From last time:
He walked over to the window with Keira silently lying in his arms. He stared up at the night’s sky, completely free of stars because the bright lights of Metropolis, even at two thirty in the morning, made the light of the stars impossible to see to the ordinary human eye. “It’s a big, crazy, confusing, amazing world out there,” he whispered. “And none of it is going to be foreign to you. You’ll see the world in a way other people can’t. It’s the most incredible thing I can imagine. And I can’t wait to share it with you. But being different like we are means you’ll have to be brave, too. You will see a lot of amazing things in the world, and a lot of things that are going to break your heart. We won’t be able to protect you from all of them. But you will always be loved. And you will never be alone.”
She’d fallen back to sleep in his arms, her tiny chest rising and falling with each deep breath. “I guess that’s all way too much to be worrying about for now,” he admitted with a soft chuckle. “You are, after all, only ten days old.” Carefully, he laid her back down in her crib, letting his fingers brush over the soft down of her hair. Clark leaned down and kissed the top of her head gently. “Good night, honey,” he whispered. “I love you.”
********
Almost four years later…
She completed the loop around Centennial Park, more than six miles in all, her feet hitting the pavement in an even rhythm. She made sure to stay on Patch’s good side—the Kent family’s border collie didn’t like having anyone in her blind spot. Anyone that is, except Clark. She was Jon and Keira’s dog, technically, but though she herded the Kent children around the house, it was usually at Clark’s feet that she could be found.
It was because of Patch that Lois had taken up running again. Six months ago, the kids had started begging for a dog. They’d gone to the pound and found the skinny border collie with only one eye – the other had been a casualty of cancer. The kids had insisted on taking her home, and oddly, calling her Patch. She had a sweet, gentle disposition, but too much energy to be cooped up in the house all day long. So even though the exercise couldn’t strengthen her heart or tone her muscles, Lois ran each morning, just to tire the dog out.
They made their way back to Sullivan Lane, Patch always at Lois’s side, letting her master set the pace. She waved at their neighbor, the elderly Mr. Silverstein, as he picked up the morning paper, then followed Patch up the steps to the brownstone’s door. She opened the door to the smells of bacon and eggs and coffee, and the sounds of the kids, chasing each other through the living room. Lois headed upstairs to shower and dress quickly. In the mornings, weekday or weekend, the house was chaos. Her runs, while principally for Patch’s benefit, were also a time for her to enjoy some silence. She made her way back downstairs and into the middle of a feud between her two children.
“No fair!” Keira cried out. “Daddy! Jon took my bear!”
“You got orange juice all over him!” Jon protested in response.
Jon dodged his mother as he came running into the foyer. Keira found herself getting scooped up by Lois as she tried to chase her much bigger brother. “Jon, give me the bear,” she said. “I’m going to give him a bath and then he’ll be all clean again, okay?” she told her pouting daughter.
With an exaggerated sigh, Jon turned over the bear. “Good,” Lois declared. “Now let’s go see what Daddy’s making for breakfast.”
In the kitchen, Clark finished spooning the scrambled eggs onto six plates as his mother poured the coffee. His tie was tucked in between the buttons of his shirt to keep it out of the stove and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. Even though it was Saturday, Clark was heading into the office for the morning. He grinned at her as she walked into the kitchen and she couldn’t help but see in him the eager, optimistic farm boy he’d been so many years ago. “Hey honey, how was your run?” he asked.
“Good,” she said as she picked up two of the plates he’d prepared and kissed him quickly. She started setting the table for breakfast.
<<…Maryland Senate Candidate, former Navy Captain and Assistant Defense Secretary Sarah Coleman, has taken a commanding early lead in statewide polls….>> Martha turned off the television as she put the juice and coffee on the table. “Kids, Jonathan, breakfast is ready!” she called.
The kids ran into the kitchen and scrambled into their seats. Patch followed them in, her front right paw wrapped in an ace bandage that was unraveling and trailing behind her. She shook off the bandage and headed straight for her water bowl, then promptly settled under the table, right next to Clark’s chair. Lois wasn’t sure why exactly it was that Patch had taken to Clark so thoroughly. After all, she was the one who usually fed and walked Patch. But maybe their dog, who’d had it pretty rough as a puppy – first being abandoned, then nearly dying from cancer – recognized that life had been tough on Clark, too.
