inalienable rights CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Marin sat with her legs folded beneath her in the long grass, which was just beginning to dry and wither as autumn commenced its bleeding into winter. She wanted to wither too, to fade until she was parched and then ground into the earth, hardened by the cold season. October would end soon, and Marin Blake found herself wishing she could follow it as it slipped away, to stay with the last of her happy days in the frozen peace that lay behind the approaching future, the comfort of a few precious moments on days now hidden, because the page of the calendar has turned. The place where months and seasons go when their purpose has been served.

But Marin couldn't wither. She had felt herself begin to change, she was growing stronger. She had none of Clark's abilities, but she didn't need any to hear him step tentatively up behind her and drop to his knees in the grass.

"Marin?" he spoke softly. "Why don't you come back inside?"

Marin barely glanced at him over her shoulder, but turned away quickly in an effort to hide her tears. She'd never liked wearing her heart on her sleeve, and she'd already shown too much of herself to Clark. No more tears for Clark Kent, she'd decided. Tears are anarchists, however, and seldom obey orders. "I'm okay here," she whispered.

"No," Clark shook his head. "It's not safe, we don't know when Lionel will come or what he's planning to do. You need to come inside, he'll be coming for you."

Marin scoffed. "Lionel Luthor is coming for me. That's rich."

"Well, you know - the baby." Clark rested his elbows on his knees and studied his boot laces.

"The clone," Marin corrected and tried to inconspicuously wipe the wetness out of her left eye.

Clark winced and scratched the back of his head. "Please don't say that."

"You have to call a spade a spade, Clark."

"Maybe you have to, but don't tell me that I do. Like you said before, I'm not bound by the same conventions. Yeah, I can do a lot of things that other people can't, but what I really want is the things they take for granted."

"Like parenthood."

Clark shifted uncomfortably and looked up at the empty sky. "Well yeah, to put a fine point on it."

"Well, that's the point you're trying to make, isn't it?"

"I guess."

"You guess?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Marin shook her head. "Spit it out, Clark."

"What?" He looked up at her in surprise.

"I can tell there's something you're not saying."

"No there isn't," Clark protested. "Not really."

Marin raised an eyebrow and turned to face him. "Yes there is."

"Nope."

"Yep."

"Why do you think so?"

"Just say it."

"Fine!" Clark growled, but didn't continue.

"Well?" Marin prodded after waiting for a moment.

"Give me a minute."

"Okay."

Clark pulled a blade of grass out of the ground and tore it lengthwise into strips. "It's just that… see, this might be as close as I'll ever get to the normal family thing."

"And by 'this' you mean the clone I'm carrying," Marin surmised.

"The baby."

"Right, the baby."

"Yeah, that's what I mean." He tossed the shredded blade of grass into the breeze. "And I also meant you."

"Me?" Marin looked incredulous. "What are you talking about?"

Clark looked suddenly petrified and ran a nervous hand through his hair as he stammered. "I mean you… and me… and the baby, just - you know? What I mean?"

Marin's jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide. "You mean you want to do this together? As in… together?"

Clark himself looked taken aback by hearing the idea put into even such vague words. "I… well… yeah? Yes, I mean. Yes."

Marin searched his eyes. "Are you serious?" she whispered.

Clark nodded earnestly. "Yeah." He took her right hand. "We can do this, Marin. We can make this work."

Marin drew her hand back. "No."

"No?" Clark looked bruised. "We can't make it work? Why not?"

Marin fought the tears that she felt rising once again. "Because it's not really what you want. You want the whole Norman Rockwell painting ideal, but the trouble is I'm not the one in that picture. I don't want you committing yourself to me out of some misguided sense of obligation."

Clark made no attempt to hide his shock, tinged with anger. "Misguided? Misguided? You're carrying my child! How is it misguided that I should want to stand by you? I can't let you go through that alone! And sorry, but it's not entirely up to you, it's up to me too."

"You didn't put me in this position, Clark, you don't owe me anything. We're both victims. We were both dealt an unfair hand here."

"And what? You're just going to sit by and accept the worst of it? You don't even want to try to make the best of it?"

"It wouldn't be real, Clark! Don't you see that? We could play house for a while and pretend that everything's comin' up daisies, we might even be happy, but it wouldn't last. You're in highschool Clark, you have everything ahead of you, this is not what you want."

"Don't tell me what I want!" Clark cried. "You don't know what I want."

"Being trapped is not what you want, I know that."

"This isn't being trapped, this might be my only chance at this."

"At fatherhood? You want to do that, at seventeen? You are not responsible for this, Clark! You're meant for such big things, don't you see that? You can't tie yourself down to something you don't really want out of a sense of duty that isn't really yours."

"Stop telling me what I can't do," Clark spat.

"You don't love me, Clark, that's the bottom line. I've accepted that. Don't pretend you feel something that you don't. It only makes this harder for both of us."

