His fingers edged under the hem of her dress. Very, very slowly, he explored the lower parts of her thigh, visualising how she had looked at the beach when dressed in the shorts.

"You have great legs," he murmured, dropping a kiss onto her kneecap.

At mid-thigh, he stopped. "Your turn," he said, barely able to compel his voice to obedience.

Lois stood from the bed and reached behind her body. Clark heard the whir of the zipper.

The shoulders of her dress teetered on the upper curves of her arms, lowering the front even more.

Lois looked at him and said, "It's your turn."

Clark slowly stood to his feet. His eyes, which had been riveted to her face, dipped lower. He stared at where the deep burgundy of the dress contrasted with the slightly flushed pink of her skin.

Lois wriggled her shoulders - just a tiny movement - and the dress slithered to the floor.


Part 11

"Scotch?"

"No, thanks."

Eric Menzies slid open his drawer, set a glass on his desk, and half-filled it from the bottle that had also been stashed out of sight.

He took a large gulp and swallowed quickly.

"Long day?" Daniel asked, endeavouring to hit exactly the right level of empathy. He wasn't sure if Eric had slept at all since banging on his door early Tuesday morning, and tiredness and stress were likely to make the higher-up's mood more volatile than usual.

"The papers, the television news, the radios have been hounding me nonstop," Eric said, sounding disgruntled. "Answering their calls is about all my PA has done since this story broke. There are only so many ways she can say, 'Mr Menzies has no comment at this time.'"

Daniel thought he sensed a glimmer of dark humour in Eric's reply, so he chanced a cautious smile. "I guess that was going to happen once you became the face of this." He paused, carefully weighing his words. "You handled it with aplomb."

Eric snorted. "If I had handled it a little better months ago -"

"The assignment was never in your portfolio."

"No, but Moyne was a part of the assignment, so it was on my radar." Eric raised his glass to his mouth, but instead of drinking from it, he stared into its amber depths. "I know he killed those two agents."

Silence fell like a night fog. Eric emptied his glass and refilled it from the bottle. He took a second glass from the drawer, poured from the bottle, and pushed it across the desk.

"Thanks," Daniel said, feeling cornered. "Have you considered another press conference? Someone else could do it - it doesn't have to be you."

"We don't actually know the whereabouts of Superman or his mental state, so there is very little we can tell them," Eric said. "Have you had any contact with Lane?"

"No. I thought it best to leave them alone. This is going to be a huge adjustment for Clark. Lois, too."

Eric nodded slowly. "That isn't stopping the media wolves from baying for an interview."

"Let them bay," Daniel said. "They are not the important ones here. Neither is the public."

"We need to find out what happened to his mother," Eric said.

Daniel had been wondering how he was going to broach the subject of Martha Kent. He had assumed that Eric had been too engrossed in the fallout from introducing the world to its resident alien to give much consideration to the missing mother. "Yes," he said. "Have you had any thoughts?"

"Four guards were there at the beginning," Eric said. "Shadbolt, Deller, Trask, and Moyne. Reuben O'Brien was the higher up, and Anstruther his deputy."

"Three of the guards are dead," Daniel said. "Whatever they knew, they've taken to the grave."

"O'Brien can't put together two coherent sentences, what Anstruther was told has been shown to be incorrect, and all the records are gone," Eric said. "Which leaves Shadbolt. Have you ever talked to him about this?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Daniel shifted uncomfortably.

"I figure you and Shadbolt had some sort of pact of silence after they escaped."

Daniel took a gulp of the Scotch and swallowed, managing to limit its effects to a gruff clearing of his throat.

"Will you ask him?" Eric said, saving Daniel from having to give a detailed account of the final few hours of the alien operation. "Ask him if he remembers anything about those early days. Ask him if Trask mentioned anything at all about what happened to the parents."

"I'll do it first thing tomorrow," Daniel said.