He sat down in his chair and broke off a little piece of bacon, surreptitiously feeding it to the dog. Lois glared at him, but he merely shrugged and smiled. Forget her previous theory, it had to be the bacon.
“Did Patch have a boo-boo?” she asked her younger child.
Keira nodded solemnly. “But she’s all better now.” Lois wondered if part of her daughter’s attachment to Patch came from the fact that she was a more amusing patient than her teddy bears and stuffed dogs.
“What time are your reservations tonight?” Lois’s father-in-law asked.
“Eight o’clock,” Clark replied.
“Daddy, I wanna go, too,” Keira declared.
“Eight o’clock is your bedtime, young lady,” Clark said with mock sternness.
“Can I go to the park today with Ryan?” Jon asked as he looked up from his eggs.
“By yourselves?” Lois asked, arching a brow.
“No, his mom’s gonna go, too,” Jon replied.
“Okay, just be home in time for dinner,” she responded. They finished breakfast and Jon helped his parents clear the table.
“Stay out of trouble,” Clark said as he tousled his son’s hair.
“I will,” Jon replied as he grabbed his Metropolis Monarchs baseball cap from the counter and pulled it down over his shaggy brown hair. “Bye Mom, bye Dad, bye Grandma, bye Grandpa,” he shouted out a string of goodbyes and dashed out of the kitchen.
“Bye Sweetie!” Lois called out after her son. She turned to see her husband untucking his tie from between his shirt buttons and rolling his sleeves back down.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said. “But I’ll be home early.”
He left unsaid their silent understanding—that his early return was still, as always, contingent on no one needing Superman. Since she was taking Keira out that morning, it meant Clark was on duty. Lois kissed him quickly. “Have a good day,” she said.
Clark picked Keira up from her chair and spun her around in his arms. She giggled with joy. “Faster, Daddy!” she shouted. He twirled around once more before putting her back down on her feet.
“Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “We don’t want to get dizzy.” He bent down to kiss the top of his little girl’s head. “Be good, sweetheart. I love you.”
“Love you too,” Keira said as she stretched her arms out, pleading for one more hug. Clark dropped to his knee and hugged his daughter. That little girl with her wide, brown eyes had the Man of Steel completely at her beck and call. She kissed his cheek. “Have fun at work, Daddy.”
“You too, kiddo. Be nice to Patch.” Clark grinned at Lois as he stood up. “Happy anniversary,” he said as he grabbed his suit coat from the back of his chair at the kitchen table. “Bye Mom, Dad.”
“Bye son!” Jonathan called out as he started to unfold the morning’s paper.
“Bye Honey!” Martha added.
********
Jon Kent was stealthy. He was agile, strong, and sneaky. From limb to limb, he climbed fluidly and gracefully into the elm tree. From here, he would totally be able to nail Ryan’s older brother with a water balloon. The younger boys had hidden their flag in the woods just north of the Sheep’s Meadow. Ryan and Timmy were off trying to find the other team’s flag, which left Jon to protect their flag. He crawled out further onto the branch, trying to get a clear shot at the opening he knew the other team would have to come through. Small branches and twigs poked at him as he levered himself into a seated position, but he ignored them. They didn’t even hurt because he was so focused. Just like a ninja. Or a sniper.
Steadying himself with one hand wrapped around the thin branch, he reached for the bag of water balloons tied to one of the belt loops on his shorts with a piece of string. He couldn’t quite open the cinch tie on the bag with just one hand, though, so he was forced to let go of the branch in order to find his ammunition. As he pulled out a slippery water balloon, he got a glimpse of the rocky ground far beneath him.
‘Don’t be a baby. Don’t get scared,’ he told himself silently. Holding the water balloon gently in one hand, he reached for the branch again.
But his hand slipped.
The water balloon fell from his other hand and wobbled its way to the ground, hitting with a squishy ‘woosh’ as it burst on the hard packed dirt. He shuddered, imagining hitting the ground himself, and suddenly, he lost his balance. He tried to grip onto the branch, but he hadn’t accounted for the fact that the thin branch was going to sway and bend under his weight. The world beneath him started to spin. He closed his eyes, feeling his heart thunder in his chest. Falling from up here was going to hurt an awful lot. It would be at least as bad as when Jason Rodgers broke his arm after falling off the top of the backstop at the baseball diamond. Jon tried to inch his way back toward the trunk, but it only caused the branch to sway more. And as his foot hit a fork in the branch he hadn’t remembered, his leg slipped and his body swung all the way around under the branch. He couldn’t hold on and he fell, like in slow motion, like it was in the movies. He tried to scream, but he wasn’t sure if he made any sound.
