They’d opted to walk back to Clark’s place, knowing that they could fly if they changed their minds, but happy for now to just amble along together.
It was pretty late – or maybe a better term was that it was pretty early, since it was now well after midnight. It was the time of night where, even in a city as big as Metropolis, the streets were almost deserted.
So they didn’t really have to worry that someone might overhear them.
They were using telepathy anyway – mostly, simply because they could. Having made the breakthrough, they were finding that they could turn the telepathy on and off without any more effort than it took to speak. And it felt… more intimate, somehow, to be conversing this way in an otherwise silent night.
I love this image, how Lois and Clark are walking home through the mostly deserted streets in the small hours of a Metropolis night, wrapped in the cocoon of their togetherness and their telepathy. The natural intimacy of it is wonderful.
I very much liked how they talked about what had happened, how they had defeated Trask and saved the hostages together, but how it had been Lois who had done most of the heroics. Now, after this, she really
is a hero, a slayer of dragons. No, wait, she is a
stabler of dragons.
She slipped her own arm around his waist, under his tuxedo jacket where he was warm and solid.
I totally, completely love this sentence. The warmth, the intimacy, the safety, the wonderful, wonderful reassurance of this little scene, with Lois wrapping her arm around Clark's waist, inside his tuxedo.
<I was afraid for… for the people I care about. Perry. Alice. Jimmy.> Her thoughts softened to the merest whisper of a touch inside his head. <And for you, Clark. I was… so afraid for you. I’d already seen what that green rock did to you. I was afraid it might… kill you. Or... that he would, as soon as you were vulnerable. And that…> She stopped, unable to go on.
He tipped his cheek to rest it on her head for a moment, slowing almost to a halt. <I know, love,> his thoughts washed over her gently. <I felt it. I felt what you were feeling.>
<I wasn’t really afraid for me,> she continued. <Not much, anyway… although I knew if Trask opened that box, I’d be affected. But even if I was affected, I was… anonymous. You know? He didn’t know about me.>
I love how she tells him that she had been so afraid for Perry, Alice, Jimmy and Clark, but not much for herself, even though Trask could certainly have killed her. And Clark knows her fears, because due to their telepathy, he truly felt what she was feeling.
They had reached his building, and he stopped on the doorstep and turned to face her, taking both of her hands in his and bringing them to his lips. He kissed the backs of her fingers before bringing their joined hands to rest over his heart. She could feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against her palms.
“Do you really understand what you did tonight, Lois?” he asked very softly. “*You* saved all those people. You saved me. And you did it using your super powers, like I do every time I put on the suit. But you also used… *you*, Lois. You, who you are – your brain, your wits. Your courage, your heart.” The last was breathed onto her lips as he kissed her almost reverently, still holding her hands against his heart.
Incredibly beautiful.
“I think I understand what you’ve been trying to tell me,” she said after a moment. “What you’ve been trying to tell me for a while now.”
“About who you are?” he asked softly. “That you’re already a superhero?”
“Yes. You said… that I already chose to do this, when I decided I would grow up to fight dragons. You said it wasn’t just super powers… and it wasn’t just words as a reporter. That it was me; my brain, my abilities – all of them, super and not.”
“And do you believe that now?”
She smiled softly at him. “Yes. I think… I think this was the last little bit of growing up I needed to do, Clark. The last little bit of growing into… me.”
Wonderful.
And he had helped, with his support, his friendship, and his love. She’d been so lucky to find him. She smiled at that thought. And he thought that *he* was the lucky one. She stretched up and kissed him, trying to convey everything she felt.
I'm running out of adjectives, but - well, I just love all of this, Janet.
“Lois…” He looked into her eyes. “You were… like a small island I saw once, in the middle of the Amazon River. It was like a sparkling jewel, all lush and green and just teeming with life - in the middle of that wide, brown, muddy water. Beautiful, intriguing, but so, so isolated. So unreachable by ordinary means, because it was in one of the deepest and widest parts of the river, where there are very strong currents.”
He lifted one hand and stroked a finger softly down her cheek. “That was how I saw you. So isolated and alone, but so, so appealing… And I knew I wanted to get to know you better. To find a raft, build a bridge - to somehow reach you. Because almost immediately upon meeting you, I could see flashes of who you really were behind those protective walls… And I loved what I saw.”
This is an absolutely lovely image.
And as she kissed him back, she realized what was different about this kiss.
It was her – and the changes he’d wrought in her. There was no more hesitation. No more holding back. She’d faced the possibility that she could lose him - really lose him, to death. She’d been reminded that neither she nor he were immortal.
And having faced that, the risks of offering him her heart paled in comparison.
Perfect.
“Lois?”
“Clark…” Her voice, husky with all she was feeling, was barely above a whisper. “I love you.”
“And I love you.” He searched her face. “I *love* you, Lois,” he repeated, and it sounded like a vow.
