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Chapter 18: Hold On To Me As We Go, As We Roll Down This Unfamiliar Road
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Mid-March 1997
23 Days Since Clark Came Home

"Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons, they fill you with fear
The trouble, it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you're not alone
'Cause I'm gonna make this place your home..."

Home by Phillip Phillips
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Lois awoke slowly, the soft light of the sunrise filtering through the gap in the curtain and tickling at her senses. But as she roused further, she realized it wasn't the light that had woken her so much as the sweet sound of cooing and squealing coming from the kitchen. She smiled, her heart flooding with warmth and love, and opened her eyes.

Clark was next to her, sprawled out a bit in his sleep and his face adorably smooshed against the pillow, and she couldn't help but notice that he looked more relaxed than he'd been the entire time he'd been home. She touched his cheek and kissed his forehead before she whispered to him. "Sleep more if you want to, love. I'm going to go see Kallie."

She dressed quickly and threw her hair up in a messy bun before heading out to the kitchen, closing the door quietly behind her.

Jonathan was playing with a delighted Kallie, and Martha hummed a happy tune while getting breakfast started. It wasn't an unfamiliar scene to Lois, but this time, with Clark home and sleeping soundly in their bed, she could allow her heart to feel every ounce of happiness.

"Morning, Mom and Dad."

"Lois!" Martha said with delight. "Good morning. How was your night, honey?"

"It was wonderful, Mom. Just perfect. Thank you," she said, smiling at her before turning to Kallie. "Good morning, sweet girl. Mommy missed you!"

Kallie's head had already turned when Lois had first spoken, but now that she had her mommy's full attention, Kallie kicked and squealed with glee. Jonathan handed her over to Lois, who cradled her close in her arms.

"She's been waiting patiently for you," Jonathan said. "We thought we'd wait a little longer before feeding her, and here you are!"

"Thanks, Dad."

Lois got settled in her rocking chair and got Kallie latched as she sat back and listened to the...normalness of this morning routine. With so many things being abnormal—well, different—about this family, it was comforting to have this mundane thing.

As Martha readied a cup of coffee for Jonathan and brought it over to him, she smiled at Lois. "So, Lois, how did you like your pie?"

She stopped her rocking abruptly. "Pie? There was pie?"

Martha burst out laughing, joined by Jonathan's hearty chuckling. "Yes, honey. Maisie's very last pecan pie of the season, to be exact."

"What?!"

Through the laughter, Martha asked, "So I take it you didn't make it around to dessert? I'd wondered about the lack of dirty dishes in the kitchen this morning. Guess we'll have to send Clark to the barn to clean up later, too."

Lois was only half-listening, hoping they'd avoid teasing about other kinds of dessert, because..."CLARK!!"

Five seconds and a whoosh later, he was standing fully dressed in front of her. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

She winced a little, not meaning to have worried him, but at least he didn't look panicked or anything. "What happened to my pie?"

"What? Nothing...wait, did something happen to it?" He glanced over at Martha and Jonathan, who were quite admirably holding in their remaining laughter.

"I never got it, that's what!" she said, indignant.

"Oh! I, uh...we got sidetracked before we ever got to it," he said with a sheepish grin.

She flushed with warmth at the memory of their other activities last night and was grateful for Martha and Jonathan's discretion—at least when it came to making comments out loud. "Well, go get it!" Lois said, raising her free arm to shoo him away.

"Now?"

"Please?"

"For breakfast?"

"Do I really have to ask again?" she raised an eyebrow at him, mildly annoyed that he was withholding her pie but also enjoying his completely bewildered look.

He opened his mouth and closed it again. And then he disappeared, reappearing again seconds later before the screen door had even finished swinging shut from his exit. He set a dome-covered dish on the kitchen table and took the lid off, revealing the pie.

Her stomach growled eagerly at the sight...well, and because she was hungry and it was time for breakfast. But mostly because it was Maisie's pecan pie.

"Should I..." he trailed off, still clearly unsure how he'd gotten to this place and moment in time when he was being scolded about pie at six o'clock in the morning after literally having woken up just minutes ago.