"I've had Moyne's apartment emptied and everything put in secure storage," Eric said. "Perhaps we could ask for Shadbolt back for a couple of days, and the three of us go through it together."

"OK."

"I'm going to see Deller's widow tomorrow morning."

"You think she might know something?"

"Before Rhodes published her first story - the one about how the alien had been captured and had died - I contacted Mrs Deller. As I suspected, she had been told that the vicious alien had slaughtered her husband."

In all the turmoil of an approaching asteroid, Scardino hadn't even taken a moment to consider the full ramifications of Clark going public. "How did she react when the story changed to the alien being alive and free ... and our only hope?"

"While you were scuttling to Smallville, I went to Mrs Deller and told her the truth."

"That her husband had been killed by someone other than the alien?"

"Yes. That as an agency, we had failed in protecting her husband - not from the dangers of an alien, but from the dangers of one of our own agents."

Daniel wondered if he'd mentioned that the killer had been his wife's nephew, but decided that there was little to be gained from pushing Eric Menzies. "What about Mrs Bortolotto?"

"He wasn't married. His mother passed away about two years ago. He was an only child."

Daniel wondered if Bortolotto's death had in any way contributed to the passing of his mother.

"It's like a pebble in a pond," Eric commented. "One man's evil - sometimes there seems no end to the effects."

"It's easy to forget in this job," Daniel said. "Death happens, we move on, and we rarely take the time to reflect on the devastation left in the family ... friends ... a community."

Eric emptied his glass and reached for the bottle again. He tightened the lid and replaced it in his desk drawer. "Mrs Deller is being well-looked after," he said. "It doesn't bring back her husband, but she doesn't want financially."

Money seemed to be the great panacea of how the agency fixed its mistakes.

"When I see her tomorrow, I'll ask her if she remembers her husband saying anything about the alien's mother," Eric said.

"But you won't mention her name?" The question was out before Daniel could stop it. He held his breath in anticipation of a sharp retort.

"No," Eric said calmly. "But - like everything else in this mess - it will have to be handled carefully."

Perhaps Eric *hadn't* slept since realising the escaped alien could save the world - he seemed to have fitted a lot of damage control into a short time.

"We have to give Clark some answers," Eric said with a deep sigh. "We owe him that much."

"I had wondered if his mom would find a way to come forward," Daniel said.

"Yeah. I did, too," Eric said. "But that assumes she *can* come forward."

"If she'd been told that her son had died, she could have made a new life."

"That would be the best possible outcome."

Daniel jolted upright in his chair. "You don't think it's possible that she will return home, do you? To Kansas?"

"I've been hoping you would hear from Lane with exactly that news," Eric admitted. "If Mrs Kent has seen the newspaper reports, she'll know that her son's identity is being kept a secret. She's not going to publicly announce that she's Martha Kent, Superman's mother."

"There are some pretty big assumptions there," Daniel said wryly. "That she is alive. That she has access to a news service. That she isn't being kept against her will."

"I've had a couple of the admin staff check the women's prisons and other institutions such as nursing homes where some of the residents are restrained from leaving for their own safety," Eric said. "And every name can be substantiated."

"In Metropolis?"

"New Troy. And the neighbouring states."

"Is it worth going further?"

"They'll keep working on it tomorrow."

Eric was serious about finding Clark's mother, Daniel thought with growing respect. He was overseeing it personally, not farming it out to a junior.

"I figure they won't have arrived in Kansas yet," Eric said, draining his already empty glass.

"They have no reason to hurry," Daniel said. "And I'm sure Lois has realised that reintroducing Clark into his community is not going to be straightforward. Not while they know more about his past than he does."

"You have a lot of faith in her."

"She saved our hides," Daniel said.

Eric nodded. "Do you think there is any future to the Superman thing?"

"As in Clark getting back into the costume and helping out again?"

"Yes."

"I don't know," Daniel said. "But I can tell you that he won't do it unless Lois encourages and supports him."

