Charade drabble
So, I loved Charade. And I couldn't focus on my homework because I wanted to write about it. So, fanfic! :D Let me know what you think; I'm not very practiced at this sort of thing. Spoilers for Charade, naturally.
~~Only Love; Never Run Smooth~~
“I guess with him gone, the question is…am I enough?”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The question hung in the air like an ill omen.
Lois let out a shuddering breath and stepped forward, leaning a weary head on his shoulder. She clenched his shirt with one hand, bunching it up, pulling the fabric and his heartstrings taut. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her with more strength and security than he felt. Fear clawed at his throat.
In a hoarse whisper, she said, “I want you to be, Clark. God, I want you to be.”
And in the silence that followed Clark realized that the unspoken truth was that he wasn’t enough, couldn’t be enough. Not as he was now, here on this rooftop, half a man.
All his life he had lived with a fear that his secret made him too dangerous, too complicated, too much for anyone to share in his life. He had tried for so long to make himself less, so that he could fit in this world, fit in someone’s heart. He had folded up that alien part of himself and tucked it neatly away. Now, unfolded, open and kite-like, he let that part of himself fly free as the Blur. But still, he feared it was too much; he separated it from Clark Kent, cut himself in twain.
But to find that Clark Kent alone could not fill Lois’ heart? To know that after years of doing his best to compress himself into the shape of a mere man, that a mere man was not enough to fulfill the one person he loved with all of his being? Facing that new and opposite fear tore at him in a way he couldn’t put into words. It hollowed him out, it flattened him, it crumbled him up like an old newspaper. It hurt
.
He pulled her closer, afraid to think what might happen if he let go, squeezing his eyes tight shut.
After a quiet minute, she pulled back, but didn’t let go of his shirt, her white knuckles digging hard into his chest as she desperately anchored herself to him. She searched his eyes, silently begging him to understand.
And he did.
A life without responsibility was empty; a life without responsibly was a life without freedom, a life without purpose. Just as he couldn’t just stay in Smallville or the Fortress and leave humanity to its own devices, Lois couldn’t just be someone’s wife, someone’s love. They both saw the broken world and could not help but try to mend it, even if the cracks were too many and their hands too few.
But God help him, though he understood, he couldn’t help but beg her to feel otherwise. The memory of her repeating his old fears back to him, the idea of some evil thing harming Lois because of him, bid him do so.
“You don’t need him to make a difference, Lois. You were making a difference long before he showed up.”
Something flickered across her face, some spark of recognition he didn’t understand, but it came and went like lightning, gone in a second. She snorted.
“Right. Because I can do so much living on ramen and desperately searching the classifieds. Fear the power of the unemployed and useless Lois Lane.”
He shook his head, “You’re not going to be unemployed for long, you’re too good for that. But it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not all grand gestures and saving the world. Lois, you change lives by just being you.”
He tried his best to smile.
“And for what it’s worth-” she flinched, and too late, Clark realized the seeming bitter undertone of that phrase and regretted it, but pushed forward anyway, “-I love you.”
She stilled - and her heart did too, he heard it skip a beat - and the look on her face, the joy, the relief, the need, the sorrow, nearly shattered him. Silently, she began to cry.
He leaned forward, kissed the tear off her right cheek, and repeated himself. He kissed her furrowed brow, and repeated himself. He kissed the tear running down her left cheek, and her free hand came up to cradle his face as he did so. She trembled. He let his mouth linger there a moment longer, before he pulled back again, uttering his declaration one more time, with a cracked voice.
She brushed his lips with her thumb, and smiled weakly.
“I love you too.”
She pulled herself up to kiss him, at once reassuring and tentatively unsure. He deepened the kiss, trying to pour all of the intense emotion that filled him into that intimate caress. She responded in kind. They moved against each other with a frenzied, melancholy passion, every touch suffuse with meaning. But even in that silent, physical conversation, they left something unsaid, a want for fullness unsatisfied.
She sighed, and leaned into him, eyes shut. They stood there, weakly swaying in the breeze, foreheads touching, as their meal grew cold. And Clark wondered, with an ache that seemed to pull all of himself inward to one deep, black pinpoint of grief, where they would go from here.
A/N: So yeah. Thoughts?