Almost Whole (Chapter Thirty-Three)

"Clark," she sighed. "You might as well just come out."

Clark stepped from behind the tree, feeling rather stupid for hiding. It hadn't been his plan. His plan had been to knock on her door, offer food, then... That was about as far as the plan went. Then she'd been there and he hadn't known what to do. He felt so hesitant with her now, still so unsure of where he stood.

"How'd you know it was me?"

She wasn't looking at him. She was looking down, worrying at the sleeve near her left wrist. "I don't know. Process of elimination. I know exactly two people who can break the sound barrier and I chased one off earlier, so..."

"I heard you needed some alone time and I didn't want to just spring myself on you if you're..."

"It's okay. This isn't exactly sprung. I mean... It is a little, but..." She took a deep breath. "I've just spent the day watching two people who really need to talk avoiding each other. And I kept thinking how simple it would be if they just let go and... talked. How stupid they were being." She looked up, finally meeting his eyes. "I don't want to be stupid. Not anymore."

He moved closer. "You couldn't be stupid if you tried."

She shook her head. "I guess you can stay. Points for flattery and all." She glanced at the bag in his hand. "And for bearing gifts. What's that?"

"It's actually from Linda." He cradled the bag in one arm and looked in. "It's teriyaki chicken, an italian hoagie, falafel, a beef and bean burrito, penne vodka, and liver and onions... which you are free not to touch."

She made a face. "Sounds very international. Except for that last part."

He smiled. "It's in a separate container and hasn't touched the other food."

She held out her hand and he moved closer, handing over the bag. "Thanks."

"No problem." He sat on the stoop next to her.

She dug into the bag and pulled out the hoagie. He made note that it was his meal choice and wondered if it was some kind of sign. He chuckled.

"What?"

"Nothing," he lied, wondering when he had turned into such a girl, dissecting her choice of food now. He wasn't sure she was ready to hear that. "Just thinking."

"About what?" she pushed. He should have guessed she'd push.

About you. As usual. "I... I don't know. I have a few million things to tell you and I don't know where I should start and even... if I should start."

"I guess I vote for starting. I have about none of those millions of things and I... I guess should have at least one or two." She breathed a heavy sigh.

"You don't sound exactly eager."

"Probably because I'm not. Don't get me wrong. I love that there's this plethora of information in all of you, but... Sometimes it feels like I'm studying for some big exam and... I just... I don't know how well I'll do."

"From all accounts, you're passing with flying colors."

She chuckled. "Well, I heard I was valedictorian."

He laughed as well. "You're the smartest person I've ever known." He looked sideways and caught her eyes, his laughter stopping. "Always were."

"Always," she repeated, shaking her head in wonder. "There's an entire life in that word and... I don't own that life. Everyone around me has pieces of it."

"We... We'd all willingly give you all we..."

"I know," she cut in. "I think, deep down, I always knew that you... that all of you," she corrected, looking away from him. "That you had what I needed, but all this time I was so scared to even ask. I knew it would change everything. And it has."

He furrowed his brow. "When did this start?"

She shrugged. "It's been coming on so gradually. It really started when I met you." She shook her head again. "I keep saying that, as if it was the first time, but... In a way, it was. I think... until that moment, I never questioned my life. But then this hulking guy walks into The Daily Planet and..." She frowned and turned to him. "Why did you?"

"Why did I what?"

"I mean, am I the reason you got the job and..."

"No. I..." He sighed. "Yeah. That's not true. Truth is, Jimmy kind of railroaded me into that... I guess you could loosely call it an interview with Perry. But I doubt I would have taken the job if you weren't there."

"Why?"

"I wanted to protect you and..." He squeezed his eyes shut. "That's not true, either. I needed to be around you."

"But why the job? Why couldn't you just... introduce yourself at a coffee shop or something?"

"I didn't think I should. You had your new life and I didn't want to interfere, but then... You didn't know me. I thought that made it okay. That I cold keep an eye on you and make sure you didn't get into any trouble." He chuckled slightly. "As if that's possible."

"Thanks." She hit him with her knee. "But you were wrong. I did know you. Not in any tangible way. I... I don't know. I couldn't figure you out. I felt this... fear of you." He winced as she said it. "I had these ideas that maybe you being there was somehow bad news."

"You weren't wrong. I wasn't always good news for you." He took a deep breath. "Lois..."

"No. Don't."

"But you should know..."

"I know I should, but I... I need more time." She turned to him with a helpless look. "You don't know what this is like, Clark. It's not just all the knowledge. It's this... resentment that I could forget in the first place. And the hardest part is actually... you." She turned away again. "I have accounts and theories that I turn over and over about you. You're like... half the exam. You seem to count for fifty percent of my grade. You seem to be this link that makes all of it click and I... I don't know how to fit you in." She glanced heavenward and leaned back against the door. "I can't figure out if you're my partner or my friend or my enemy or my... lover." Her face reddened slightly at this.