"You think she's *that* important to him?"

"I don't think there's a way to quantify how important Lois is to Clark. Or Superman. They both need her."

"He's a lucky man," Eric said.

"Yeah," Daniel agreed, thinking about the cell. "And that's despite everything Trask and Moyne did to him."

||_||

Lois listened as their combined breaths slowly returned to normal.

She was tucked between Clark's arm and his body, availing herself of his bare chest to use as a pillow. Her arm was draped languidly across his stomach, her fingers skating over the warm skin that stretched tightly around his ribs.

Clark's chest lifted suddenly with a chuckle.

Lois responded with a lazy laugh. "Good, huh?"

"Better than good," he said. His voice droned through his chest, magnifying its sexiness to crazy levels.

She could feel the depths of his relaxation and contentment as his fingers drew abstract patterns on her shoulder. Now was her time. She risked shattering the current mood, but there would be no better time to do this. "Clark?"

"Yes, honey?" he said in a husky voice that tempted her to veer from the path she had determined.

Lois refocussed. Now was exactly the right time. "I'd like to tell you a story."

"OK," he said agreeably, although she heard a trace of surprise in his tone.

Her hand slid up his ribcage and to his neck, resting it there as the side of her thumb stroked the skin behind his ear.

"Are you sure you want to *tell* a story?" Clark asked as his hand captured hers. "Perhaps it would be more fun to act it out."

Lois chuckled. "I'll tell the story first, then ..."

His laughter rolled through his chest again. "What is this story about?"

"It's about a mom and a dad," Lois said. "And their baby."

"Lo-is?" he said, sounding serious, but she could hear his smile. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

She giggled and determinedly applied her mind to finding the way through this particular minefield. "No," she said. "The parents are not us."

"Pity," he said, his fingers continuing to caress her shoulder.

"This mom and dad had a terrible decision to make."

"They did?"

"Yes. They knew that their planet was going to be destroyed, killing all life on it."

"Is this about the asteroid?"

"No. This is about another planet."

His breathing stopped. His muscles tensed. "Is *that* what makes me different? I'm from another planet?"

Lois lifted from his chest and smiled into his slightly widened eyes. "Yes," she said. "Your natural parents packed you into a tiny spaceship and sent you to Earth - hoping you would look enough like the rest of us that you would have the chance of a regular life."

"They died?" he asked, his voice weighed down with sadness.

"I believe so," Lois said, stroking his jaw. "Jonathan and Martha Kent found your spaceship, brought you home, kept your secret, and raised you as their own son."

"They must have been such good people," Clark said.

"They were," Lois said.

"How did they cope with all of my differences?"

"I don't think the differences manifested themselves straight away," Lois said. "But from what you have told me, your parents accepted you just the way you were."

"I owe them everything. My life. My name."

"They loved you very much. And you loved them."

"I ... I wish I had some memories of them," Clark said.

"Perhaps being here on the farm will help you remember," Lois said, keeping her mind on this particular minefield and refusing to think ahead to the others that were going to have to be confronted eventually. "You have plenty of time."

Clark managed a wan smile. "So ... I'm not human?"

"Not in the sense of Earth being your home planet," Lois said lightly. "You come from the planet of Krypton - so that makes you Kryptonian."

His eyebrows pulled together. "I guess that makes me an alien," he said.

Lois wasn't going to admit to that. "It makes you Kryptonian," she said.

"But this is Planet Earth," Clark said. "So, here, I'm an alien."

"I don't want you to stress about this."

He grinned suddenly, easing Lois's tension. "And you figured that, having already blown my mind, you could slip in another bombshell in the hope that it would hardly cause a ripple through my torpid tranquillity?"

Lois matched his grin, daring to hope that this would be all right. "You got me."

"Your timing is impeccable," Clark said. "I can't feel isolated - not while we're like this. It just isn't possible."

"So, you're all right? You're not going to obsess over being different?"

