For anyone who doesn't know what a Tank and Wendy Challenge story is all about, I'll give you a brief explanation. It all started three or four years ago when Tank threw out one of his little evil vignettes with a twist in the tail - and I decided to 'fix' it. Without even asking permission, I should add. That was Just Another Revelation Story
. Instead of getting mad, Tank very kindly got even. He invited me to write the first half of an evil story so that he could fix it. And so the challenges were born.
The rules we have to follow are simple. The author whose turn it is to start writes one section with a twist in the tail. We, not surprisingly, choose twists which we imagine the other might have some difficulty dealing with, or dislikes writing about. 
The other author must then finish it in one section. The challenge-setter must be able to come up with a solution to the predicament him- or herself - in other words, neither of us can set a challenge we'd consider impossible.
So that, in a nutshell, is how these challenges work. If you'd like to see more, look under both our names in the Fanfiction Archive, or go here. I'm not actually sure if it is my turn at the moment, but there hasn't been one for quite some time, so I claim the right to begin them again. 
And now, on with the challenge... ~ The Homecoming ~“Fifteen minutes to contact, Lord Kal-El.”
Clark nodded his thanks to the young officer who had given him the information. Standing up, he stretched in an effort to ease some of the kinks out of his body. It had been a long journey, and the small ship held none of the comforts of the vessel in which he’d travelled to New Krypton so long ago. This one was designed for speed, not comfort. And that suited him just fine.
He walked away from the flight deck and over towards the access port. The interior shell of the ship at this point was made of a material resembling Earth’s stainless steel, and he gazed at the reflection of himself which he could see in the polished door. What Lois would see when he found her again.
“You will find a lot changed on Earth, Kal,” Zara had warned him before they’d said goodbye and he’d boarded this spaceship.
“All I care is that the people I love will be there,” he’d told her. “They’ll find me changed too, anyway.”
And he had altered, though that wasn’t surprising. He’d been away a long time. Ten years in Earth time, which was around seven or eight years on New Krypton, though it had felt like a lot longer. Eons longer.
His hair was longer - he’d been too busy tying up all his affairs on New Krypton to find time to get it cut. He’d changed to a side parting in order to make the longer style easier to manage. The dark locks were now peppered with white, too: a legacy of the long years of war, turmoil and despair that he was ever going to find a solution which would allow him to leave that barren rock of a planet.
Lois wouldn’t mind the greying hair, he knew. She wouldn’t mind the other physical changes in her fiancé, either - such as the additional weight he was now carrying. His powers had vanished on New Krypton, the red sun making him like any other human - or Kryptonian. For the first time in his life, he’d needed food for fuel - and, for some reason, New Kryptonian food had affected his metabolism differently from Earth food. He’d put on weight.
Clark glanced down at himself, eyeing the padding around his middle with rueful resignation. He would have to start an exercise regime - always assuming that, once his powers returned when he was back on Earth, exercise would have an effect on his weight and body size.
Superman would look very odd with a paunch, he told himself, smiling inwardly. Though that, of course, assumed that Superman would also return, and right now he wasn’t at all sure about that. He’d seen too many ugly things to believe as strongly as he did in basic human decency, or to think that one person, no matter how powerful, could solve much of the world’s problems.
Sometimes, he had learned, it was better to let people - whoever they might be - sort out their own problems. Make their own mistakes.
“Five minutes, my lord.”
Clark pulled himself up to his full height, unconsciously sucking in his stomach as he did so. Almost there.
Almost home. At last.
**********
Lois juggled the grocery bags in one arm while she rummaged in her purse for the keys. They were in there somewhere. She could hear them jingling. Just as she’d resigned herself to putting the bags down so that she could search properly, someone spoke from behind her.
“Need some help there?”
About to tell whoever it was that she was fine, Lois hesitated. Her breath caught in her throat. There was something very familiar about that voice...
Could it be?
No. Not after all this time. It just wasn’t possible. It had been ten years!
No. If Clark had been going to come back to her, he’d have been back years ago. She’d resigned herself to that long, long ago. He couldn’t get back from New Krypton. He’d had to marry Zara after all, and he was trapped there.
That was what she’d told herself, time and time again, after every sleepless night she’d lain in bed, or sat by her window gazing at his star, and longed for him.
He wasn’t coming home.
She’d had to let herself think of him as alive and well and married to Zara. Much as it hurt, it was a better alternative to thinking him dead. And she’d had those thoughts too, on other nights. Nights when she’d managed to fall asleep only to dream.
