TOC found hereChapter 20: Hold On To Me And Never Let Me Go~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Mid-March 199723 Days Since Clark Came Home"'Cause with you, I'd withstandAll of hell to hold your handI'd give it all, I'd give for usGive anything, but I won't give up'Cause you know, you know, you knowThat I love you, I have loved you all along..."Far Away by Nickelback ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
They were all sitting around the dinner table, and Lois was begrudgingly sharing the rest of her pecan pie with Perry and Jonathan. Martha had made everyone some tea, and for a while, nothing but the clinking of forks against plates could be heard. That and the symphony of crickets and the occasional frog, the sound drifting in on the evening breeze through the screen door.
Clark sat next to her at the table, holding Kallie as she slept. Lois' heart clenched as she watched them, the two most important people in her life. He looked up at her and smiled.
<<I love you.>><<I love you, too. Are you sure about this?>>He reached out for her hand and she took hold of his, giving it a squeeze.
<<As long as I have you with me.>> <<Always,>> she told him.
Lois wasn't sure at all. She had faith in his determination, his desire...but would they have to go back sooner than he was ready? Perry said he could try to make her maternity leave extend as long as possible—and Clark would start therapy right away—but she worried that everything was suddenly happening so fast. Who had started the countdown clock on their—okay, well, it wasn't exactly a
quiet Smallville life with all the emotional upheaval, but it was certainly a whole lot quieter and calmer than Metropolis would be.
As much as she yearned to be back there, she'd gotten mighty used to small town living and the peacefulness of the country. Lois Lane, of all people. She wondered if she'd be able to sleep soundly right away with the sounds of the city in the background or if she'd need time to adjust as she had when moving here. Would Kallie have trouble adjusting too?
And Clark...would he be able to sleep? Or would he stay up, plagued by every call of distress within the cacophony that filled the night skies of Metropolis? She wished he could turn his super hearing off, try and save himself the guilt of not responding to every distant—and not-so-distant—S.O.S.
"Ahem." Someone cleared their throat across the room. "I'm afraid we need your help...or rather, you need ours...I think."
Lois froze. She knew that voice. She hated that voice.
Every head whipped around toward the screen door.
"No," Lois said, her voice steely and low. "I don't want to see you!"
"Ms. Lane, if you'll just listen for a moment...I'm afraid I've made a bit of a mistake..."
"A mistake?!" She felt the fury rising, her chest tightening. "Damn right, you made a mistake!"
"Lois, hang on. Just wait," Clark said...but it wasn't Clark, it was...
The other Clark stepped out in front of the screen door, smiling at her briefly before looking at Wells. "I told you you should have let her see me first."
"Quite. Quite right you are," Wells said, stepping aside and taking off his bowler hat to fiddle with.
"No..." Lois shook her head, suddenly terrified of why they were here, why they were back when
her Clark was home. "No...he's not going anywhere! We're fine. You can just go. I mean, not that I-I'm not glad to see you, Clark—other Clark. It's good to see you...I just...How are you?" Lois couldn't keep track of all the feelings wrenching through her chest.
He smiled then, a smile like she'd never seen from him before. There was something...
"Lois, there's someone I want you to meet," the other Clark said.
Lois gasped. "You found her!" she breathed. Her emotions shifted abruptly from wresting to skittering as a woman who looked alarmingly like her moved from out of the shadows into the glow of the porch light. Lois gasped again and looked back at the other Clark. "You found her," she said, her voice a whisper.
He simply nodded, a wide smile on his face and his eyes moist.
Lois flung open the screen door as the other Clark jumped back out of the way, and she launched herself into his arms. "Oh, Clark, I'm so happy for you!" She squeezed him tight and then pulled back, swiping at the tears slipping from her eyes before she held out a hand to her double. "You must be Lois."
"I've...heard a lot about you." The other Lois smiled nervously and shook her hand. "Congratulations...? On the baby...she was born already, right?"
"Thank you," Lois said, smiling and nodding. "Kallie. Just about 2 months old now." She turned, seeking her daughter out and found her still in Clark's arms...amidst a sea of very shocked faces.
"I..." Lois started, her eyes darting between the two groups of people, who were all looking to her for the answer. She gestured at the new arrivals. "Lois. Clark. H.G. Wells. Some of you have met before, and...I'm going to make myself some coffee. Have at it."