"Whatever I am, it didn't keep me from marrying the prettiest of all Earth women." His grin came again, doused with suggestion. "And it didn't stop us from, ah ... verifying our compatibility."

She responded to his smile, but hauled her attention back to ensuring that Clark was going to be OK. "Do you have any more questions?"

"Yep."

He didn't sound terribly perturbed. "Go ahead," she said. "Ask."

"Would you like to make love with me again? Now?"

Lois felt her smile burst forth. "You've had enough of the story-telling?" she said.

"Well," he said with a muscle-melting smile, "tomorrow, we have to continue driving the Jeep towards Kansas. You can tell me more stories, then. But now ..."

"Now, you have other ideas for better use of our time."

"Precisely," Clark said.

Lois grinned and skimmed her hand down his neck and onto his chest. "Well, Mr Krypton, this Earth woman would like to check out our compatibility again," she said in a low, evocative tone. "Just to make sure."

Clark didn't agree. He didn't disagree, either. He spread his hands around her head and kissed her with such heat that every other thought was combusted in the fire of his passion.

||_||

The intensity ebbed away, leaving behind a silky layer of complete contentment.

He had everything.

He was an alien.

A planetary foreigner.

He had Lois.

She had married him.

She loved him.

She had shared her body with him. Willingly. Naturally. Forging unbreakable bonds between them.

And then, with total acceptance as her platform, she had revealed the truth of his identity.

Clark touched a kiss to the top of her head. "Are you asleep, honey?"

"No," she replied. "Just very, very sated."

Clark felt a ripple of combined relief and humour. "That's good," he said. Then he added, "'Cause I don't think I'd done this before today."

Lois lifted her head with a burst of energy that seemed to come from nowhere and grinned at him. "I never would have guessed," she said.

"Hadn't I told you?"

"You once said that you didn't have much experience."

"So ... I was a virgin," he said, completely unsure how he felt about that.

"Not anymore," Lois said with what sounded a lot like triumph.

Clark laughed, but it was stifled as he reflected on the enormity of what she had done for him. "Thank you," he whispered, brushing back her hair with a light stroke.

She shuffled up his body and kissed him. "Do you want to go back to our motel rooms?"

"No," he said, remembering how much he had dreaded having to separate from Lois.

"I couldn't believe it when you got *two* rooms," she said. "What a way to crush a woman's hopes."

"I suppose we do have to go back and get the Jeep?" he said, wanting nothing more than to stay here with Lois indefinitely.

"Yeah, but not now. It's not even midnight yet."

"You should get some sleep. I'll wake you before sunrise."

"Are you OK?" Lois asked. "With the other-planet thing? You're not going to lie here all night and be consumed by it, are you?"

No - if he lay awake all night with Lois draped over him, he was sure he wouldn't be thinking too much about where he had been born. "You mean the fact that I'm an alien?" He had meant to sound serious, but his mood just wasn't suited to solemnity.

"I mean the fact that you're a married alien with a hot-hot-hot body and a wife who intends to make good use of it."

Alien or not, how could he be anything other than completely happy? "I'm married to you," Clark said. "I'm in love. My body is slaked with pleasure, my heart is overwhelmed with love, and my mind is full of you."

"Good," Lois said with a satisfied smile. She kissed him and snuggled back down the bed, resting her head on his chest. "Goodnight, my love."

"Goodnight," he said. "My darling wife."

||_||

~~ Friday ~~

Lois's cell phone rang about an hour after they'd left the motel where the newly married couple had ostensibly spent the night in separate rooms. She saw the caller ID and smiled. "Hi, Uncle Mike," she said.

"Hi, Lois, love," he said cheerily. "How was dinner the other night?"

"Delicious," Lois said. "Thank you."

"Are you still in Metropolis?"

"No. It was a flying visit," Lois said with a smiling glance towards Clark, who was driving. "I had a couple of work commitments that needed my attention."

"Were you able to see your dad?"

