Clark stayed awake a little longer, thinking about her comments. Lana didn't know all the mistakes he'd made, the regrets he'd had. But then he thought, That's in the past now. All I can do is go forward from here. He carefully leaned over and touched her.
That was one of the things he'd come to enjoy most about this strange camping trip. The tent was very snug – purportedly a two-man, but the two men would have to be pretty cozy. Clark found himself waking up every morning with an arm thrown over Lana. Sometimes it was Lana's arm over him. The first morning it had been a little awkward, but then they'd both wordlessly decided to accept it, to live with it as part of this odd series of events.
Clark realized that he'd been starved for human touch ever since breaking up with Lana. When they were together, he'd loved touching her, caressing her, running his hands over her body as they made love, before and after too. Even handshakes and hugs in public had the unstated background, the promise to touch each other tenderly later on. She'd massaged him, rubbed his back, tantalized him with light butterfly-like touches too. He missed all that.
His mother still hugged him, but it was different now that his father was gone and he was the man of the house. Clark had to protect her now; in some ways, the parent-child relationship had turned upside down. He still loved and respected his mother, but he saw now how his parents had given him the tools to become an adult. Sometimes the responsibility was hard.
Clark couldn't touch Chloe, not that he didn't want to, but it might awaken sleeping dogs in the delicate détente of their emotional relationship. Chloe was his best friend, and he trusted her beyond anyone except his mother, but a romantic relationship? What could happen there? He might lose her friendship, a thought not bearable.
Of course, he wasn't going to be hugging and kissing Lois, and even the handshakes and hearty pats on the back from Lex were, of course, now a thing of the past.
So, to be curled up against another human, to feel their warmth, their heart beating, to hear their steady breathing in the dark stillness of three a.m., was a simple joy to him. Clark couldn't stop remembering the times Lana and he had fallen asleep in bed together after making love. Sometimes, (and it was becoming more frequent), on this trip, in the tent together, he felt the stirrings of desire.
He wondered if Lana did too. In his fantasies, he saw them kissing, hugging, going further. Then the baby would cry and he'd come plummeting back to Earth, realizing that Lana had just delivered a baby and probably was in no mood for sex. And that wasn't even getting into the whole Lex-is-your-husband thing. So Clark had carefully kept these feelings to himself.
It would be hard to see Lana go back to her life with Lex. Confessing his secret to her had gotten things out in the open. Despite the initial fear, she accepted him now, and conversations together now weren't aborted by Clark's need to misdirect and lie to protect his identity. He'd grown to love her even more.
Clark tossed and turned. Then there was Laura. The baby had become dear to him as the days passed. He loved her tiny face, her dark eyes that sometimes widened in surprise, sometimes screwed up in rage as she cried for food or changing. Clark spent a lot of time holding her when they were in camp; Laura in turn seemed to like being held by him. Most of the time, now, she'd stop crying when Clark picked her up. He found himself singing lullabies and nursery rhymes to her, tunes that he remembered his mother singing to him when he was a child.
But when they got back to civilization…officially, Laura was Lex's child. Lex would get the DNA test, the birth certificate - all the insignia of title, so to speak – he had all the parental rights. Even though Clark had been present at her birth, had cared for her for days now, legally, he had no claims to Laura.
Unless I'm really her father…Clark resolutely turned his thoughts away. He didn't know the law – if a child was born to parents in wedlock, was the male parent automatically presumed to be the father of the child, even with DNA evidence disproving it? What if the mother said that someone other than her husband was the father? Luthorcorp lawyers would certainly argue whatever was most advantageous for Lex. If I were her father…But proving that would be difficult to do without revealing his secret. Clark would do it in a heartbeat, though, when he thought what lay in store for Laura.
Lex hated Clark. There was no way he'd ever let Clark see Laura. She'd be surrounded by bodyguards, isolated, raised in the mansion with only servants for company, no true friends. And, worst of all, raised by the Luthor family, a family with a parricidal grandfather, a murdering, mentally ill grandmother, and a twisted father. Clark liked Lana, but knew there was no way she could stand up to the power and influence of the Luthors. She was only one person against the machine.
Fantasies spun through his head. What if Lana divorced Lex? Now that she knew his secret, Clark could and would offer marriage. He would gladly raise Laura, assuming that Lana could get custody. He bet that Lana still had some feelings for him, from things that she'd said – and hadn't said—on their travels together.
Then reality hit him upside the head. Don't be stupid, Clark, he told himself. He forced himself to go to sleep.
Lana woke in the middle of the night, crawling out to use the latrine, her increased frequency a remnant from her pregnancy. Clark woke a little as he usually did, but fell back to sleep as she re-entered the tent. Lana sat up in the tight confines, her head brushing the centerline. She picked up Laura, put the squirming baby to her breast.
As Laura nursed, Lana stared into the darkness of the tent, just thinking. It awed her that Clark now trusted her with his secret. Even though she'd found out by accident, he'd been open, telling her things she wouldn't have found out on her own, things that he hadn't really needed to tell her. It was as if he'd decided, If she knows part of it, I'm going to tell her everything about it.
Knowing that Clark was an alien made so much sense now. It explained all the weird happenings, the crazy things that always seemed to occur around him. Seeing him (or, more accurately, not seeing him) use super-speed to set up their camp brought back memories of miraculous rescues, now explained. She still had a little bit of an aversion to the heat vision; despite the much-appreciated hot showers, at times Lana still had horrible memories of the black ship aliens burning up people, destroying vehicles, leaving charred piles of ash.