Nightmares in which he had come back. In which she’d held him in her arms, raised her lips for his kiss - only for him to be torn away from her by some invisible, irresistible force. Nightmares where she could only watch, helpless, as Lord Nor or another renegade Kryptonian, struck her fiancé down with a weapon blazing fire. Or where Clark spoke to her, his voice full of agony, telling her that he’d tried but he was so sorry that he hadn’t managed to stay alive so that he could come back to her.
No, that voice wasn’t Clark’s. He wasn’t coming home.
“I said, do you need help?”
The voice was closer. And - oh god - it sounded like him. It had just that soft edge to it, that loving, gentle tone he’d always used when they were private together.
But it couldn’t be...
She didn’t dare to turn around. If she did, she knew that she’d only be disappointed. The man, whoever he was, approaching her wasn’t Clark.
“Lois.” Oh god! How could anyone be so cruel! To call her by her name, with just that intonation that Clark had always used...
She didn’t want to turn around. But something in the voice, the tone, impelled her. She swivelled slowly, afraid of what she would see.
She saw a man. Tall - around six feet. His hair was dark, but traced through with silvery lines. The style was unfamiliar: long and, although tidy, less well-kept than she was used to. He had a beard, also peppered with silver. His face was tanned and weatherbeaten, and his spectacles had seen better days. And he was several pounds heavier than the image engraved on her memory.
He was older, too - he looked older than her now. Although he could only be in his very early forties, just like her, he could have been mistaken for five or even ten years older.
But he was Clark. And he’d come home to her.
With an inarticulate cry, she dropped her groceries and ran to him.
*********
Lois. In his arms again, after all this time.
For long moments, Clark simply wasn’t capable of speech. Lois was murmuring his name over and over, running her fingers through his hair and pressing tiny kisses over his face. He couldn’t even pronounce her name.
At long last, he was home - back in Lois’s arms, where he belonged.
Finally, she disengaged; he felt lost and empty again, but only for a moment. After all, he was with her. They were together, and he would never leave her again. And they did need time to talk - the most important thing for now being how soon they could get married.
“I don’t believe this!” Lois was saying, her voice shaky with sobs. He was reminded so much of the way she’d sounded the night they’d said goodbye: trying to stay calm and reassuring for him, but continually on the verge of tears. “It’s been so long... I thought you weren’t coming back, Clark.”
“For a while, I thought I wasn’t coming back either,” he admitted. “It took a long time for everything to be resolved - but in the end I just told the Council that I was leaving and they’d just better damned well make it happen. I said I’d walk out on them no matter what state things were in, so they’d better get moving and sort things out if they didn’t want that. So... here I am.” And he reached out for her, wanting to hold her again. Aching to feel her in his arms. He’d been starved of her for so long...
“We’d better go inside, Clark,” she said, indicating the door jerkily.
She was right, he supposed - the way he felt, he’d have half her clothes ripped off in minutes if he started kissing her, and that wouldn’t be a good idea out in the hallway. To give himself something to do, he picked up her grocery bags while she opened the door. And he watched her. His Lois.
She’d changed, too. She was older, of course, but still every bit as beautiful. She’d put on a little weight, but to his mind she looked better that way - he hadn’t quite dared to tell her, but he’d thought she was a little too thin in the months before he’d left. Her hair was still a luscious dark brown, although he suspected that there were a few grey roots; perhaps her hair owed at least some of its colour to a bottle these days.
And her hair was longer - down below her shoulders again, although not quite as long as it had been when he’d proposed to her for the first time. At that thought, he slipped his free hand inside the collar of the dark T-shirt which was one of the few items of his Earth clothing which fit him now. There, on a chain, hung her wedding ring, the ring he’d taken with him to New Krypton. The ring he’d lain awake holding on many, many nights. The ring he couldn’t wait to put on her finger.
Soon, he told himself. Very soon.
The apartment had changed, too, he noticed as soon as he stepped inside. The uncomfortable white sofas had vanished, replaced by a large, squishy couch and a couple of armchairs. Much of the rest of the furniture was unfamiliar, too. And the room was far less pristine than he remembered; in fact, it was almost messy.
But he didn’t care. He was home.
He put the grocery bags down on the nearest available surface and reached for Lois again. She melted against him as he pulled her into his arms, his fingers learning the feel of her again, his nostrils re-learning her scent. And, at last, he was able to lower his head and claim her lips.
