Home is Where the Hero Is
by Bellarata
a/n- This is a rewrite of the episode Home is Where the Hurt is. I was greatly dissatisfied how this episode went and I had to do something about it. This is my first Lois/Clark fic and I hope I don’t screw it up!! If this storyline has already been done, my apologies! Know it wasn’t intentional - I tried to find other HIWTHI fics and couldn’t find any that were along these lines. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 1
A rue smile tugged at Sam Lane’s lips as he sat in the darkened bedroom of his daughter’s fiancé. This wasn’t how he expected to be spending his Christmas, that much was for certain. When he’d made the impulsive decision to show up uninvited on his eldest daughter’s doorstep to spend Christmas with her, he’d pretty much anticipated how it would play out. Lois would be surprised, yet wary - and with good reason. He had thought he could bulldoze his way back into her life under the distorted cloak of Christmas spirit, knowing his daughter wouldn‘t have the heart to toss him out on his very deserving behind into the cold. Not on Christmas. It had been unfair and an act of a desperate man - and he was ashamed of himself. He had assumed she’d be alone at Christmas, as she usually was. What he hadn’t anticipated was finding her apartment occupied by strangers, who were obviously very much at home in her daughter’s life. Strangers that obviously cared about his daughter like she was family.
It had made him realize even more how much he had failed her as a parent.
When Lois had finally walked through her door, Sam had taken the coward’s way out and hid in the bathroom, finding that he needed a moment to work up the courage to face the disillusionment and disappointment in his daughter’s eyes when she realized that he had planned to hijack her holiday by showing up unannounced. But before he could muster up the courage to finally face her, his ex-wife had shown up, obviously with the same intent to use Christmas tradition as an excuse to not be alone.
Things had gone downhill from there, and he had no one to blame but himself.
Bringing out his latest creation and introducing her as his fiancée? What had he been thinking? That had been slipped out before he could help himself - an automatic defense mechanism against the one woman who still had the ability to turn his life inside out without even chipping a nail. A woman who he had been lucky enough to have as his wife at one time - before he ruined it. Ruined everything. Who had he been trying to fool? Even as he said the words, claiming his robot as his betrothed, he knew it had only proved to make him even more pathetic and low in the eyes of those he still loved so dearly.
There were times that he didn’t like himself very much - and sure couldn’t blame others who felt the same way.
Yet - here he was. He’d been offered a gift that he didn’t think he had quite deserved. A chance to make a difference. A chance to make his daughter see him as something other than a failure and disappointment.
A chance to be the hero that Lois had used to regard him as. A brilliant doctor, she had called him. Lois had asked him to save Superman - and he was determined to do just that. His daughter had asked him for help, something she hadn’t done since she was little. It felt good. It gave him hope. ‘I need your help,’ she had said to him, something he had never thought he’d ever hear from her lips again.
He just prayed he didn’t screw it up.
Sam shifted in his seat, the past hours more draining than anything he’d ever experienced in his life. His eyes found the sleeping form of his daughter, snuggled against the super hero who’d saved the world more times than he cared to think. Well, now it was his turn to save the world - by saving Superman.
He just prayed he could do it. The Kryptonite was doing its job - robbing Superman of his very life, clearly evident in the labored breath and skin that had long since turned ashen. Superman was dying and Sam was the one who had put the very first nail in his coffin by suggesting that the only way to save this hero was to bring him to the brink of death. God, he hoped he was right and that it would work. He didn’t want to think of the consequences if he was wrong.
Sam watched Lois shift uneasily in her sleep, noticing the way she pressed herself even closer to the man who occupied her fiancé’s bed. It made him feel… odd, watching his daughter sleeping so intimately with another man in Clark‘s own home. Surely he wasn’t the only who felt that way? He thought back to the conversation he’d overheard between his daughter and the man who wasn’t her fiancé. ’I love you,” had been the very last words Superman had uttered to his daughter before the Kryptonite had stolen his awareness, rendering him mercifully unconscious. A coma, Sam had declared, watching as Lois’ face had crumpled and she had lowered herself to Superman’s chest, the tears flying down her cheeks to stain the very *S* that had become such a symbol of hope to Metropolis. To the world. It was so hard to think that he was from another planet, when he was lying next to his daughter looking so completely human.
His daughter loved this man. And this man obviously loved his daughter. So where did that leave Clark?
It was a simple leap of logic, one that Lois was making no attempts to hide. Her daughter loved Superman - yet she was engaged to another man. It was obvious in the tortured tears and sobs she made no attempt to still, she was crying over him as a lover. Not as a friend.
Something wasn’t quite making sense here.
Quiet footsteps interrupted his musing, and Sam watched as Clark Kent’s father lowered himself wearily into the empty seat next to him. Feeling decidedly awkward, Sam’s gaze darted from Jonathan to the sleeping pair on the bed. He almost felt like he should apologize for his daughter’s actions, sleeping so intimately with another man in his son’s own bed. It seemed so… scandalous and so wrong. Sam didn’t want this man thinking badly of his daughter, regardless of the circumstances. Yet… there was neither reproach nor judgment in the other man’s eyes. Instead there was a mutual look worry and despair. A look of… love. It was quite clear to Sam at that moment that Jonathan Kent loved Superman as a…
Son.
And as if a cloak had suddenly been lifted and the truth revealed, Sam knew. Without a doubt, he knew.
Superman was Clark Kent.
tbc
PLEASE let me know what you think and if I should continue!
