Thank you, Toomi8. I'm glad you found Rachel to be a real person in my tale. I find that I can't write throwaway or stereotyped characters, even secondary ones, and even though it adds length to the chapters. Hence all the information on Mrs. Howard, Tommy, Lana, Madge the rental clerk, Deidre the waitress, Bob Clay the cattle rancher, even Whit Bascombe the railroad station manager and Gary Plunkett the erstwhile cattle buyer. I hope you enjoyed them too. And it's okay if you don't have a preference on the epilogues.
Cuidadora, thank you for your kind words. I can understand why you'd prefer that Clark tell Rachel that he plans to marry Lois, but this gave me the opportunity to show a bit more of Lois' growth over the time the story covers. It also very quietly highlights one key thing: Lois has flown with Clark and Rachel has never flown with him. I wanted to - very sneakily - show that while Rachel never minded that Clark was also Superman and certainly wasn't put off by the fact, Lois embraced Clark's dual identity (by the end of the story, anyway) more completely than Rachel did. And you're right, the "what if?" question makes fanfiction so much fun.
MDS21, thank you for coming out of lurkerhood. I'm glad you weren't tossed off the roller coaster by the ups and downs of this epic. And I'm glad you liked the choice of endings. I chose to "tell" about the conversation between Clark and Lois mainly to save space (this thing clocked in at over 124,000 words!) and to retain a little surprise for the epilogue.
I have a third epilogue which I can send anyone who wishes to see it. Polly was the one who pushed the first version, Trope liked the second, and Harley gave me the third. I doubt that I'll post that one here unless there is a hue and cry to see it. I'm pretty sure the only epilogue in the archive version will be the first one.
Thanks to everyone who commented, everyone who read my offering, and everyone who enjoyed it even a little. See you on the boards!