"No. I called Ronny during the asteroid scare, and she told me that they had played videos on the television and kept all newspapers out of the home. They'd decided it wasn't worth upsetting the residents."

"Yeah. And it was all over in just a few hours, thanks to Superman turning up and saving the day." Lois could hear the admiration in her uncle's voice. "I don't suppose you got to meet him?"

"I'm in the travel business, Uncle Mike," Lois said with a smile. "I don't think Superman needs to book a ticket if he wants to get from A to B."

Uncle Mike's hearty laugh undulated down the phone line. "Well, whoever he is and wherever he came from, it was a great day for us when he chose Earth as his new home."

"Yes," Lois agreed, again looking at Clark. He shot her a smile. "We are very lucky he's here."

"Were you OK?" Uncle Mike asked. "I tried to call you after the first press conference, but I couldn't get through."

"Yeah," Lois said. "I was with Clark."

"Clark?" Uncle Mike asked, drawing out the name to emphasise his interest. "I assume the other meal was for this Clark I keep hearing about?"

"Yes," Lois said.

"Is it serious? With him?"

"Do you consider marriage to be serious?"

"Marriage?" Uncle Mike exclaimed. "You're engaged? Lois, love, that's wonderful news. Clark is one lucky man."

"He keeps telling me that," Lois said with a smile to Clark. "But we're not just engaged, we're married."

"Married? Lois, when did this happen?"

"A few days ago. But then the asteroid happened, and things got hectic at work, and Clark and I have been trying to juggle his farm in Kansas and my job in Metropolis."

"I must be getting old," Uncle Mike said. "Suddenly, I'm finding it hard to keep up."

"We'll be back in Metropolis tomorrow," Lois said, with a questioning glance towards Clark. He nodded. "We'll go and see Dad then. Would it be all right if you didn't tell him our news? I'd like to tell him myself tomorrow."

"Sure, Lois," Uncle Mike said amiably. "And is there any chance you would have a few minutes to pop into the restaurant? I'd love to meet the young man who has captured your heart. Perhaps we could have lunch together."

After another glance to Clark and seeing no overtly negative reaction to the suggestion, Lois said, "We'd like that, Uncle Mike. Thanks. And I still have an account I need to settle."

"Ah, don't worry about that," her uncle said. "Consider it a wedding present."

"OK, thanks."

"Before you go, I did call for a reason," Uncle Mike said. "Ronny has suggested that your dad might be able to manage an electric wheelchair."

"You mean he could get around by himself?" Lois said as a whole range of possibilities floated through her mind. "That would be *so* wonderful for him."

"We can't get too excited yet," Uncle Mike cautioned. "A stroke can affect a person's spatial perception. He might find it too hard to control the chair."

"Oh," Lois said.

"I agreed to the salesman coming later today with a range of chairs. Ronny says we should know fairly quickly whether it's going to be possible for Sam to manage one of them."

Although the electric wheelchair might not be a reality for her dad, just the suggestion of it had altered her mindset a little. "Hey, Uncle Mike?" Lois said. "Would it be possible for Dad to come to lunch with us tomorrow? Could we get one of those special cabs to collect him? It would do him good to get out of the nursing home for an hour or so."

"When the weather's been nice, I've been taking him for walks," Uncle Mike said. "He enjoys that a lot."

"I haven't eaten with him since the stroke," Lois said, feeling a bit ashamed of her admission. "How much help does he need? Would that embarrass him in public?"

"I'm sure we could choose something from the menu that would be easy for him," Uncle Mike said. "A sandwich or something like that."

"Can we do it?" Lois said, feeling her excitement rise. "Would that be OK?"

"I'll ask him today," Uncle Mike said. "If it doesn't go so well with the wheelchairs, it might make him feel a bit better."

"But if it does go well with the wheelchairs, we'll have two things to celebrate," Lois said.