Or all of the above, he thought, staying silent.

"And there's this part of me that doesn't even want to try to figure out you before I figure out me, whoever that is." She laughed bitterly. "You know, when all his started, I thought I was having some kind of hallucinations, these... visions." She frowned. "Or memories. I guess I know now that's what they are." She leaned back and toyed with the wrapper on the hoagie. "I'm relieved to know I'm not crazy now, but... Sometimes I think I'll get there."

"You won't get anywhere near there," he said earnestly. "Not if I have any power to stop it."

She turned her head to him. "You mean that," she said, her voice shaking slightly.

"With everything in me," he said honestly. "You mean that much."

"That only makes you scarier." She looked away. "Because I hate meaning that much to someone and not remembering it." She blew out a long, steamy breath. "That meaning... that belongs to Chloe Sullivan. To Lois Lane, you're... someone she works well with. You're someone she's... heavily attracted to. But, to Chloe, you seem to have been more than I can grasp and..." She groaned. "Did you ever feel that you were two people?"

He found himself startled into laughter. So he went on laughing. He had to.

"Jesus!" Soon, she was laughing, too. "Look who I'm talking to."

"I was gonna say..."

A car backfired somwhere east and they stopped as the sound sliced through the air, effectively bringing them back to a silent earth.

"I'm no one," she whispered.

He stared sideways at her, not sure what to say. "That's not true," he said, for lack of anything better.

"I'm not really Lois. I'm not really Chloe. I suppose I'm just... imperfect. Unfinished. That's what Murray thinks."

"Murray admires you. We all do. He doesn't think you're..."

"I'm not saying he thinks I'm lacking in some way, just that... The job wasn't done," she said firmly. "On Grady's end."

Clark mulled that over, visions of ghost limbs and pencil imprints in his mind.

"He wasn't done with me," she went on, staring ahead of her. "He must have taken the big stuff, but there was enough left over to get me asking questions and to trigger the headaches."

"Do they still..."

"They're gone now," she said firmly. "I'm not saying it's not still hard remembering. It pretty much throws my entire world view out of whack, but... It doesn't hurt, not physically." She laughed harshly. "I actually have a card carrying evil scientist to thank for that."

He clenched his fists. "I don't think thanks are called for. That same concoction started this."

"My choice started this. I need to make peace with that."

He faced her, aghast. "Lois, I found traces of the chemical on your shirt and..."

"From what we know, Grady had some level of involvement with that project. That chemical might have been just... part of the treatment."

"But we don't know that for sure. You might have been..."

"I might have been perfectly willing to go along with the process."

"I can't believe that."

"Clark I'm trying to forgive myself, here. It would help if you just..."

"What? Forgive you? You did nothing wrong. I was the one who..." He stopped as the color drained from her face. "Another time," he said, restraining himself. "I just... I can't bear to think that you would really want to forget all of it."

"Yeah. I think we might be entering the realm of TMI, here."

"That's not just about us," he said, staring ahead. "It's about you. About who you are. You never hid from the truth. That's why it's been so hard for me, hiding the truth from someone like you." He clenched his fists again to keep from tearing off a chunk of her stoop. "It's frustrating and angering because I can't help feeling it's... it's not what you need. I... Maybe not always, but these days, I seem driven to always give you... what you need."

She was silent, but seemed calm, so he went on.

"When I first found the chemicals and had Murray analyze them, we'd thought maybe of... using some derivative to help you cope with the headaches, like a post-hypnotic suugestion, but... In the end, we couldn't do it. It was too dangerous."

Lois nodded alowly. "Doctor Albright wasnt so fill of scruples. Of course, I don't think she meant to help me at all. It was just.... a supposedly good byproduct of something so awful..." She shook herself. "I tend to paint Grady in a sweeter light. I suppose all that therapy, some of it even real, bonded us. I suppose I could have been his masterpiece if he hadn't skipped town. He nearly created a life. A life free of history. A life uncomplicated by pesky things like truth."

"Do you want..."

"I don't know what I want," she broke in, her voice breaking. "I don't know if I see that as better. Sometimes I do. I mean, it has to be better than this... half-existence. One foot in one life, one foot in the other, and never quite stepping over that line. Such a miserable excuse for a life..."

"No," Clark protested, turning to her. "You have a life now, even if..."

"Do I? Because, from what I see, I have a livelihood and days that are filled. But who am I? I have no personality."

He grasped her shoulders. "Don't be ridiculous. You..."

"I have no idea who I am. I don't even know my favorite ice cream, not for sure. I don't know my favorite movie or..."

"Chocolate peanut butter," he said suddenly

She grew still. "What?"