Lois bit her lip to keep from laughing. She still wanted her pie. "Cut me a piece? Yes, please," she answered as she stood up, Kallie still latched, and moved to sit at the kitchen table.

He was still standing there, dumbfounded.

"Now? Please?" she prompted, gently at first. "You really shouldn't keep a woman from her pregnancy craving—I...I mean, it was. A craving. When I was pregnant. Was."

"I think I need to sit down," Clark said numbly.

Martha swooped in then and patted Clark on the shoulder as he sank down into the chair next to Lois. "It's okay, honey. I'll get it served up."

Lois' heart was racing, wondering what the heck had just happened and hoping she hadn't broken Clark. She put her free hand out to cover his knee. "Are you okay, love?"

His brow furrowed, clearly having to think about his answer. She rubbed his knee while she waited.

Meanwhile, Martha had quietly set a small stack of plates down on the table along with the pie server and forks.

"It was just a little...weird, I guess," Clark said at last, and for a moment, she couldn't discern if it was melancholy or confusion or hope she felt coming from him. Maybe all of the above. "Another one of the things I missed."

"Yeah," she said, her voice soft as she grabbed hold of his hand and held it, running her thumb gently over the back. "I'm sorry you had to miss it."

He was quiet and she couldn't quite read his thoughts. It didn't feel like he was intentionally blocking her, but his heart and mind didn't seem fully open either. And there was every possibility he just didn't know what to think or how to feel. She honestly wasn't sure herself.

And while they did need to talk about the bigger things, the harder things, she was loath to do so just yet. She wanted to cling to the levity just a little longer.

Lois stroked his hand to get his attention again. "Honey, I promise next time I'm pregnant, I'll send you all over the world for my cravings. I'll take full advantage of you."

That roused a chuckle out of him, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. "The fringe benefits of marrying a man who can fly?"

"Exactly." She grinned at him.

"Deal," he said, his voice cracking a little.

She gave his hand a squeeze. "We'll be okay, love. We'll get there."

Whether 'there' meant her next pregnancy or the place where everything was okay again, she wasn't entirely sure. But she knew they'd get there.

**********

Lois kept stealing glances at Clark as they walked hand in hand out to the pond on the south edge of the property. Having been away from Kallie most of the day yesterday, Lois had really wanted to take her with them. And Martha had suggested using the baby carrier Lois hadn't gotten around to using, ever, seeing as they hardly left the house.

If anyone had asked her even a year ago, 'man babywearing an infant' wouldn't have even been on her radar, let alone her top ten list of sexiest things in the world. Yet, here she was, finding herself unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of it.

And, sure, maybe it was because it was her baby and her man, but she knew something fundamental within Lois Lane had changed. Part of her worried, as she had done much of the time he'd been gone, that she would get back to work and find she'd lost her edge, gone soft.

Though she knew it wasn't fair to put such a spin on it, she sometimes felt like she'd just run away and hidden from her problems. Lois Lane wasn't a coward. She knew she'd been protecting herself and Kallie...and in large part Clark's secret identity, but it was entirely unlike Lois Lane to...do nothing. To lay low.

It had been quite some time since she'd felt like herself. Honestly, she wasn't sure who that was now. But she did know that she was still a journalist. She still had awards to win and wrongs to right.

She knew they'd get back to Metropolis. Back to the Planet. Back...home.

But home had a much different meaning now.

As they neared the dock, Clark squeezed her hand gently. "Hey, are you okay? You've been pretty quiet. And..." <<...it's harder to feel you in here.>>

Their connection, he meant, and she'd noticed too that everything felt a little distant today. She looked over at him and smiled. "I'm okay...just thinking." She led him by the hand over to sit on the old bench that rested up against the outbuilding. They sat down and Clark put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned in gratefully, not realizing how much she'd needed the comfort of his body close to hers right then. Kallie was sleeping soundly against his chest, no doubt soothed as Lois was by his warmth and the sound of his heartbeat.

They were quiet for a long moment, and she watched as Clark's gaze swept over their surroundings. She wondered what he was thinking, if seeing this place after however long brought back memories—and which ones. Or maybe he was regarding how it had changed, or how he had changed.