The flurry of words and movements started instantly, as if she'd had some power to freeze and unfreeze time. She made her way to the coffee maker and busied herself with the preparations, her mind reeling with possible reasons Wells was back, and with two doppelgangers this time.
As she filled the filter and the pot, trying to tune out the din around her, Lois could feel sadness from Clark and a resentment roiling just under the surface. While she assumed it was about Wells' presence, his actions, she couldn't discount the fact that Clark might have some feelings about the other Clark's role in everything. She would have to ask him later.
After pressing start, she stared at the coffee maker for long minutes and wondered if it really would brew more slowly under watchful eyes. She felt Clark come up behind her slowly, his hand coming to rest on her lower back. "I put Kallie in our room," he said softly, the sadness still lingering within him. "Are you okay?"
She turned into him and he wrapped his arms around her. "No, probably not?" she whispered into his chest. "Can't our life ever be normal?"
He chuckled lightly and rubbed her back. "Normal isn't our watchword, remember?"
Her laughter against his chest was a warm puff of air, and she loved that they could laugh a little more easily these days even though the worry was still there underneath. "This little corner of the kitchen isn't a very good hiding place, is it?" she said, still whispering, and a bit afraid to look up from her small haven in his arms.
"We could escape to the treehouse—have us there in four seconds?" he said, his voice low and ever-so-slightly husky. "They're all waiting in the living room. Might not even see us.
"I wish, but we should probably face the music sooner than later," she said softly as she patted his chest and pulled back a bit. "Besides, I can smell my coffee is ready."
Clark reached for her mug and took it off the rack. "May I?"
Her heart hitched along with her breath and she nodded, watching as he lovingly made her coffee and the rest of the world fell away. With cream and sugar because he knew without asking that she'd want the real deal right now. He stirred everything together, and before he handed it over, he blew a faint puff of air over it, making sure it was the perfect temperature.
"This is the best cup of coffee I've ever had," she said as she brought the mug to her lips, her heart so full that she thought it might burst.
"You haven't even tasted it yet." He smiled so warmly at her, his eyes shining.
"Doesn't matter." She stayed, starting into his eyes for another moment longer, and then she took a sip. "Yep, best cup of coffee ever. Thank you," she said, finding it a slight struggle to get the words out past the lump in her throat.
Clark leaned in to kiss her forehead, so excruciatingly tender, and she could feel his love surging in his chest—mixed with all the sadness and grief, but so strong was the love that she knew in her heart they'd make it somehow despite all the worries and the doubts.
"C'mon," he said softly. His hand fell to settle on the small of her back as he led them out of the kitchen and toward the living room. "Let's go face the music."
**********
Lois' head was spinning already. Clark. Lois. Lois. Clark. "Hang on! Before we go any further, I think we should...come up with some nicknames or something because this is getting really confusing really fast."
Martha nodded, then turned to the other Clark sitting next to her on the couch and his Lois next to him. "Clark...maybe we could call you Jerome? I mean...assuming that's your middle name, too?"
"It is." He nodded. "And sure, we can try that. I can't promise I still won't answer to Clark, but I think it'll help." He smiled nervously.
"What about you, dear?" Martha asked the other Lois.
"Joanne," she said. "Joanne's my middle name."
"Mine too," Lois said, smiling slightly. "Okay, I guess since that is settled, you can go ahead and continue, Mr. Wells."
"Ah, yes. Thank you Ms. Lane. Definitely a good idea!" Wells said from his seat in one of the kitchen chairs they'd moved to the living room. "Now, as I was saying, when I brought the other Cl—sorry, right—when I brought Jerome here to take Clark's place, well, it turns out I was attempting to fix the wrong problem. So I—"
"What do you mean you fixed the wrong problem?!" Lois fumed. She felt Clark's hand squeeze her knee gently, as if to say she should calm down and let Wells finish. She didn't want to calm down, and none of the other six people in the room seemed to be properly outraged.
"That's not precisely it," Wells said a bit nervously. "You see, on my last visit to Utopia—or rather, the absence of Utopia—it had seemed clear to me that the culprit was Superman's prolonged absence from the planet—and Clark's absence from the, uh,
Planet—" Wells paused to chuckle at his own words, but Lois was not amused. "Anyway...that surely such a long absence from both Clark and Superman at the same time would have let the secret out of the bag and sown a great deal of mistrust in Superman. Thus, no Utopia."