Suddenly, there was a loud thud. And he’d stopped falling. But it didn’t hurt. He opened his eyes and looked up. Above him, the green, leafy branches of the tree swayed with a slight breeze. Oh no! Maybe he was paralyzed! He’d seen it on TV – kids who’d dived into a shallow swimming pool and had broken their necks! They said they hadn’t felt any pain because they didn’t feel anything at all.
Terrified, he wiggled his toes. Nope, they still wiggled, at least, it felt like they wiggled. He lifted his head up and stared down at his sneakers. ‘You dope!’ he thought to himself. If he could lift his head up, he wasn’t paralyzed. Experimentally, he stood up. Nothing hurt. He looked down at his legs. Not even any scratches.
Maybe the spot where he’d landed had been unusually soft. He turned around and looked down at the ground that had been beneath him. A sharp, jagged gray edge of rock jutted out of the dirt, just where his head had been. Jon lifted his fingers gingerly to the back of his head. No bump, no bleeding. It didn’t even hurt at all. He should have busted his head open on that rock. But it hadn’t hurt at all.
Why?
He’d gotten hurt plenty of times before. For all of last summer, his knees had been perpetually scraped. Every time another scratch or wound from sliding on the baseball diamond or falling off his bike had scabbed over, he’d managed to get another one. But he couldn’t remember getting hurt in the last few months.
But it had been winter.
Sure, he’d still played outside, but when you fell down in a snowball fight, you just got cold and wet. You didn’t get a skinned knee or a broken arm. Jon looked around at the woods surrounding him. In the brush, he found a broken green glass bottle. He tried to brush the dirt off the broken edge of it before pressing the sharp point against the tip of one finger. He didn’t press very hard at first, but no matter how much pressure he applied, the glass didn’t cut him. It didn’t even hurt! He gave his hand a sharp, sudden poke with the broken edge of glass. Still, nothing happened.
Jon dropped the broken bottle and backed slowly away from it. He nearly tripped backward over the boulder that was behind him. Turning toward it, he tried another experiment. He kicked the large rock as hard as he could, shuddering, expecting pain to radiate from his toes. But it didn’t hurt.
This didn’t make any sense.
He was invulnerable.
He was invincible.
He was…Super.
********
Jon ran home as fast as he could, his heart thumping, his feet pounding on the concrete. His uncoordinated limbs flailed awkwardly as he dashed up the steps and burst into the townhouse. It didn’t make sense. How could he be super? Maybe what had happened in the park was a fluke. He ran into the laundry room and found a safety pin in the cabinet with Grandma’s sewing kit. He jabbed it as hard as he could into his thumb, tensing as he expected it to hurt. But it didn’t. It wasn’t a fluke. He realized he was biting his tongue, but that didn’t hurt either.
How could he be super?
Unless…his parents were super.
But he’d seen pictures of his mom when she was pregnant with him. Maybe he’d been switched at birth. But that didn’t make any sense either. Unless there were Kryptonian families on Earth. Did Superman or Ultrawoman have any kids? He went into the living room, searching for the picture albums. The house was quiet – Mom and Grandma were going to take Keira to the library and Grandpa was probably playing checkers with his friend Harry. He pulled the picture albums off the bookshelves, and started flipping furiously through them. There were pictures of his grandparents and his mom when she was pregnant. Then pictures of her and him when he was born. She was in a bed, holding him. He looked really small. Was that really him? He remembered Grandpa telling him he’d been born in Dad’s old apartment. Which meant he couldn’t have been switched in a hospital.
There were more pictures of him when he was a baby. Pictures of him with Grandma and Grandpa on their farm. And when he was bigger, pictures of him and Dad. So he probably wasn’t switched at birth with a Kryptonian baby.
Which meant…one of his parents had to be Kryptonian. But if he already knew that Mom really was his mom, that could only mean that Dad…wasn’t really his dad.
That meant Superman had to be his dad.
His parents didn’t know it yet, but he knew where babies came from. Sure, they weren’t supposed to talk about that in school until he was in fifth grade, but the older kids on the playground had been more than happy to share the information to a bunch of incredulous third graders. It was gross. He didn’t want to think of his mom and dad doing *that.* And they had to have done it at least twice.
