeah, I would call that strong", she said with a sarcastic note in her voice.
Clark ignored the bite. "And I'm fast."
"How fast?"
He thought about saying, as fast as those aliens from the black ship, but decided that would be a bad idea. "I can run from Smallville to Metropolis in about thirty seconds." Actually, he could do it faster, but thirty seconds somehow sounded more palatable.
Lana took on a pensive expression. "That's why I'd see you in Metropolis all the time. I always wondered how you had time to deal with the farm and come and see me too".
"It's helpful in getting the chores done too. And I wanted to see you." Clark's voice sank low as he remembered meeting her in her dorm, going out, having someone to date, having someone who cared. "I loved our time together." And I lost it. We could have been together.
Clark continued. "There's the heat vision. You saw me boil the water."
"Yes", she agreed. Apparently she didn't have questions about that. Of course, she'd seen the aliens in the black ship turn a bunch of police officers into well-blackened toast. Better not to dwell on the heat vision, he thought.
"And the X-ray vision thing." He winced as anger came back on her face.
"How much have you been snooping, Clark?" she asked.
"Really, I'm not", he said earnestly.
She pursed up her lips in a moue of disbelief.
"No, really. Come on, Lana. If you could look at people, underneath, what would you see? I don't want to see a lot of underwear and stuff. There's such a thing as too much information, you know."
She gave a tiny smile. Emboldened, he continued. "I'm not a Peeping Tom, Lana. I did look at you – the x-ray looking – when I got here, but I haven't looked at you that way since our sophomore year."
He answered her unspoken question, the quizzical expression on her face. "When Tina Greer was masquerading as you and I had to look for the meteor rock in her skeleton. That was the only way I could tell her apart from whoever she was pretending to be." I had to make sure you were you and not her, the unspoken subtext. "I only use it for emergencies, like seeing if people are hurt."
She still looked disbelieving, but gestured to go on, apparently giving him the benefit of the doubt.
"I have the breathing thing."
"The breathing thing?"
"Um, yes, you saw it when I cooled down the boiling water. It's the ability to breathe out large volumes of air, really fast and hard. Or I can super-cool my breath."
"How do you do that?" she asked, looking fascinated, momentarily forgetting her wariness.
"I'm not really sure, but I think I can extract energy from the air I inhale to the point where it turns liquid. Then I can turn it back into a gas which increases the volume, or leave it close to liquid. Liquid air is at a pretty cold temperature."
Sounded good to him; he'd never really thought about it before and he was scrambling for a plausible-sounding answer.
"So, you're strong, and fast, and have the heat vision and the x-ray vision and the breathing thing. Anything else?"
"My skin is pretty strong. I've been shot before and the bullets didn't penetrate."
Lana began breathing faster. Clark could hear her heartbeat speed up again. "Are you OK?" he asked her.
She sat back. "Just had a flashback to the time the…other…aliens from the black ship came. The police fired so many bullets at them." A pause. "It didn't affect them at all."
Clark moved a little closer to her, reached over to take her hand. She let him do it. He squeezed it gently. "But it's not like I'm wearing armor or something. For example, I can still feel you." He gave her an encouraging smile.
Slowly, Lana's breathing and heartbeat returned to normal. Clark hoped it meant that she was coming to accept him.
"What else?" she asked.
"Well, I can hear pretty well."
"Pretty well?"
Clark sighed and told her. "I didn't need GPS to come here. I listened for your voice and heartbeat and that's how I found you."
Shock crossed her face. She was speechless.
Clark continued. "In fact, it's a pretty good thing that I did, because you know you're way, way off the flight plan that your pilot filed."
"I'm not sure how long the plane flew after he died…" she said weakly. Then she rallied. "Clark, you're saying you could hear me from Smallville?"
He thought about saying, Well, I could have if I'd listened from there. He contented himself with telling her, "No, I heard you when I was up here in Canada away from the big cities."
She still looked incredulous.
"That's another thing I have to focus on to use it", he said. "I don't go around hearing everything in the world."
"What else can you hear?" Lana asked.
"Well, just the stuff that you would hear, unless I work at it." He scuffed his foot in the dirt, looking at the sparks flying from the fire. The sky had darkened from twilight to full night during their conversation. "It's that too-much-information thing again, Lana."
She nodded in understanding after a moment.
"That's about it", he finished.
"Are you sure?" she asked sharply. "You're not going to tell me that you have some other strange alien powers, like telepathy or time travel or something?" She continued ranting as Clark smiled ruefully. "I mean, this is all a big shock to me. Finding out that someone you thought you knew has all these powers and has been hiding them…Next you're going to tell me that you can fly!"