"Why are you so sure of what I feel or don't feel?" Clark edged closer to her.

Marin looked at him directly. "Can you look me in the eye and say you love me?"

Clark hesitated. "I…"

"See?" Marin turned away, cursing the still-rising tears.

"Don't do that, Marin. Stop assuming things. A lot of stuff has happened lately, you've got to give me some time to figure that out. Maybe you're right and it can't work, but I think it's worth really giving it a try, don't you?

"It's just prolonging the inevitable."

"Why do you say things like that?"

Marin smiled in spite of herself and shook her head. "You really don't see it, do you?"

"What?"

"Lois."

"Lois?"

"Don't deny you have feelings for her."

Clark swallowed dryly. "Well yes, but… no more than for you."

Marin couldn't suppress a wounded laugh. "Oh, now that's just not true."

"And you would know that how?" Clark queried indignantly.

"I'm a skilled observer, but you wouldn't have to be one to see there's something between you two. Something undeniable. You love her. She's the one in your Norman Rockwell painting."

Clark responded with silence, and he remained wordless for quite some time as he stared out over the horizon. Finally, he shook his head and turned back to Marin. "No. That isn't a good enough reason. Just because you think I'm supposed to be with somebody else doesn't mean that I agree. I've had enough of people telling me what my future is supposed to be, what I'm supposed to do - I don't want it all mapped out. I don't want to have things decided for me. I care about Lois, yeah, and that may or may not change, I don't know, but that's the point. The future hasn't happened yet, we don't know what's in it, and I want it that way. The only thing I know for sure is that this, right here right now with you, is an opportunity, and I may never have another chance like this. No, I wasn't planning on being a dad at seventeen, but life is unpredictable and I can't just give this up. And I can't just pass you up either. If you really truly don't care about me and don't want to give this a shot that's one thing, but if you do, you have to try it with me. You said we're both victims here, and yeah, it started that way but it doesn't have to end that way. It's not gonna be easy either way, but wouldn't you rather try it together first?"

Clark's boyish hopefulness was beginning to wear down Marin's defenses, but she was determined not to let him make a mistake, as she was certain that was what it would be. "It's not that simple, Clark."

"Of course it isn't simple, it's the craziest situation I can imagine, but we're in it, so what are we gonna do about it?"

It was Marin's turn to give pause to her words and gaze into the distance. She watched the gentle October breeze curling through the treetops beyond the fields, their leaves having donned their autumn reds and golds. To Marin, they shone with a melancholy beauty. "People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime."

"What?"

"The people you meet throughout your life. Some are there only briefly, to teach you something or to learn something from you, and they move on. They're like flashes. Some are meant to stay with you forever. And then there are those who are meant to be with you through a season. They're like bridges between stages of your life. You meet them, they change you, maybe you change them, hopefully all for the better, but then there comes a point when one or both of you realizes that you'll never have more than that. Just a season. Might be beautiful, might be cold, might be brilliant, but only a season nonetheless."

Clark nodded sullenly. "So, you're saying that's all we are to each other? A season?"

Marin's expression was pained as she nodded. "If that. More like a fall storm system," she said, attempting levity and falling flat.

Clark shook his head. "I disagree. I think people only leave your life if they decide to and you decide to let them. People aren't seasons. If we both believed that this could work, then it could work. That's the bottom line as far as I'm concerned."

Marin only hung her head. "Clark, one day you'll take a good look at Lois Lane -a real, honest look - and you'll understand everything I've been saying."

"So in the mean time I'm supposed to pretend that you don't matter to me at all?"

"Better than pretending that I matter to you more than I do."

Clark shook his head and tore a handful of grass from the ground near his feet. "This is just insane, all of this. It's so messed up."

Marin bit her lower lip and the first of those long-restrained tears began to fall. "Clark, I'm sorry, I know none of this is going the right way and it's all really hard to deal with, but someday you'll understand it, that it was for the best."

"I don't think I can talk about this anymore right now."

"That's okay."

"We should get back inside."

"Okay."

Clark stood and offered a hand down to Marin, pulling her to her feet. He looked down at her face and wiped away a tear clinging to her chin. "I know you don't believe this can happen. I don't know if it's because you're scared or what, but I just want you to know that if you're willing to try, I'm here." He pulled her into a hug and brought his lips close to her ear. "I haven't forgotten that night in your room. Not a second of it. I know it didn't go the way we expected it to, but I'll never forget it. And I was not pretending."

There was no holding back the tears then, and Marin let herself fall against Clark, crying into his shirt as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She couldn't make sense of anything, and for the moment, she didn't want to.

Clark held her and stroked her hair, then pulled back just enough to look into her tear-streaked face before he brought his lips to meet hers. Amid his distraction, he never heard the stealthily approaching footsteps, nor the cocking of the hammer on the army pistol in Lionel Luthor's hand. He didn't even hear the roar of the shot before he felt the fiery pain of a kryptonite bullet biting through the flesh of his back.