Lois was jolted by a sudden pulse of righteous indignation from Jerome just before he spoke.
"So, that's what you've never wanted to tell me? That my universe
has no Utopia?" Jerome ground out, his jaw tense. "What is it with you and your fixation on
this universe? Did you make a mistake bringing this Lois to my universe too? Having her create Superman?" He stood abruptly and took a step towards Wells. "Or was that just part of your long play so that you could have an extra in case of emergencies?"
Joanne was on her feet in seconds, holding his arm and talking softly to him. "Honey, please, calm down. We talked about this."
The room was silent but for Joanne's murmuring as she coaxed Jerome back to their seats on the couch next to Martha. Lois watched them in wonder, fascinated by the way just her touch had calmed him, and then more so, her words.
Her heart was thudding in her chest, not often used to hearing such an angry tone from Clark, either Clark. His words struck deeply, his fury with Wells for interfering—how terrible it must be to feel like he was always coming in second to some ridiculous ideal.
No one seemed to want to say a word, but she realized now that it wasn't that the other people in the room weren't properly outraged...it's that everyone was doing their best to keep a tight rein on their anger. Martha was sitting tight-lipped next to Jerome, one hand on his back to soothe. Joanne, next to Jerome and still holding his hand, kept darting small glares at Wells. Jonathan, at the end of the other couch with her and her Clark, had his arms crossed in front of his chest, his brow set low. Perry, in another kitchen chair, was tugging at his tie like he did when he was stressed, and his eyes kept jumping from Wells to Jerome.
Lois glanced herself at Wells, who was avoiding eye contact and fidgeting with his hat again. To her surprise, she actually felt a measure of pity for Wells. She had to respect the courage it must have taken to come here knowing there were two infuriated Supermen and worse, two violently protective and pissed off Lois Lanes.
She cleared her throat. "Mr. Wells?"
"Right, yes," he said, seeming to come out of his stupor. He set his hat neatly on his lap and rested his hands on either side of it. "First off, Clark...other Clark...er...not that you're the
other or...right Jerome, sorry. Anyway, I am terribly sorry I've made you feel this way. Tempus was the one to have thrown Ms. Lane and me into your universe, but that doesn't excuse how I've treated you. I-I was...unthinking, and for that, I am sorry."
Jerome gave him a curt nod, his jaw still tense and lips in a tight line.
"You see," Wells continued, "part of my mistake, and why I came to take you back after only a month is that I didn't realize you were to be needed when your Lois—er, Joanne—arrived back to Metropolis. It was then that I went to check on this universe's Utopia and...well, found that I'd been wrong in my presumptions."
"Wait!" Lois said. "Presumption?! As in, you made a
guess as to what the problem was? You didn't know for sure before you tried to 'fix' things? Are you serious right now?"
Clark's hand was on her knee again, but not to calm her this time. He was reeling a bit himself, and she could feel his anxiety start to build.
"Ms. Lane, time travel is...well, things can be down right fiddly when you meddle with larger events—"
"Hah!" she and Joanne cried at the same time.
"—I, ah...It's all a bit of a guessing game which cause will...cause which effect." Wells said, clearly a bit off-kilter. "You see, it wasn't at all that the world learned of Superman's secret identity; that had no bearing on the foundation of Utopia." Wells paused to look earnestly, even apologetically, at Jerome.
"So, let me get this straight," Perry said. "You've been essentially playing Russian roulette with Lois and Clark's future here?"
"Well, perhaps the metaphor is a bit extreme," Wells said. "But it
is a bit like shooting in the dark when it comes to finding the precipitating event, and I...uh...still haven't quite put my finger on that exact event yet. So, I'm not sure what to...fix."
Lois felt her temper flare again, and there were other grumblings around the room as well. Clark was still tense beside her.
Martha beat her to the punch...and was probably much kinder about it. "Okay, Mr. Wells..." Martha started. "Then why don't you start by telling us what else you've ruled out as the precipitating event?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Kent," Wells said. "You see, I had thought maybe it was the fact that Earth was without Clark, but that proved not to be the case since the ot—Jerome—was indeed here. So, after that, I thought that perhaps the problem lay in the fact that Clark was without Earth, as it were, for so long! But when I tried to rectify that, something was even more amiss. He left for New Krypton, but then came back the following day because apparently a faction of New Kryptonians invaded Earth instead. Can you believe it? Smallville under siege. It was qu—"
"Wells!" Lois interrupted, trying to help move things along...but more importantly, save Clark the stress of hearing about alternate timelines that might only upset him more. "I think we're all getting a bit dizzied here. What was next?"