She smiled at him. “I know.” She reached out, and he grasped her hand firmly in his. “I do know it, Clark,” she repeated.
She tightened her grip on his hand, and he meshed their fingers together. She raised their joined hands, palm to palm, and pressed them against her heart. It was time to tell him what she’d learned. What she knew; what she wanted.
She took a deep breath. “Clark… Will you marry me?”
Oh, I
love this! I love that fact that
she is the one who proposes. How perfect. Clark has been in love with her for so long, and he has been longing for marriage with her for so long. Now Lois finally knows that she wants to be married to him as much as he wants to be married to her. What could be more perfect than
her proposal?
I'm so glad, too, that Clark isn't the sort of man who feels that it is a man's prerogative to pop the question.
He stared at her for a millisecond before she saw the wonder and joy *bloom* across his face.
“*Yes*.” He smiled at her, a smile of such blinding love that she felt herself lose touch with gravity at the power of it. And even as she left the couch, even before her super reflexes could engage, he was on his feet and lifting her to twirl her around.
As she laughed down at him, hands on his shoulders, he laughed back up at her. “Yes! Yes. YesYesYes!”
Oh, so wonderful!
And ever since, it had been… like their unconstrained flight, the carefree and joyful dance in and among the clouds that night in the Kansas twilight.
This life dance – the joyful rhythm of their time together - was just as exciting, with its own swoops and dips and rolls, just as glorious as they rode the currents of their days.
Just as breathtaking; just as quiet.
Just as laughter-filled and just as solemn.
And their other dance – their dance in the night – it was just as exhilarating, the connection between them strong and deep and true. She hadn’t known how it could be - moving as one, slow and intense - full of passion and heat, soaring toward rapture without flight. They were two souls perfectly in tandem - two as one, their minds as entangled as their bodies. Clark with her and her with Clark, grounded only in their bodies - their minds and hearts and souls in flight.
To me, this is the part that I love most of all in this fused final part and epilogue. Definitely one of the most memorable images of your entire story was the scene in Smallville, where Lois and Clark were flying and dancing in the sky like glorious birds together. Here, you show us that their married life, and not least their physical intimacy, is like that sort of ecstatic flight without actual flying. I find it exquisitely beautiful.
It was also great to see Lois make her debut as an "official" superhero, Kinetic. Ehhh... Kinetic *Girl*?
“This is the dramatic appearance and rescue of scores of rail commuters by what appears to be the city’s newest superhero, Kinetic Girl,” the LNN anchor’s voice said as the camera shakily followed the black and pink form.
Lois choked, turning it into a cough at the last moment. “What –“ she began indignantly.
<Lois…> Clark began warningly.
“What did they just call her?” she demanded. <Kinetic *Girl*, Clark?>
Jimmy looked at her curiously. “Uh… you guys talked to her,” he said. “Didn’t your article say that she said her name is Kinetic Girl…?” He trailed off, looking back at the TV screen.
“I think it’s just Kinetic, Jim,” Clark said mildly as Lois growled under her breath.
“Yeah…” Jimmy said, obviously distracted by the short video, which LNN was replaying again as the anchor kept talking about the rescue. “..that’s what I said. Kinetic Girl.” He sighed almost dreamily.
Irresistible! Clark tells Jimmy that the new superhero is named just Kinetic, and Jimmy agrees, adding that that is what he had just said... Kinetic Girl! And so adorable that Jimmy is so starstruck that he couldn't really process what Clark told him!
Perry’s bellow rang out again. “Awright, people! News! I want news!”
He shook a handful of newspapers - some of their competitors’ current editions - in emphasis. “I want our headlines to be bigger and better than our competition’s!” He flapped the papers again for emphasis. “Bigger! Better! This is the Daily Planet, folks, not the Hoboken Gazette!”
Grinning, Lois raised an eyebrow at Clark, who grinned back. Perry in full news-hunt-mode was a one-man show.
“Now let’s get out there and get stories!” Perry continued. “And pictures! Pictures *and* stories! This newspaper is on the leading edge for Superman stories – so let’s get out there and make it happen with Kinetic Girl, too!”
Loved that image of Perry! The Hoboken Gazette, indeed. And even Perry, who almost certainly knows that Lois is the new superhero, and who almost certainly knows that Lois won't like the name Kinetic *Girl*, even he insists on the *Girl*! Oh, give up, girl! You have to know when you are outnumbered and give in gracefully.
I had a thought here... given that Lois and Clark are both Kryptonian in this story, chances are that they are most certainly physically compatible. So if they want to have a child there is nothing to stop them. However, Kinetic Girl can't very well fly around obviously pregnant while Lois is visibly expecting, too. So I guess Kinetic Girl will have to go on a sabbatical while Lois is pregnant. Even that might possibly raise
some people's suspicions. Oh, well - maybe your Lois and Clark share Tank's preference for a life without children!
This has been a wonderful and beautifully original story, Janet, told in what has at times been a positively poetic style.
Ann
