I feel like I've been waiting for this for 18 years! (not really, more like... 7? -ish? Idk, I found this fandom back in 2015 and just started reading through the archive, so ever since the 'Ks', lol.)
It is definitely worth the wait! Away From the Sun has been a fic I re-read regularly, but I haven't re-read Wherever You Will Go because of the not quite cliffhanger. I just did in anticipation of this being posted. It's still raw and a little awkward, but that doesn't lessen the emotional impact of the story.
This one seemed to start with the same raw, awkward writing, and I admit I had difficulty connecting with it. It might be that I just didn't understand what was going on, that Clark had been trained by torture and convinced by circumstances to deny the very core of himself: the compassion that encompasses everything he does and his love for Lois, and that's the level on which I connect with him. But when he managed to break through that, I started being able to connect with the story, and it became a testiment to how much you've grown as a writer over the years.
I'm deeply glad you've come back to the fandom and blessed us again with your writing!
PS: I think my favorite phrase was something like 'trying to wrap words around feelings'. It's such a great way to describe the difficulty of doing so!