Ew.
Thinking about his mom doing *that* with someone else was even grosser.
But how else could he be invincible?
Leaving the photo albums in a pile on the living room floor, he ran to the rec room and turned on the computer. He had research to do. He just hoped he could finish it before anyone else got home. Jon opened a search engine and typed in his mom’s name and ‘Superman.’ The boy’s jaw hung open as he saw how many hits the search returned. His mouth twisted into a frown at a picture of his Mom from a long time ago, kissing Superman. He heard the front door open and he leapt up from the computer, running out of the rec room.
“Jon, are you okay?” his mother asked as she rushed into the house. “Ryan’s mom said you ran off from the park. You know you’re not supposed to be home by yourself.”
Mom walked over to him and looked him over, brushing his hair out of his face. Jon scowled and looked away. “Leave me alone!” he shouted as he shrugged her off.
“Jonathan Clark Kent!” his mother scolded. “What has gotten into you?”
“I got books!” his little sister exclaimed, holding up a stack of picture books. Grandma put a hand on her shoulder and kept Keira from running into the foyer.
“I know Dad’s not my real dad,” he said. “I know what you did!” Jon saw a look of surprise on his mother’s face. He turned and bolted up the stairs to his room.
“Jon!” his mother shouted after him but he slammed his door. He would have thought that finding out he was invincible, a superhero in the making, would have been totally cool. Instead, hot tears stung his eyes and he tried not to sob.
********
Lois picked up the phone in the kitchen and speed dialed her husband. “Clark, come home now,” she said tersely.
<<What’s going on? Are the kids okay?>>
“We’ve got to have a talk with Jon.”
<<The birds and the bees? Aren’t they supposed to have that talk next year in school?>>
“Not that talk. The other talk.”
“Ah. Be right there.”
She heard a sonic boom a few seconds later as her husband returned home. From upstairs, she could hear him descend from the library. She met him on the second floor, just outside Jon’s room. She could hear her little boy crying and it broke her heart.
Lois took her husband’s arm and led him toward their room. “I don’t know what happened but Jon ran away from the Park and came home. He scared Ryan’s mother half to death.”
“He came home by himself?” Clark asked.
She nodded. “When I got home, he was angry. He claimed he knew you weren’t his father and that he ‘knew what I did.’”
Clark’s mouth twisted into a frown. “So something probably happened in the park and he realized he’s not like other kids.”
“And he thinks Superman is his father. He left the computer on in the rec room. He was looking at an old photo from when you stopped the Nightfall asteroid.”
“That picture of you kissing me before I took off?” he asked. Lois nodded silently. Her husband sighed as he dragged a hand through his hair. “Well, we knew this was going to happen sooner or later.”
“You think he’s ready to handle the secret?” Lois asked.
“He’s a smart kid. I think he’ll get it.” He’d been about Jon’s age himself when his powers had started manifesting. Ever since he’d returned from New Krypton, he’d thought about how this day would go – how would he tell his own son about who he was, what sort of powers he was going to develop, his Kryptonian heritage.
“Well let’s go. Jon’s hurting. He needs his parents.” She took his hand and squeezed it gently.
********
“Jon?” Clark rapped softly on the door as he pushed it open. Jon was lying face down on the bed. He didn’t look up or acknowledge his parents. Clark looked at the bare wall next to the bed, where Jon’s Superman poster had once hung. It was now in a pile of pieces on the ground.
“Honey?” Lois ventured gently. “Honey, we need to talk to you. What happened today in the park?”
“I fell out of a tree,” Jon said flatly, his voice muffled by his pillow. “I didn’t get hurt. I know Dad isn’t my real father. He can’t be.”
Clark stepped across the room toward the bed and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I am your father,” he said. “And I know you’re not like other kids. You’re ‘super.’ So are we.”
Jon sat up and looked at his parents, his eyes red from crying, but his little brow was knitted in consternation. “What do you mean?”
“What we’re going to tell you is the biggest secret we have. And we haven’t told you yet because we needed to keep you and your sister safe. But it’s time you knew.” Clark looked over his shoulder, making sure the door behind them was closed. He glanced at his wife, who nodded slightly. In unison, they spun into their suits. When they came to a stop, fully decked out in superhero regalia, they smiled at the look of shock on their little boy’s face.
“You’re…you…so I’m….” he stuttered, his eyes wide.