"Yes, quite. What seemed to be the real problem was that...Clark had come back from New Krypton and Superman, well, he only sort of did...he was a changed man, and never could get back to the values and principles he once lived by."
Lois felt Clark freeze and his heart wrench as Wells spoke, his worst fears confirmed, and she desperately wanted to yell at Wells again, but instead, she focused her energy on trying to project her love to Clark and surround him with it.
<<You'll be okay. You WILL.>>"So, naturally, I wondered what had gone so wrong..." Wells continued to prattle on, either oblivious to Clark's distress or too nervous to stop explaining. "...and I found that this universe's original timeline...showed no evidence of New Kryptonians. Utopia was there; New Krypton not a part of its history at all."
"What does that mean?" Jonathan asked. "They weren't supposed to come here in the first place?"
"Precisely," Wells said. "But something, somewhere altered the timeline, and made the New Kryptonians show up. I believe whatever it is that altered the timeline is what we need to fix. I, unfortunately, need your help to solve this enigma, because by going to New Krypton, experiencing the war up there, well...I went to the future and had a chat with this psychiatrist fellow, this Dr. Jonathan Shay, one of the foremost experts on something called PTSD. It seems Clark here came home with PTSD as well as what Dr. Shay calls a 'moral injury' and was never quite the same afterwards."
Her Clark...she could feel that his panic had subsided, but in its place was an anger and grief so profound that she almost couldn't breathe. The feelings were so overwhelming that she couldn't hope to comfort him in any way.
The room was silent once more, as if everyone else could feel Clark's emotions too. And maybe they could...they were practically overflowing, flooding the room.
She watched his jaw tick, and he took a breath before leveling a heavy look at Wells. "Why?" he asked, his voice low and rough, but it had a sharp edge and there was no mistaking the resentment and pain underneath.
Wells flinched and shrunk back into his seat. "Wh-what do you mean?"
Clark stood and his voice rose, the edge still there and sharper than ever. "Why didn't you just stop me from leaving in the first place?"
Wells sat there, wide-eyed and in silence, unable to produce any words when he opened his mouth. The tension stretched.
Then Lois felt a sudden lurch of grief in her heart, and she reached for Clark, holding him back and urging him to sit back down because she knew he wanted to escape, find the solace and cold comfort of the treehouse—anything but to be here and be in so much pain.
<<Stay. Please, love.>> He sat again slowly, his eyes not even on Wells anymore but somewhere in the middle distance.
<<I know it hurts. But we need to do this.>><<She's right,>> came Jerome's voice in her mind...certainly in Clark's mind too.
She and Clark looked up abruptly, finding Jerome staring at them, just as startled.
"Did you just...?" Lois asked.
"I...guess I did," Jerome said. "I didn't know...we...it's only ever worked with Lois—I mean, Joanne."
"What's going on?" Martha asked.
"Telepathy," both Loises and Clarks said at the same time.
"Oh my!" said Wells.
Perry, Jonathan, and Martha were all staring, and Perry looked supremely confused. Lois was startled but not altogether surprised that the telepathy worked with their doubles, given that she and Jerome had shared an echo of a connection before. Wells was oddly quiet, seemingly lost in thought, while Lois explained the telepathy and the connection—including what she'd learned from Clark—to everyone who didn't know.
"Mr. Wells?" Lois prompted. "Is there something...do you know anything about all of this?"
He gave a small nod before he started. "One of my fellow inventors—a science theorist by the name of Dr. Gregory Reeve, who was delighted, by the way, to hear of my proof that parallel universes exist—anyway, to the point, he had a theory about counterparts from multiple universes and how they might be somehow...cosmically linked. Something more than just the typical mirroring of universe events—Clark being sent here as a baby, Perry White being editor of the
Daily Planet, Lois Lane being an award-winning reporter...so many things mirrored across universes. But the cosmic link was—well, it's all of course theoretical—but he suggested that counterparts might also share parts of experiences somehow. To be frank, he did get a bit technical at that point, and I'm not sure I followed."