He ran his hand along the smooth surface of the bench slats behind them. "I guess Dad put a new coat of varnish on this while I was gone."

She buried her face in his chest and giggled.

"What?" She could hear the amusement in his curiosity.

"The first time I came out here...I got a splinter in my butt." She laughed again and her heart surged with warmth when she felt the rumble of his laugh. "So Dad marched out here the very next morning with sandpaper, the can of varnish, and a paintbrush."

"Sounds about right," Clark said, chuckling as he stroked Kallie's back, moving his hand in a slow rhythm against the soft fabric of the carrier.

"He was so excited, you know? To be a grandpa. Is so excited."

She could almost feel his heart squeeze, every happy moment tinted bittersweet. Clark's voice was soft when he spoke next. "He used to warn me, tell me not to get my hopes up when I wished and dreamed for a family of my own someday. 'Now, Clark, we don't know if that's possible,' he would say. I wondered sometimes at his pragmatism, why he would temper my dreams like that, but I think he was just scared...scared of me getting hurt, terrified of the wrong people finding out about me...but maybe most of all, of me having my heart broken."

Lois nodded against his chest, saddened by his words but understanding them all the same, especially now that she knew Jonathan better. She was heartened, though, by the sight of all Clark's hopes and dreams—all the hopes and dreams she never realized she'd had too—snuggled right there, sleeping so soundly against his chest.

"Maybe part of that was protecting himself, too, not getting his own hopes up. But I always had Mom to balance me out."

"They make great parents," she said. "Thank you for sharing them with me."

In answer, he squeezed his arm around her shoulders and placed a kiss on the top of her head. "So, you said the first time you came out here?"

"Yeah. There's no gym out here." She looked up at him and grinned. "So, I would go for walks, kind of explore the property more. You know, this is a really big farm!"

"Just shy of 400 acres. Decent for a small farm."

"Sounds huge to me." She smiled and shifted a little, pulling her knees up to her chest. "It was...kind of an emotional day, and I was surprised to find this clearing, this pond out here...and then the memories all hit me at once."

"Trask."

She nodded again. "I almost lost you that day."

They both stayed silent, reliving echoes of the memories for a long moment.

"The second time I came out here...honestly, it was only because I didn't want Dad's hard work to go to waste." They shared a light chuckle. "But when I was out here...I'm not even sure how to explain it...there was a part of me that felt more connected to you here. I know that seems silly. You lived in the house, our room, for goodness' sake. You'd think I'd have felt closer to you there...instead of here, where I only had bad memories."

He seemed to realize she needed a bit more time to wrap words around her feelings, and she was grateful. She'd spent so much time here over the last seven months, thinking nothing and everything—remembering how scared she was watching him almost get shot, wondering if she'd have been more scared if she'd known the truth then, realizing how she'd felt about him. "I think...maybe, maybe because this is where I first realized I'd been falling for you. I remembered that, hung on to that...and then all the thoughts and emotions that came after it. I spent a lot of time wishing I'd not fought my feelings for you for so long."

"Oh, honey..." She could feel the twist in his heart, mirroring her own. "You needed time."

"And you gave it to me...and then some," she said, grateful and regretful all at once.

Clark gave her another squeeze and another kiss, and she could feel her heart fill with the warmth of his love. "Worth the wait, remember?"

"Yeah," she said softly. "And Clark?" she shifted so that she could look at him more squarely, even though it took her further from the warmth of his solid frame. "It's my turn to give you time. All the time you need. Going home, I mean." Her heart twisted, knowing it might be even longer a road home. "We'll figure it out. Whatever you need."

<<Thank you.>>

Lois nodded and snuggled back into his side, bringing a hand up to cover his own on Kallie's back. A gentle breeze had kicked up, and the sound of leaves rustling and the water gently lapping at the pond's edge filled the silence. Time seemed to float away as they sat, letting their feelings ebb and flow and just be, just the three of them. Her little family. She closed her eyes and took deep, calming breaths, her chest rising and falling in counterpoint to his.