“Your mom and I are Ultrawoman and Superman,” Clark said calmly. “You are our son. And you’re developing the same powers we have.”
Jon’s mouth hung open. He simply stared at his parents in their brightly colored uniforms. Clark waited with bated breath to see how his son would react. “So I’m going to be a superhero, too? Way cool,” he whispered.
Lois smiled. “Now, you need to know how important it is to keep this a secret. The only other people who know this are Grandma and Grandpa. Even your Grandma Ellen and Grandpa Sam don’t know. You can’t tell anyone, not your friends, not your teachers. Not Keira. The more people who know this, the more dangerous it is for the people in our family who aren’t super, like Grandma, Grandpa, and your little sister.”
“So are you both from Krypton?” Jon asked. “When did you come to Earth? When can I start flying?” The questions came out with rapid fire speed, causing Clark to grin. Everyone told him that Jon looked like his dad, but in his inquisitiveness, he was a lot more like his mother.
“No, I’m from Earth, I was born in Metropolis, just like you,” Lois began. “Grandpa Sam and Grandma Ellen are just regular people and I didn’t even have these powers before I became Ultrawoman…” Lois began.
They took turns filling Jon in on how Clark learned he was from Krypton, how he never told anyone about his powers, and how Lois eventually got her husband’s powers and became a superhero, too. It took over an hour to answer their little boy’s questions.
“Is there anything else you want to know?” Clark asked at last.
“Can we go flying?” Jon asked with a grin.
“Okay, but just a short one,” Clark said. “Your mother and I have a date tonight and I still have to get the newspaper out.”
********
Clark set his keys down on his dresser, admiring his wife as she walked ahead of him into their bedroom and toward the stereo. It was just like her to remember that before their first date, he'd admitted to having envisioned her wearing a deep burgundy dress. The one she wore now accentuated her narrow waist and the soft curve of her hips. The slit on one side gave him only a tantalizing glimpse of her gorgeously long legs. The spaghetti straps and V-back of the dress did nothing to obscure her slim, elegant shoulders or her soft, honey-colored skin. He ached to touch her, knowing that her skin would be smooth and warm under his fingers.
He dropped his jacket on the chair, his tie following immediately after, never taking his eyes off her. She slipped out of her heels. As soon as they'd walked into the restaurant, the eyes of every man in the room turned to Lois. Many did nothing to hide the fact that they were admiring her as she walked by. A few seemed to have the dopey, wistful look on their faces that Clark knew had to have been on his face the first time he saw her. It was funny, but all of the appreciative gazes didn't bother him in the slightest, and he knew it was because all night, the only man Lois had looked at was him. He was almost giddy with the knowledge that she was indeed the most gorgeous woman any man had ever laid eyes on, and the only one she seemed to notice was him. He only hoped that he had been able to be somewhat discreet about it, instead of wearing a self-satisfied grin the entire evening.
Clark didn't know how she did it. Thirteen years after he'd met her, after ten years of marriage and six years since his return, she continued to take his breath away every time she walked into a room. Every time she smiled at him, he felt his heart rate kick up a notch. Every time she looked at him with a glint of mischief in those dark eyes, his whole body would be flushed with warmth. The slight sway of her hips when she walked was hypnotic. The smell of her skin could intoxicate him.
The soft strains of music began to fill the room as she padded barefoot back toward him, an almost shy smile on her face. "Dance with me," she whispered as he pulled her into his arms. She slipped one hand into his as he looped the other arm around her delicate waist.
He took her hand and placed it against his heart and held it there as they gently swayed to the music. She placed her head against his chest and he leaned down to kiss the crown of her hair. "I love you," he whispered almost breathlessly in her ear.
"I love you," she murmured against his chest. He floated them gently off the ground, eliciting a slight, satisfied sigh from her. She looked up at him and he took the invitation to kiss her. Her lips parted under his and she freed her hands to loop them around his neck and tangle her fingers in his hair.
His hands settled on either side of her waist as he held her tightly against his body. His lips trailed soft kisses down her neck and toward one shoulder. His hands searched for the zipper at the back of her dress, his fingers fumbling, to no avail. He growled in frustration. "How am I supposed to get you out of this thing?" he asked.
"Can't you just find the zipper with your vision gizmo?" she asked, an impish grin on her face.
"Believe me, I've x-rayed through the dress, but that wasn't what I was looking for," he replied.