"But that doesn't quite explain why I felt such a strong connection to this Lois when she came to my universe," Jerome said. "She's not my counterpart."
"Ah!" Wells said. "But she
is your counterpart's soul mate! And it seems, from what this Lois said, that there's a bit of Kryptonian physiology at play as well. Oh, this is very exciting! Dr. Reeve will be—"
"Mr. Wells, please," Lois said. "I...
we would prefer it if you didn't share so much about us and our private lives with your scientist friends, especially the stuff that's Kryptonian in nature."
"Right, sorry. You're quite right."
"So you're saying..." Joanne started slowly, and Lois could feel a faint but peculiar sadness from her. "...that Lois and I both went to the Congo four years ago, and there was some
thing, some event that meant she came home and I...didn't?"
Lois was getting echoes of her counterpart's grief and...regret. "I'm sorry," she told Joanne. "I don't know any of what you went through, but I can imagine it...well, I'm sorry."
"Thanks," Joanne Lois said, taking Jerome's hand in her own. "I'm doing a whole lot better now. Clark and I may not have family quite like you do..." She nodded to Martha and then Jonathan in turn. "But we have each other, and our own Perry, too." She grinned a little and looked over at Perry.
Martha gasped. "Clark! Your parents all those years ago..." She looked from Jerome to Jonathan. "Hang on...Jonathan, didn't we...there was a very near miss we had 20-some years ago. I'd almost forgotten..."
"That's right!" Jonathan said. "I lost control of the car for half a second. Almost had a wreck!" "We’d assumed it was just some muscle spasm or something, but…"
"The doctor gave you a clean bill of health and nothing ever came of it." Martha's hand went to cover her mouth. "...that could have been..."
No one quite knew what to say after that, as if they were having a collective moment of silence for the alternate Martha and Jonathan Kent.
"What if the precipitating events are linked across universes too?" Jerome said. "And what would happen if someone was in the wrong universe when one happened?"
"What are you getting at, honey?" Joanne asked.
"What if my being here during this Clark's absence was actually what caused there to be no Utopia in the end? Wells already admitted it was a mistake bringing me here. What if there was some sort of ripple or butterfly effect?"
Lois felt her adrenaline start pumping, that tingling feeling she always got when there was a juicy lead to be found. "But Wells said that there
was a Utopia when Clark didn't go to New Krypton, and there was never any trace of the New Kryptonians at all in the history. So, that means
something happened somewhere to make them come and find Clark."
"Okay," Joanne said said, clearly feeling and building off Lois' own excitement. "So, Clark, did they tell you
why they came looking for you? Why they needed you to come?"
"They said I was the rightful heir to the throne as Lord Kal-El of the House of El, and they needed me to—"
"Hold up! We're royalty?" Jerome said, his eyebrows high on his forehead.
"Honey!" Joanne said. "Shh, you can freak out about the details later. Lois and I are on to something!" She turned to face Clark again. "Now did they tell you anything else? If it's royalty, does that mean someone died or abdicated the throne?"
Joanne and Lois both looked at Clark expectantly, and Clark looked a little frazzled. She gave his leg a squeeze.
"Yeah," Clark said. "My uncle Zor-El of the House of El. Actually, Zara said she suspected it was an assassination, but since he was older and frail, no one would authorize an investigation into his death. She said he'd been trying to reform the government, make changes that were upsetting the—"
"Wait!" Jerome said. "Did you say Sorrel?"
"No, Zor-El, with a Z."
"Honey?" Joanne said to Jerome.
"Sorrel Ellis. He was an older guy, a political activist...I barely remembered the fact that he had been trying to run against Perry for mayor."
"Say what now?" Perry asked, eyes wide.
"Mr. White," Jerome said, "you left the paper to run for Mayor of Metropolis. Actually, you
are the mayor now...er, well, your counterpart is the mayor."
"Well, I'll be!" Perry said in wonder. "I can't imagine ever leaving the Planet, but good for me—er, him. But you said this Sorrel person was going to run against me—er, him. Who
did run against him?"
"Tempus!" half the room exclaimed in unison.