"You like chocolate peanut butter. You used to call it the cure-all. You said that chocolate was shown to be good for the circulatory system, while peanut butter helped with memory retention." He found himself smiling. "You said that it must say something about you that your choice in ice cream was such a perfect balm for the mind and body. And I said..." He stopped, not sure how much was too much.

"What did you say?" she prodded, her hands gripping his forearms.

He loosened his grasp. "Well, you always had to back everything up with some scientfic fact. I said you couldn't admit that it was junk food and you just liked the taste. And you said 'Well, of course I like the taste, or I'd be eating ginkgo biloba and aspirin ice cream.' You know, that was one of the many times you had me running to the computer to look something up after pretending I knew what you were talking about."

"Not aspirin..." She smiled slightly.

"Ginkgo biloba."

"Well, I cant be sure, since you don't get sick." She looked down.

He did, too. Her hoagie was squashed between them. "Oh. Sorry." He let her go reluctantly.

He swore he saw a flash of disappointment in her eyes as well before she scooted over, leaning back against the railing. "So... you know me that well?"

"I think we spent more time together than anyone who wasn't born conjoined. Yes."

"Well, then... What is my favorite movie?"

He leaned back and stared at her. "I don't think I can say."

"Clark, I doubt this little detail is more than I can handle."

"No. I... really don't think I can say. You never played favorites. You had a.. type. You liked the forties. From screwball comedies to drama, noir pieces... So I guess that makes it more of a time than a type."

She rolled her eyes. "And here I thought you knew so much about me. Everyone has a favorite."

"I don't know. I... You'd force me to watch so many and you always said I absolutely had to see every one until you wore me down. But I think... I think you were fanatical about Citizen Kane."

"No points for originality, then. Isn't that supposed to be the top movie of all time? I mean, on AFI, at least."

"I just remember being bored out of my mind and you kept pausing it, explaining to me why I shouldn't be bored out of my mind. I thought you were a little crazy. In my defense, I was thirteen and we'd just met and I was a little afraid of you."

"The superpowered being was afraid of me?"

"You were just so... intense. I remember you covering your eyes near the end. You said you couldn't look. And I wondered why. Then I saw Rosebud burning and you kept going on about how much you hated that nobody would ever know. I didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, I thought Rosebud being a sled was kind of a let down. But you said that wasn't the point. It was that they didn't find out the truth. That if they'd splashed that name everywhere, then someone would have known. Then you told me you weren't going to make that mistake. You'd always make sure everyone knew. You said that, when we were in high school, you were going to take Smallville High's crappy paper and turn it into the bastion of truth. I had to run and look up bastion." He smiled. "You were right, though. You took a paper about sports worship and club events and turned it into something a lot of people picked up over The Ledger. And me..." he shook his head. "I just worked on it. Mostly to hide the truth from the most troublesome reporter in the history of reporters."

She laughed. "I do sound pretty scary."

"To a messed up kid, trying so hard to hide who he was, you were downright terrifying. But I just didn't see you the right way then. When you found out, I... I wondered why I never told you before. I should have known you'd be the best partner... the best friend I could have ever had."

"Best friends," she whispered. "I... Clark, I... I wouldn't mind having that again." She looked down. "With you."

Her knee was touching his and he wanted to tell her that there was so much more they could be, even nearly had been. "I... Are you sure that's what you want? Because there are other things that... If you knew, you might think twice about..."

"I know you know me. I know I want to know me. That's all I need for now."

He wanted to give her what she needed.

"So... maybe we should... get together sometimes and... hang out."

"But are you sure..."

"Clark, I'm not talking about dismantling bombs and going target shooting, here. But maybe we could watch movies or go bowling or ice skating."

"Not ice skating," he said, wincing. "You kind of hate it. You fell down once and some kid's skate went nearly over your elbow."

She pulled her sleeve up and turned her arm over. "So that's what that's from." She turned to him, her "I guess this is exactly what I mean. You know this stuff. Linda doesn't even know most of this stuff. You... As complicated as this should be, I... I don't know. It seems pretty simple right now. Clark, I want to be friends."

"I want that, too," he said honestly. I want that so much. I want more than... He kept the rest to himself, standing as she did.

"So what about tomorrow?"

Work, training, being Clark, being Superman, lunch with Lana... "I think I can squeeze you in," he said, wishing he didn't even have to think of the rest of it. Just her.

"Bowling sounds kind of good. Do I like bowling?"

"You do."

"Good." She moved to the door, then turned back. "I wasn't one of those crazies that had my own monogrammed shirt or anything..."

"No. Just healthy enjoyment of the game. You weren't even good at it."

"Chloe Sullivan: bad, but content bowler. You learn something new every day." She held up the hoagie. "Thanks for this. I think you should take the liver with you... and destroy it."

"Will do." He picked up the bag.

"Night."

He watched the door close before he moved down the steps, turning to look back.

Friends.

It was enough. For now, it was enough.

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Continued in... Almost Friends