inalienable rights CHAPTER ELEVEN
Clark stood shyly against the closed door of Marin's bunker, taking in his surroundings. "I didn't realize any of you actually lived here."
Marin was trying to subtly shove a pile of dirty laundry under her bed. "Well, I'm the only one. I live here most of the time. Dr. Swann lives in New York, as you know, and so does Dr. Crosby. Andrea lives with her husband a couple of blocks from here, and Ethan - I think he still lives with his parents."
Clark chuckled. "Really?"
"No," Marin answered, settling herself on the bed, sitting cross-legged against the headboard. "But he's so socially stunted, he may as well."
Clark retreated further into the corner by the door as he eyed the room - Marin in a bulky sweatshirt, sitting on the bed, surrounded by all the evidence of her achievements - certificates, trophies, ribbons - proof of her brilliance and ambition. Then there were the things that belied her softness and individuality - a shelf of Jane Austen novels intermixed with her science texts, photos of friends and family, walls adorned with her own charcoal sketches of things she'd never seen, uneven stacks of CDs and movies, a well-worn teddy-bear stuffed between crates of technical notebooks where most people would never notice it. The hidden Marin - smart and talented, and look what I'm reducing her to.
Marin adjusted her position to lean against the wall, turning toward Clark. "You can, uh… you can actually come in, you know - I mean, there's no point in standing in the corner." She had grown very adept at feigning confidence she didn't really feel, and was pooling all her resources at the moment to keep from combusting in a burst of nervous energy. She didn't have the nerve to tell Clark that she really did want him to come in, if only so she could pretend for just a little while that it was her whom he cared for. She also didn't have the heart to burden him with her feelings, because she knew he didn't share them.
Clark took a step forward, then his eyes fell on a framed picture of Marin and a young man, looking very happy together in thick parkas on what appeared to be a ski trip. He withdrew his forward step and sank back into the corner. "This is just - it's too intimate."
Marin released a long-bottled anxious laugh. "Well, yeah, it tends to be that way."
"No, I mean this… here. In your room, with all your stuff - "
Marin looked confused. "We can do this more clinically, but I thought - well, is that what you want?"
"No, it's just…" Clark stopped to search the ceiling for his explanation, and instead turned back to the framed photo and picked it up. "It's this. This guy."
"Jake? What about him?"
"Is he your boyfriend?"
Marin's face washed over with a pained expression. "Not that it should matter to you, but no, not anymore." Her voice fell and her eyes retreated to another time. "He met somebody else," she added darkly. "There's nobody you need to worry about, if that's what you mean. I'm not with anybody, so I'm not cheating anybody."
Clark raised his eyebrow. "Except yourself."
"People do this every day, Clark. Most for much less noble or moral reasons."
"But I don't, and neither do you."
Marin scowled. "Geez, you really do have some kind of superhuman ability to avoid any moral ambiguity, don't you?"
"I just don't feel right about this, Marin!" Clark shouted. "And honestly, I don't know why that's so hard for you to understand - or why this is so easy for you."
"I never said it was easy for me, I just said I was willing to do it for your sake."
"But why?" Clark finally gave up his post by the door and approached the bed, his face close enough to Marin's that she could see her reflection in his eyes. "Why are you willing to do this for me? What makes me worth it?"
Marin held his gaze and returned it wordlessly, until her resolve broke and she was forced to blink away her treacherous tears. "I don't know what you want to hear, Clark. There are answers you need and I can help you get them. I'm willing to help you get them, and that has to be enough for you."
Clark didn't reply right away, in truth because he didn't know how to. Was it enough for him? Was it even enough for her? He looked down again at the picture of Marin and Jake. "Why do you still keep this, in a frame by your bed?"
"Clark, I'm pretty sure it was you who said this was too intimate - and this isn't helping." Marin hugged a pillow to her chest.
"Just - humor me, okay? Why do you keep this if he broke your heart?"
"Why does it matter?"
"Just answer the question."
"Because… he meant something to me once. We had a history."
"You shared experiences."
"To put it incredibly vaguely, yes, we obviously 'shared experiences.'"
"Experiences that you're having trouble getting over."
Marin gave in to the tears and tucked her chin into the pillow. "What's your point?" she whispered.
Clark knelt by the edge of the bed and looked up into Marin's red-rimmed eyes. "You're holding on to memories made with someone who deliberately hurt you."
Marin shook her head. "You don't know that he - "
"He did," Clark stated, preventing her from protesting. "But you're holding on."
"And again," Marin spat bitterly. "What is your point?"
"It's just that - experiment or not - if we share this experience, we're both going to hold on to it."
"How do you know that?"
"Are you saying it would be easy for you to forget?"
Marin sniffled and smiled in spite of herself. "No," she admitted.
"Dr. Swann said that we're the sum of our experiences," Clark recited as he stood and backed toward the door. "I don't want yours to add up unevenly because of me."
"Is that all?" Marin scoffed.
"Isn't that enough?"
"No."
Clark put his hand on the door handle and mulled over his reply. Finally, he spoke. "Marin, I'm just a scared farm kid. I really don't know what to do."
Marin pulled deeper into herself, hiding behind the pillow, but she still threw on her brave face. "Clark, the decision is all yours. If you decide the answers are worth it, just come back and knock on the door."
Clark nodded solemnly and disappeared through the door, closing it gingerly behind him.
"That was Lois Lane," Martha announced as she pulled a pan of fresh blueberry muffins from the oven, having just hung up the phone.
"Lois Lane?" Jonathan answered with surprise, washing his hands in the kitchen sink. "Did she leave something here?" He reached for a muffin, but Martha slapped his hand back.
"Not now, dinner's almost ready!" Since Clark had forced the issue of honesty and all had been laid out on the table, Martha was feeling more like herself again. "You could give me a hand and set the table. You can handle a table for two, can't you?"
Jonathan playfully rolled his eyes and opened a cupboard. "I may need step-by-step instructions, just in case. What's this round, flat thing for?"
"If you break my plate, I'm buying new dishes."
Jonathan cradled the dinner plate like an infant. "No harm will come to your dinnerware," he vowed with a grandiose bow and continued to set the table. "What did Lois want?"
Martha furrowed her brow and upended the muffin pan. "I can't really say, I don't think she was sure either."
Jonathan looked up from the table. "What does that mean?"
"I don't know, she wanted the number of the friends Clark is staying with, because apparently he has some answers she needs? I don't know, she was talking a mile a minute and I couldn't get a word in."
"You didn't give her the number, did you?"
Martha glared at Jonathan and smacked him with a dishtowel. "No, I didn't give her the number. I told her I misplaced it."
Jonathan rubbed the spot on his arm where the towel had struck. "You're lethal with that thing, you know."
"I know," Martha smirked. "You don't think Lois ran into Clark in Metropolis, do you?"
Jonathan shrugged. "Couldn't say. It's a big city."
Clark paced the spartan accommodations of his tiny underground bunker for what felt like hours, contemplating each decision he could make and what all the possible outcomes might be. Sometimes he could justify just going for it, sometimes he couldn't.
In the end, you could surmise that all of Marin's arguments had held their weight and convinced him. Maybe he had analyzed it to the point that it made no sense anymore, and the only answer was to act. Maybe he was simply a young man, drawn by biology and curiosity to what had been promised to him.
Whichever thread of reason you follow, you'll find they all led Clark down the hall that night, to knock on Marin's door.