Jerome spoke up first. "Sorrel Ellis never ran for mayor because...he died a somewhat unexpected death shortly before the campaigning started. No one...thought anything of it because he was a bit old and somewhat frail..." He trailed off slowly.
"Oh, boy," Perry said with a chuff. "This all sure is one hell of a story. I wish it was something I could publish."
"Perry!" both Joanne and Lois said.
"Sorry, sorry. My mind is reelin' with all this wild information, and about the only thing that makes real sense to me is a good ol' story about political corruption and murder."
Lois and Joanne both leveled disapproving glares at him.
He put a hand up in apology for each of them. "Sorry! I'll be good."
"If I'm following along here," Jonathan said, "then it seems like the way to 'fix', for lack of a better term, the issue here is to go back in time in the other universe and stop this Tempus fellow from killing Sorrel?"
"In theory..." Wells hesitated, taking a deep breath. "It certainly sounds like the simple answer, but that event there set off several subsequent events that, well...even if we were right, and if we were successful, then exists the very real possibility that this Lois and I would never be taken to the alternate universe and there would be no Superman."
Lois felt the lurches from Joanne and Jerome, a gut punch of mild panic and grief at the idea of a what-if scenario like that.
Wells shook his head strongly. "I won't do it. There is just too much risk involved for a purely theoretical fix. Too many paradoxes and pitfalls with that one. I'm afraid that's not the solution."
"Then what
do we do?" asked Martha.
"Well, I
could attempt again to...uh, keep Clark from going in the first place?" Wells offered hesitantly, throwing a nervous glance in Clark's direction. "Let him know the consequences of going so that he can decide to stay?"
Lois felt a wave of complicated emotions flood Clark's chest—her own, too. "You can't..." she said softly as she put a hand on Clark's back and moved to hold his other hand in hers. "He'll choose to go every time. It's who he is. If he can help...he will. And on New Krypton...yes, terrible, horrific things happened that changed him. But he also did so much good. He changed the government, saved lives, set them up for the future."
There was a steely resolve within him now, and a profound sadness and love that all didn't quite make sense together. Yet at the same time...it made perfect sense. She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
"Kallie," he said, his voice low and thready. "I'm not giving up Kallie."
"Of course not, honey," Martha said. "No one wants that. We'll just come up with another solution."
Lois was cataloging everything in her mind, all the details and emotions and people...and there was only one clear answer. "We already have one," she said.
"We do?" everyone asked.
Lois nodded. "It's the one we came up with earlier. Everything we planned before these guys showed up. Clark gets therapy, professional help for PTSD, and we do our best to get back to our regular lives to create a sense of...well, whatever the heck normalcy means for us."
There were a few chuckles around the room, hers included. She continued, "And our biggest concern, Clark's biggest hurdle, was not being ready to be Superman. We happen to have a Superman right here if he's willing to help out, and guessing by his presence here already, I'm assuming he is."
"When Wells came to us asking for help," Jerome said, "I was hesitant, of course, but...he mentioned you were struggling and that the solution wasn't clear." He looked down at his hands for a moment before looking back over, directly at Clark. "I know the struggle, how hard it is to try and be...super...when you feel anything but. I don't know what happened up there or what you've been through. I know my path is so much different than yours, but I want to help." He glanced at Joanne and she nodded and took his hand. Then he looked back at Clark. "...if you're okay with that."
Martha regarded Jerome with concern but relief, too, reaching out to give his arm a squeeze.
"I can help, too," Joanne said. "I've...well, I have experience with PTSD."
Lois watched Jerome take Joanne's hand and look at her with so much love and admiration as he brought her hand up to place a gentle kiss on it.
Lois couldn't help but notice Martha's rather delighted look. Martha asked, "Does that mean you'll both be staying for a while?"
Jerome nodded and put his arm around Martha, giving her a gentle squeeze. "As long as we can come for Sunday dinners?"
Martha swatted him on the shoulder. "You'd better!"
The tension seemed to drain from the room, though it was still heavy with emotion. As a lighter conversation continued around them, Lois looked at Clark and ran her hand up and down his back. He had tears in his eyes, but she could at least feel a measure of relief from him and...some sort of gratitude that came with complicated feelings of guilt.
<<You deserve it, love. If you still don't believe it yet, believe me.>>He nodded, a tear slipping from his eye, and he brought their joined hands up to his lips to kiss hers.