"Clark!" She gave him a playful swat on the chest. She kissed him again before reaching for the tiny clasp at the top of the zipper. His hands covered hers as he began to unzip the dress. It fell away from her shoulders, spilling toward the ground. Lois turned her attention to the buttons on his shirt, slowly undoing them and exposing a ribbon of skin. She trailed kisses down his neck and over his chest, across the newly revealed skin. She grasped the shirttails and untucked them, pushing the sides of the shirt down over his shoulder and bunching them up on his arms.
No wonder she'd asked him to wear that French cuffed shirt and the fancy cufflinks, he thought idly to himself. His arms were now essentially stuck as he couldn't get his hands out of the sleeves with the cufflinks still in. "Aren't you going to help me out of this?" he asked.
"You're the strongest man in the world, aren't you?" she asked.
"Well, I could just rip through the shirt, but I think you'd get mad at me."
"Well then, I guess you're stuck," she replied as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his. Her bare skin against his chest sent jolts of electricity through him, like it always did. She kissed him thoroughly. With renewed enthusiasm, he managed to wriggle his way out of the shirtsleeves, damaging neither the shirt nor the cufflinks.
"How did you do that?" she asked in a mock pout as he wrapped his arms around her, his hands trailing languidly down the smooth skin of her back.
"Same way I can tear my shirt open without popping off the buttons. I should show you that sometime."
"And here I thought you liked sewing the buttons back onto your shirts after I'm done ravishing you."
He chuckled before kissing her again. His eyes still closed, he whispered, "do you have any idea how much I love you?" He felt her place her hand against his cheek.
"As much as I love you," she replied.
Their lips met again as he floated them up higher and then reclined on his back, his wife lying securely on top of him. He reached up to caress her cheek. She turned to drop a kiss in the palm of his hand. "Happy anniversary, sweetheart," he murmured.
"Happy anniversary," she whispered. He could see the tears shining brightly in her eyes, but knew they were tears of happiness. They had cried together far too many times for him not to know the difference.
He opened his mouth to say something, but couldn't form the words. How could he begin to explain? How could he describe what she meant to him? What she'd given to him? She'd brought into the world their two wonderful children. She'd graced him with her endless patience and support, and he could scarcely describe the importance of all of the nights she'd held him and held his world together. She'd given him the love that had so clearly saved his life on many occasions. And how could he begin to apologize for four agonizingly long years of lonely nights? She'd made clear in no uncertain terms that she sought no apology. She never blamed him for the hurt they'd endured during their separation, but even more humbling was the fact that she never blamed him for the hurt he'd caused her when he returned. Their pain hadn't ended when they were reunited. She had endured more than any person should have been asked to, and in the end, she was the one responsible for the fact that they were still together. He had only survived because the power of her love was so much stronger than the power of his fear.
"What is it?" she asked softly, reminding him that after all of these years, there was nothing he could hide from her.
"I just wanted to say thank you," he began, as he trailed kisses from the corner of her mouth along the line of her jaw and up to her ear. "For marrying me. For giving me two beautiful children. For loving our son enough for both of us when I couldn't be here. For taking care of my parents. For never losing faith in me. For never letting me forget that there isn't anything I can't tell you. For loving me more than any man could ever hope to be loved." He felt moisture on his cheek. He turned to look at her and brushed a tear from her face.
"How do you do it?" she murmured. "How do you make me fall in love with you all over again every day?" She kissed him as he floated them back down to the bed. Silently, he discarded the rest of their clothing. They made love, as they had countless times before, two people who knew one another better than they knew themselves. In a way though, it almost felt like the first time. She never ceased to fascinate him, her quietly whispered declarations of love never failed to quicken his pulse. Being with her allowed him, just for a moment, to feel connected to something far bigger, more permanent, than himself. He loved her. Not just for that instant, or even for all the days of the rest of his life. He loved her eternally. That love would survive long after they were both gone. Even when the light in the world had dimmed, his love for her wouldn't.
Hours later, as she lay peacefully in his arms, he found contentment in watching her sleep, knowing he was exactly where he was supposed to be. When he was with her, he was home. He had crossed the universe, not once but twice, to find her. His journey had taken him down long and lonely roads, places of impenetrable darkness, and he'd stumbled more than once. But he had someone to lift him up. He would never walk alone again. The path in front of him wasn't just his, it was theirs. Whatever lay ahead, they would discover together. Eventually, sleep claimed him, too.
The End
