Epilogue
Clark looked around the newsroom from his new desk. He and Lois were back on speaking terms, Luthor was dead (and thanks to a timely word to a powerful friend, certain to stay that way no matter who’d stolen his remains from the morgue), the Daily Planet was back on the newsstands, and Superman was back in the sky where he belonged. Everything was back to normal, and he couldn’t be happier.
He’d been getting to know Lucifer better over the past six weeks, too. It was refreshing to have another man around who knew what it was like to deal with greater-than-human abilities and having the world either not know about or not acknowledge the challenges of inhumanity. Between a few surreptitious flights when Lois and Chloe were busy and a series of increasingly frequent texts, Clark felt like they were building a solid friendship.
He spotted Lois from the corner of his eye as she stepped into Perry’s office and sighed, barely remembering not to blow all the papers off his desk. Fine, so maybe he
could be happier. On the other hand, he could ruin everything and never be happy again. He thought back over the past few months and his painful separation from Lois during the whole fiasco of her engagement to Luthor and everything that had followed.
As much as he wanted to tell her everything and finally let her all the way in, his terror of risking losing her in a more permanent fashion froze him like a bug in amber. He was so paralysed in his agony of indecision that he flinched when his phone chirped to signal an incoming message. Grateful for the reprieve from raking himself over the coals, he fished it out of his pocket and looked at the screen.
It was from Lucifer - a picture and a short message. The picture was a selfie of Lucifer looking as relaxed as Clark had ever seen him. Chloe was visible over his shoulder, dressed in pyjamas and scowling at the camera from under unkempt hair as she ate her breakfast. The message was short and to the point.
‘I swear you won’t regret it’Clark stared at the image as a grin slowly spread across his face, then got out of his chair to go find Lois.
He had important things to tell her.