<<I love you.>><<I love you too.>>At some point, Jonathan brewed some more coffee, and they all stayed up late working to finalize the details—who would be staying where, what communication would be like, what Jerome would say as Superman at a press conference announcing his and Clark's return.
Wells headed out on his own, bidding everyone the best of luck and a promise to be back to return Joanne and Jerome to their own universe in several months, though Lois thought she might hold her breath on that estimate. Jerome flew Perry home, and then came back for Joanne, and they headed to Clark's apartment to settle in for their long stay in Metropolis.
**********
Lois and Clark laid in their bed after everyone else had long since left and gone to sleep. Kallie was between them, sleeping soundly again after Clark had fed her, and for a long time, they just watched her. Her little tummy rose and fell with each little breath. Every once in a while, her tiny brow would furrow and she would make tiny whimpers, maybe from a troublesome bit of dream. But every time, Clark would gently stroke her cheek and she would calm instantly.
Then her little mouth quirked in a smile and what sounded like little laughs came out. Lois' heart swelled with love, and she reached for Clark's hand to hold, needing to touch him but not wanting to take her eyes off this magical sight as Kallie continued to smile in her sleep.
The moment ended, and Lois finally found Clark's eyes. He was looking at her with so much love, it stole her breath away, and their connection seemed to surge and strengthen. "She's so amazing," he whispered softly. "Thank you."
Her heart swelled again, but she couldn't help but let out a little laugh. "You helped, you know."
He smiled, his eyes shining. "
You are so amazing. Everything you did to get her to this place and time. Everything..." He paused and swallowed thickly. "Everything you did for me—waiting for me, loving me, believing in me. I wouldn't have made it if I hadn't had you down here carrying me the whole time in your heart."
"Oh, Clark. I wouldn't have made it without your love."
"I'd be lost without you in my life," he said softly, bringing his hand up to cup her cheek in that so-familiar gesture.
"Me too, love. Me too." She held his hand against her cheek for a moment and then turned to press a kiss into his palm.
"You think it'll really be okay? That I'll be okay?" he whispered hoarsely.
She nodded. "It has to be. We're together now. You and me...we're stronger than you alone." Her mouth quirked into a grin. "And we can multiply that by two."
Clark raised an eyebrow at her.
"Did you see them in there, Joanne and Jerome? They're just like us—different—but just like us, so connected and so strong together. We're going to kick some serious butt."
She roused a smile from him and beamed back with her own. "You're incredible, you know that?" he said.
"I know." She grinned, her heart so full. "So are you, Clark." Suddenly, the emotions seemed to overflow, and she could feel tears starting in her eyes. "So incredible. So brave. I've never known anyone with as selfless and pure a heart."
"I wish I could kiss you right now." He glanced down at Kallie between them.
"I'll give you a kiss if you can transfer her to the bassinet without waking her up." She winked at him.
She watched in amusement and anticipation as he got up at super speed and then bent down so slowly and delicately to pick her up with two hands. Carefully, he carried her over to the bassinet and laid her down.
Lois laid back against the pillows and waited for him. "You're very good at that, you know."
"Well, I do have a lot of experience with delicate explosives." He grinned.
"You're comparing our darling baby to a bomb?!" she asked, teasing him.
"Lois, honey, I'm sure I don't have to remind you of the fact that she explodes regularly—spit up, crying, and poop explosions?"
Lois buried her head in the pillows and burst into laughter. She heard the sweet sound of his laughter too, getting ever closer as he climbed back into bed next to her. When she lifted her head up from the pillows moments later, his face was inches away, and he was staring at her with an intensity that stole her breath again.
He swooped in to kiss her, his lips plying against hers as she felt their connection surge and overflow again, so strongly that she couldn't even identify what emotions they were feeling. It was as though lights were sparking, twinkling inside her brilliantly in pinks and reds and greens and purples, the warmth and glow eddying with the thrill and tingling of what was to come. She felt his hands, warm against her cheeks as he loved her, running his fingers through her hair and saying with his mouth what couldn't ever be put into words. When they finally parted, foreheads resting against one another, they were both breathless.
Lois let out a shuddering breath, stroking his cheek and letting her hand come to rest on his chest.
<<I love you. So much.>><<I love you too,>> he told her
, and then he gathered her in his arms and kissed her again, the promise of all their tomorrows not so far away.
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