In her mind, a strange yet beautiful place appeared, and she gasped lightly before she realized it was Clark's memory. There was some sort of grand courtyard, a large expanse of land, filled with all sorts of strange plants she'd never seen before in a warm splash of colors—lots of reds, hints of oranges, and dashes of pale pinks—somehow mixed in perfect harmony with the cool of the blues and purples. Leaves in strange shapes and vines whirling this way and that, and gossamer-light petals on what looked like flowers amongst all manner of trees.

Tall but tattered walls surrounded the grounds, a shimmering sleek material, not metal but nothing like stone. There was a vague sense that this had been carefully architected and well-manicured at some point, some of the plants in what used to be rows but now were overgrown and ragged and the colors following only some semblance of a pattern. An impossibly tall archway marked the entrance, a phrase engraved across it: Kaogahv skilorodh zhehd zw kehpes shokh.

It seemed to be night in this strange place, but that made it all the better, for there were little floating lights that just hovered there, almost like large fireflies or stars that had fallen only to hang mere feet above the ground. Some of the plants themselves seemed to glow, giving off an ethereal light in many colors.

Eyes still closed, her hand moved down to his knee and gave it a squeeze.

"It's beautiful, Clark," she whispered. "On the archway, what does it say?"

"Kaogahv skilorodh zhehd zw kehpes shokh," he said, his voice quiet, and it sounded oddly beautiful to hear the strange tones from his mouth instead of in his mind where she'd heard them most. "It's a Kryptonian proverb: Let the person who has truth speak."

He let the silence stretch between them, perhaps wondering what truths were left to speak. After a time, he spoke again. "There was a young village leader there—on New Krypton, not here in the garden—she reminded me so much of you. Tenacious and fiesty, and her youth making you wonder where she might have gotten all that bravery from." His sadness and grief filled her heart, and she took hold of it to lessen the pain. She knew there was so much more, but he'd get to it in his own time.

"Her village was under siege...I..."

Lois felt the conflict in his heart, the anguish and guilt, though she didn't know the details. She didn't need to know the details. She did her best to surround him with acceptance and forgiveness. <<My love, you have it no matter what.>>

Though their eyes were still closed, she could sense him shaking his head, not to deny her support, but to skip ahead in his memories, to the easier part. "She had been brave enough to challenge me and speak the truth, even though she risked death to do so, her village almost..." He paused and cleared his throat. "I asked her to be the first representative, to be on my advisory council for forming the new government."

Her heart went out to him again, knowing that there was so much pain wrapped up in the triumph of his actions, this young woman's actions. And she saw a vision of her in Clark's memory—a slight figure with short and tight, dark curls against her deep olive skin—and a name—Dene-Ra. Lois sent a silent prayer of thanks to her, grateful for the confidence and the optimism she'd clearly shared with Clark when he hadn't possessed any of his own.

Dene-Ra faded from her vision and they were back to the garden, and Lois took it to mean everything was still too fresh and painful, but then he spoke of her again.

"She was more like them...like Jor-El and a small faction of those on the expedition, New Kryptonians who had believed in peace. This garden was built shortly after they colonized," Clark said softly. "An edict from the old world to the new world. Shahrrehth Zehdh-Tahn, they called it," he said solemnly. "It doesn't translate so well, but it essentially means a place of hope for unity and belonging—meant to be a reminder of what New Krypton should strive to be. They were optimistic, idealistic..."

"It didn't last long?" she asked even though she'd heard the answer already from his heart, her eyes still closed to take in the beauty before her.

She felt him shake his head. "I used to come here to the gardens...those times I didn't spend in the war room or my bedchamber, when I could slip past my own guards but still be relatively sure of my safety.

"Other than in my head, where I could be with you, it was the only place that made sense to me. Except it didn't make any sense at all why something so beautiful, so peaceful would have fallen out of favor and into disrepair."

"But life persevered anyway," she said, marveling at lush overgrowth that didn't seem to care that no one had tended to it in far too many years.