"A family lunch," Uncle Mike said happily. "And we even get a new member to welcome. This is going to be good."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Lois said. "We'll go to the nursing home before lunch."

"Great," he said. "Don't worry about anything. I'll book the cab and clear everything with Ronny."

"Thanks, Uncle Mike," Lois said. "See you tomorrow." She disconnected the call and smiled across to Clark. "You heard that?"

He looked a little uncomfortable. "Yeah," he said. "I tried not to listen."

"It's OK," Lois said. "It's easier if you listen - then I don't have to repeat everything."

"You don't have any more secrets from me?" Clark asked with a smile.

"A few," she said, trying to make it sound alluring rather than alarming. "But nothing that need stop you listening to my conversation with my uncle."

Clark smiled. "Do you want to spend all day driving?" he asked.

"No," Lois said, glad they had moved away from the subject of secrets. "This is our honeymoon."

"So I was thinking ..."

"Go on," she said, drooling ever so slightly over the mysterious smile on Clark's face.

"We could park the Jeep somewhere and get on back to Kansas. I'm sure there's work I should be doing on the farm - and if I get tired - you know, after the trauma of crashing into an asteroid - I could stumble up the stairs to the bedroom and maybe ... my wife could, ah ... reinvigorate me."

Lois chuckled. "Are you propositioning me, Mr Kent?"

"Yes," he declared with a wide grin. He lifted his hand from the steering wheel and held it out to her. "So ... want to go home with me, honey?"

"What are we going to do with the Jeep?"

"Well, it would be useful to have it to get around Metropolis tomorrow. After dark tonight, I could come back for it and take it to the garage at your dad's place. Then we'd have it for tomorrow."

"Good idea," Lois said. "His car is at the farm, so eventually, we should probably swap them back, but Dad's not going to need a vehicle for a while."

"Did he have a stroke?"

Lois nodded. "Sorry," she said. "I forgot that I hadn't told you."

"You said he was unwell."

"I was away on an assignment. I didn't even know it had happened until a few weeks later. Then, when I got home, I discovered that he was paralysed down one side of his body, confined to bed, and unable to speak."

"Aw, Lois," Clark said softly. "I'm so sorry."

"But since then, he's made a lot of improvements," Lois said brightly. "He is learning to sign to communicate and now he might be able to get an electric wheelchair. He's a lot happier, he's working hard at his therapies, he can read, and he enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles." She waited to see if Clark responded to the mention of the jigsaw puzzles.

"It will be nice if he can have lunch with us tomorrow," he said.

"A lot of his improvement began after you made him a tray for the jigsaw puzzles," Lois said.

"I did?"

"Yeah. I had the idea, I gave you a rough description, and you did the rest."

"Did I use a hammer and nails?" Clark asked. "Like a regular guy? Or did I use some alien skills?"

"I think you sanded it back with your eyes," Lois said with a smile.

"Ah, just like the shaving."

"Yeah."

Clark pulled into a densely treed roadside stop. "Do you think the Jeep will be safe here until nightfall?"

"You're serious about wanting to get back to Smallville?" Lois said, trying to formulate a plan to deal with the difficulties inherent in Clark having contact with people who knew he had seven missing years.

"Yes," he said, reaching over and kissing her cheek. "I'm eager to start our lives. Together - as husband and wife. Once we're there, you can work on your novel if that's what you want to do. And we can think about our future."

"You don't want to keep driving? Think of it as a honeymoon?"

"Honey," Clark said, smiling through his 'consider-this' expression. "We can have a vacation anywhere in the world. At any time. But this is our honeymoon, and all we need is a readily accessible bed." He looked around the Jeep, appearing to search for something. "As a honeymoon venue," he said with a wink, "this is sadly lacking."

"OK," Lois said, smiling despite her gut rapping its warnings through the corridors on her brain.

Clark leapt from the driver's seat and went to her door to open it. "Let's go home," he said as he scooped her into his arms.

Lois kissed him, and they flew into the early morning sky.