It was amazing, really. Waking up in the morning, realizing, I'm sleeping next to an alien, made her breath catch sometimes. The world wasn't all explored and discovered. She wasn't bound to being what her parents had been. There was something really astounding in the world and she knew what – knew who - it was. Sometimes she just said, Wow, quietly, as Clark did some other unreal thing.
The things he could do…he'd run all day with her in his arms and never be breathing hard. Clark would set up camp, hunt for food, cook, heat water, do all sorts of things to make them more comfortable, and he never made any cracks about her not doing any of the work. He'd literally almost died for her in the bear attack, then had miraculously healed himself. He'd come to search her out in the middle of the wilderness. Lana faced it – she would have died of exposure or starvation, or from having the baby, without his help.
It had been very good having the time to really talk with him. Lana would talk, Clark would reply, as he carried her. By now she figured that Clark was running slower than before, but that he didn't seem to realize it. Selfishly she hoped that subconsciously, he wanted to spend more time with her. She certainly wanted to spend more time with him. It was an odd vacation, a prolonged date, a forced intimacy.
Having Clark's secret out in the open made their conversation easy now. They could talk about anything, and did. Except Lex, and her marriage, and what would happen in the future. Both had tacitly stayed away from those topics - metaphorical kryptonite.
Lana hadn't wanted to face it, but holding her baby at three a.m. in the dark night, she forced herself to consider the future. She couldn't turn her back on Clark now; they were better friends than ever. Lana asked herself if she still had romantic feelings for him. Yes you do and you know it, she told herself. Waking up in the morning clutching him, legs entwined with his, head resting on his chest, probably told him that too. Ever the gentleman, he'd said nothing, defusing a potentially awkward topic. Lately, though, a few of Clark's physical reactions had made Lana wonder if Clark still had romantic feelings for her, too.
Of course, after just having a baby,(and without an epidural or anythingshe thought), sexual intercourse was the last thing she wanted right now. But as the days passed, Lana remembered some of the other things they'd done, the tender kisses, the love play, the caresses,. She wanted to ask, Clark, do you remember that too? But she didn't dare. Opening that topic was too dangerous.
She switched Laura to the other breast, lost in thought. I've married Lex. I've given him my word. We have a child together. Although, right now, it felt like Laura was Clark's baby.
She wondered about that, sometimes – counting back, it was possible. If Clark had been human, like he said, at that time. Her biology classes had given her an idea of all the incredible things that had to go right for a woman to have a healthy baby (which Laura seemed to be, so far.) Despite the Inquisitor's frequent lurid headlines (and to think I used to just laugh at the "I Had Sex With A Space Alien" stories), Lana didn't think that it would be that simple for an alien and a human to have a child together. In fact, it was probably impossible. But if Clark was human then…She wondered if she dared to bring up that subject in their conversations. She really wanted to ask him – were you really human, Clark, then, or were you just a Kryptonian without powers? The answer might make such a difference.
What bothered her, what kept her awake at night, were trust issues. She'd broken up with Clark because of that, tired of his lying. Now Lana wondered about Lex – he said that he trusted her, that he was telling her everything. But she knew that he wasn't, not all the time, not about everything. She knew that Lex had to keep some things confidential for business, and knew that Lex felt she might not want to hear all the gory details of certain other things. But was Lex straight with her about the things she asked him directly about? It was making her paranoid, almost – Is Lex lying to me about this or not? She could never be certain.
Wispy daydreams had gone through her head in the past few days. Gradually they were becoming more solid, but still fantastical. Thoughts of divorcing Lex, of marrying Clark, having Martha Kent as Laura's grandmother. Living with a man who had proved with his actions that he loved her, a man who trusted her with his biggest secret.
Then sober second thoughts intruded. Be serious, Lana. Lex would never let his daughter go. And did Lana want to leave him? Lex loved her too, she would bet on that.
Strange as it would seem, the money wasn't a factor – not only had Lex given her several million dollars when they arranged the pre-nuptial agreement, but she had her trust fund, investments from her parents' life insurance policies. She'd always had enough to live comfortably. Just because she'd married a billionaire didn't mean that she was tied to the billionaire lifestyle.
But marrying a billionaire had its drawbacks too – being stalked by paparazzi not least among them. Lana shifted restlessly, the baby breaking off her suckling for a moment as she did so. Another reason to stay with Lex. Going to Clark would be the juiciest scandal of the decade – a love triangle that would guarantee scads of sales of the Inquisitor and other tabloids. They'd never have privacy. And now Lana knew how important that was to Clark. He was good at covering up his secret, but he slipped sometimes.
Lana closed her eyes, squeezing the lids tightly. She told herself that what was important was that she had given Lex her word. She'd promised to marry, love, and honor him. Maybe it was natural to want to go back to an old flame, to what now seemed a better offer, but she'd like to feel that when she gave her word, it meant something, that it wouldn't be thrown to the side at the first temptation. It's my integrity on the line. I will not betray Lex. I'll make our marriage work.
Right now, hearing Clark's steady breathing in the tent, it seemed a dry and bitter thought. She sighed.
Then she had another thought: What if Lex betrayed me first?