He kissed her as a dying man in the desert might drink the only water he’d come across in days. Thirstily. Impatiently. Needily. And as if he never wanted it to end. He couldn’t get enough of her. He didn’t know where to touch her first, or whether he just wanted to nibble her lips to begin with or to open her mouth beneath his and explore her in intimate detail. He wanted everything - he wanted all the ten long years they’d been apart.
“Oh, Lois,” he groaned against her mouth as he felt her response.
But, too soon - far too soon - she broke away from him. “No! Clark... I... We need to talk,” she said, sounding regretful and very uncomfortable.
Very reluctantly, he allowed her to escape his grasp. “I know I was away for a long time -” he began, wanting to explain that there really hadn’t been any way for him to get home sooner.
“Clark...” she began, then broke off as if whatever she had to say was very difficult and she wasn’t sure how to begin. After a moment, she moved to the couch and sat down. For lack of any other ideas, he sat beside her.
“You’re right, it’s been a long time,” she began, sounding awkward. “And... Clark, you have to know that I never forgot you. I never stopped loving you, either. But... well, as the years went past, we had to accept that you weren’t going to come back. I mean, we’d heard nothing, and... well, all of us - Martha, Jonathan and me - we knew that if there’d been any way, you’d have come home. We... we didn’t know whether to think that you were settled on New Krypton or... or even dead.”
“What are you saying, Lois?” A cold dread had settled inside him. This wasn’t what he’d hoped to come home to. Lois still had feelings for him; he had no doubt about that. The way she’d looked at him when she’d finally turned around, the way she’d run into his arms - and the way she’d responded to his kiss just now. She still loved him, didn't she? But there was a problem.
“I’m married, Clark.”
The three words reverberated in his head. He tried to push them away, tell himself that he hadn’t heard her say what he’d thought she’d said. Lois wouldn’t have married someone else. She loved him. She’d promised that she’d wait for him. She wouldn’t have got married to someone else.
He looked at her. Her expression told him that it was true. And then he made himself glance down at her hand. On the third finger of her left hand, a gold band gleamed.
Not the ring he’d bought for her all those years ago. A newer, larger ring, with engraving around the edges. A ring which said that Lois really had married another man.
His Lois. Someone else’s wife.
His instincts screamed at him to get up and walk out. And just keep on walking until he could go no further - until he collapsed from exhaustion or fell into the river. He didn’t care. Part of him even wondered how he could contact his spaceship and get it to come back and pick him up.
But he didn’t do either of those things. Because he had to know. “Who, Lois? Who is it?” he demanded. “Is he anyone I know?”
Not Dan, he pleaded silently. Please, not Scardino.
“Jimmy,” she said quietly.
“What?” He stared at her. “Jimmy Olsen? You married Jimmy Olsen?”
She had to be kidding! Jimmy was their friend, sure - but he was Jimmy! Not much more than a kid, and he could have sworn that Lois would never have been able to stand more than half an hour or so of his company socially. He remembered the night she’d slept at Jimmy’s apartment while her own place was being fumigated - the two had come close to never speaking to each other again.
“He’s not the way you remember him, Clark. He’s older too, you should know that. And he was great after you left. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend. He worked it all out, you know. About you, I mean. He guessed, but he didn’t tell me for ages. He was just there for me any time I wanted. The number of times I cried for you, and he was there to hold me... And when I woke in the night, missing you so much I could barely breathe, I would call him. No matter what time it was, he never minded. And he’d just talk to me until I’d stopped crying. He was amazing, Clark. And he never asked for anything. He was just my friend, and I couldn’t have managed without him.”
Riven with jealousy, so hurt he could barely think, Clark just stared at her. “I’m glad he was such a good friend to you, Lois,” he managed finally. “I’m glad he was there for you. But you had my parents, Perry...”
“And they were great too. But, Clark, your parents were missing you too. And I hated calling them when I was upset, because it only upset them too. And Perry... I’m sure he knew about you, too, but I didn’t
know and I didn’t want to talk to him in case I let something slip. Jimmy - he was the only one I could really talk to.”
“You didn’t have to marry him, though,” he bit out.