"Persistent, tenacious plants that seemed so incongruous with the rocky, desolate landscape around them. It reminded me of you...how you demand the world be a better place, and because of you, it is."

"Oh, Clark." She snuggled closer into him, wrapping an arm around him and Kallie as best she could. She was half-desperate to kiss him but still reluctant to open her eyes and break the spell.

"This place made a certain kind of sense when everything else just seemed so far away from...everything. Jor-El spoke of ideals and customs, values like optimism and peace. Unity. It was disheartening to know that a culture, a people so desperate and determined to survive, would turn away from those ideals when they could have, should have embraced them."

Lois could only hmmm. It didn't make sense to her, their cold and utilitarian ways, and she could only guess that there'd been more truth to Ching's claim that she'd given him credit for. They'd needed Clark even more than they'd known, for reasons they couldn't have begun to comprehend. She still wasn't sure they'd deserved him.

"I would come here and try to remind myself why I was there...but so often, I could only think of you. There's this place in the Peruvian Amazon I found one year on my travels. Bioluminescent plants and insects in a jungle full of exotic plants of all shapes and sizes. It was so stunning, so beautiful—I kept meaning to take you there...before everything happened."

Lois hugged him tighter.

"I felt closest to you here," he continued, his voice still soft and wistful. "Because it reminded me of you, and maybe because it was similar enough to somewhere on Earth. Or because I had time and space for breathing and could almost, even if just for the barest of moments, imagine you with me. I wish you could have been there."

"I'm here now," she said softly, squeezing him tightly again. "Show me."

And so they sat there and toured the gardens in their minds, Clark telling her all the names of the plants and making up names for the ones he didn't know. At the back of the gardens, hidden from view of the front entrance, was a waterfall—but not of water. Iridescent, crystalline liquid cascaded from a high, cliff-like wall into a shimmering pool. The hum and burble of the falls had a melodic quality to it and a calming effect on both of their senses.

She was awed by the beauty and the unfamiliarity of it all, and she found her heart so full, comforted by the knowledge that, amidst all the horrors up there, at least he'd had this.

Against her arm, she could feel Kallie start to wriggle. With a half-reluctant sigh, Lois opened her eyes, the images and sounds of the garden disappearing. Clark still had his eyes closed, and she felt her heart surge with love—how peaceful he looked, just in that moment. She reached up to touch his cheek, and she leaned in to press a feather-light kiss to his lips.

"Thank you for showing me."

His eyes found hers. "Thank you for being there...for understanding."

"Of course, love. Of course." She kissed him again, not much deeper but trying to convey everything she was feeling, her gratitude and acceptance.

"We should get back," he said.

"There's no rush. I can feed Kallie here. We can stay a little longer."

"I mean home. Metropolis." His voice was solemn but calmer and more certain than she'd heard from him since he'd been home. He started taking a fussing Kallie out of the carrier, slowly unwrapping the long swath of cloth while holding her.

"But you're not—are you ready?" she asked, unsure if the building anxiety was hers or his, and she watched him carefully as he soothed Kallie, rubbing her back and bouncing her so gently against his chest. She wondered if he realized how natural he looked.

"I don't know if I'll ever be ready," he said, sadness and a slight waver in his voice, as he placed a soft kiss on Kallie's head. "But you are. I can't make you stay here so much longer than you need to."

"But, Clark...that's not—it doesn't matter! You need more time. We need more time...it's..." she trailed off, unsure if she could finish with the sudden lump in her throat.

"Here, she's hungry," he said quietly, handing Kallie off to her and she took her reflexively.

Lois tucked Kallie in the crook of her arm and lifted her shirt, getting her latched and feeding while the emotions stormed in her own chest. She just watched Kallie suckling for a long moment, trying to figure out what to say...trying to figure out what she was even thinking. Clark was silent too, watching Kallie along with her and bringing his hand up to stroke the soft hair on the top of her little head.

"It's time, though. Isn't it?" he asked.

"We can't just...go back. It's not...it's not that simple." He wasn't ready. He wasn't thinking clearly, thinking through all the details, all the things they needed to talk about. "Let's head back to the house. We should talk to Mom and Dad."

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