"Um…no." Clark thought about saying, Not yet, but salved his conscience by telling himself that right now, he couldn't. "But I can run really fast."
"I think we talked about that already." Her voice was tart.
He went for the comic relief. "All of those abilities are at your service, Madame", he said grandiloquently, bowing with a flamboyant sweep of a non-existent hat.
Lana gave a little giggle and relaxed.
"No, really, I mean it, Lana", he said in a more serious tone. "You're my friend." We were more than friends once, he thought, but carefully didn't say it. He didn't need to; he could tell that Lana was thinking that too.
Clark sat down again next to Lana, keeping quiet, watching the fire. The logs glowed a deep red at the base of the pile; a tiny crackling noise arose at intervals.
"So how are we going to get out of here?" she asked, dropping the what-are-Clark's-powers subject. Clark hoped he'd satisfied her on that score.
"Well, I've been doing some thinking about that." Clark leaned forward and stirred the fire with a branch. Sparks flew into the night air. "Now that you know about my abilities, things are, um, different now."
"You could say that", Lana agreed in a low voice.
"I thought about carrying you out at super-speed. But then I realized that even though the trees and branches wouldn't hurt me, you could get injured if you ran into one at super-speed. So speeding is out for you."
Lana felt curiously disappointed.
Clark continued. "I don't think you're really in any shape to walk. So there's two options. One: I can leave you here with the food and the tent and all the gear, and I can run at super-speed and come back with help."
Lana grimaced; she didn't relish the thought of being left alone. "How long would it take?"
"I could get to the nearest city pretty fast, but then it would take some time to get a rescue party out here. I think they'd have to fly in, and that means getting a water-landing plane. Or maybe they'd have to come in with horses and that would take a long time. I'm not really sure."
"What's option two?" she asked.
"That's where I carry you out, but at regular human walking or running speed. That would take a few days."
Lana considered that for a moment. "What would we do about water?"
"I think I remember where some streams are, that I passed on the way in. But if we couldn't get to a campsite with a stream or lake in time, I'd get you set up with the tent and then I'd just run back here to get water."
"Oh. That would work." Lana felt a little dazed; she was only beginning to understand the implications of having Clark on her side.
"I could run to a town and get a distress beacon", he mused. "But the problem is that they would wonder why you didn't use it right away. And if you said it was in the lake, they would wonder how you got it out of a crashed plane. And they would look into it and find out that it didn't come with the plane, and then they'd start asking questions about how you got it…" Clark trailed off.
"That would blow your cover", she said flatly.
"Yes", he said. Then he looked at her, almost-desperation in his eyes. "Lana, I've lived here on…on Earth my whole life, almost. I act like a human, I think like a human, I feel like a human. If it gets out that I'm not…" he frowned. "You've seen the paparazzi. Heck, you know what it's like to be in their sights since you married Lex. You're a target to them, that's all."
"I know", she said quietly. She thought back to the days after her engagement was announced, the wedding. The crowd of reporters, photographers, TV news gatherers, and just plain gawkers had actually frightened her. They'd pushed in on her, sticking their microphones under her face, screaming her name to get her attention, asking for a quote, a picture, the inside story of what it was like to live with Lex. Thank God for Luthorcorp Security. They'd held back the masses, kept them from crushing her.
It still wasn't good. She still had to have a bodyguard when she went out anywhere, and, although the novelty had worn off, she still got photographed regularly, reporters jumping up like jack-in-the-boxes just when she thought she was done with them.
"Please don't tell them, Lana", Clark pleaded. "Think of what it would do to my mother…" He swallowed. "They'd want to investigate me, put me in a lab somewhere…I'd have to be a fugitive. I'd have to leave Smallville, everyone and everything I care about…"
Wow. Clark had a real phobia about this. Then Lana was ashamed as she thought about it. He'd obviously had a lot more time to consider the possibilities than she had.
"I know what it's like to be in their sights", she said fiercely. "I'll help you keep your secret, Clark."
He gave a sigh of relief. "Thank you." He stirred the fire once again. Then he asked quietly, "Will you tell Lex?"
Lana looked up in confusion. "He is my husband…."
Neither of them mentioned the ill will between Clark and Lex, the numerous warnings Clark had given her about marrying Lex, the recriminations she'd thrown back at him, the many arguments they'd had.
"Please, Lana", Clark said softly.
She looked away and said nothing.