“Clark, we were just friends for years,” Lois said; he thought she sounded defensive. “He never did anything to make me think... But then - it was ten years to the day after you first came to the Planet, and it all just hit me again. What I’d lost. How much I missed you. And that you weren’t coming back. And your parents had been telling me for at least a couple of years by then to get on with my life. And... I was crying, and Jimmy was holding me, and... we kissed, Clark. It just happened. And he told me that he’d loved me for years, and he knew that I’d always love you first, but he was willing to accept that... and we got married.”
Clark just looked at her. Emotions were warring with each other inside him: anger, hurt, rejection, despair... and guilt.
Guilt. For what right did he have to be angry with Lois for marrying someone else, a man who had been a true friend to her and who did actually love her? And someone who, he was pretty sure now, she loved too, in her own way.
He had no right. For he’d been married too.
He’d married Zara. They’d both resisted it at first, but it had soon become clear that if there was to be any hope of stability among those opposed to Lord Nor then Kal-El had to be married to the Lady Zara. It would reassure the people that their rulers were united, the Council had insisted. So they’d married, but for the first three or four years it had been a marriage in name only. A ceremonial marriage, to convince people that their lord and lady were united.
But then there had been mutterings about the need for an heir. A child sired by Lord Kal-El and born to the Lady Zara. Again, they’d resisted, Zara as strongly as he himself. Their objections had been ignored. An heir was needed, to get the message across even more strongly to Lord Nor that his chances of seizing power legitimately were miniscule. When he’d finally accepted that their having a child was unavoidable, Clark had wanted to explore artificial methods - he’d had the tacit support of Lieutenant Ching, Zara’s bodyguard and the man Zara loved, in that. But, again, they’d had their wishes overruled. If there was any hint that the royal heir had been conceived by any other than natural means, suspicion would be thrown on its parentage, he had been assured.
And so he and Zara had been obliged to share a bed. To do together all the things that he’d dreamed of doing - but only with Lois. Thankfully, Zara had conceived within a couple of months, and the baby had been born healthy, so they had been able to abandon that side of their relationship, much to the relief of the three parties most closely concerned.
But the fact remained that, like Lois, he had been unfaithful. He had been married to Zara, and he had been a full husband to her. Although he was now divorced, and he’d appointed Ching as guardian to his child, his situation was little different from Lois’s.
And at least Lois had married someone she cared about. It hadn’t been a liaison for political reasons.
“You’re right,” he said quietly, apologetically. He would have to tell her about Zara, but that could come later. “You had every reason to think that I wasn’t coming back. And I am glad that Jimmy was there for you.” He took a deep breath, needing the strength to say what he intended to now. “But I am back now, Lois, and I know you still love me. I wouldn’t even think of saying this if I thought you didn’t love me any more, but even though I know it’d be difficult for you and it would hurt Jimmy - I want you back. Will you divorce him and marry me?”
Lois stared at him in silence for a long moment. He could see the longing on her face, and he knew that she wanted to be with him just as much as he wanted to be with her. She did still love him. Although he’d said that he knew she did, he hadn’t been entirely sure - it had been a gamble.
She still loved him. And, however hard it was going to be for her, she was going to leave her husband and come back to him.
But then, regret and sadness on her face, she shook her head. “I can’t, Clark. I just can’t.”
“But you love me!” he objected. “And I love you. We’ve waited all this time, Lois. We need to be together.”
“There’s more than just you and me to think about, Clark,” she said softly.
“I know. And if it helps, I’ll talk to Jimmy. You said he knows how much you love me.”
“That’s not all,” she told him, then broke off as a sound came from outside. “I was going to tell you, Clark, but... well, here’s Jimmy now.”
Clark stood as the door was unlocked, then pushed open by an older version of a man he used to know very well. Lois’s husband. Jimmy Olsen.
“Hi, honey!” Jimmy called, then halted abruptly, staring at Clark.
In his arms, Clark saw then, Jimmy held a small, wriggling bundle: a boy, no more than two years old. He had Jimmy’s hair and chin - and in case there was any doubt in Clark’s mind, he had Lois’s eyes.
The child saw Lois and held out his arms eagerly, crying, “Mommy!”
Lois cast Clark a glance; he saw apology, together with burning love for the child in her husband’s arms. She hurried over, taking the boy from Jimmy and cuddling him against her. He buried his face in her shoulder, chattering away to her, clearly delighted to see her. As she was to see him.
Standing beside her husband, Lois said, “Clark, this is Clark James Olsen. Our son - Jimmy’s and mine.”
**********
Over to Tank! 
And, yes, this is very easy, but I thought you'd like to be eased back in gently.
